“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with ever fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
-C.S. Lewis
Recently I saw someone on social media putting the question to their followers, “Is it worth getting married?” Not, should I get married. Not, is it a good thing to get married. But is it worth getting married? In other words, will entering into the institution of marriage result in a net gain for my life? Will submitting to the constraints of monogamy pay off in the end? Will marriage help actualize my potential? Will it benefit me financially? Will it boost my instagram followers?
And it’s not just marriage, either. Lately it seems like many people are asking questions about things that used to just be common sense. “Is it worth it to tell the truth?” “Is it worth it to work hard?” “Is it worth it to have kids?” “Is it worth it to join a church?” “Is it worth it to follow Jesus?”
As Christians, it’s true that we should have an answer ready for anyone who asks. But it’s also true that, as Rosaria Butterfield observed, “It’s impossible to give a good answer to a bad question.” And as it happens, the “Is it worth it?” line of questions happen to be among those which are uniformly bad. Not because it’s wrong to want good reasons before making a decision. But because the questions themselves demonstrate a critical blindness to the story we find ourselves in.
The Story We Find Ourselves In
Not only are stories important; they’re also inevitable. Every single person lives according to the story they believe themselves to be in. They are the means by which we organize, interpret, and respond to reality. “You are enough.” “Follow your heart.” “Nothing means anything.” “You only live once.” “C.R.E.A.M.” All of these are examples of stories — albeit little shriveled ones — which will generally persuade out decisions.
Except when we need to call in the advisory board at Meta Platforms Inc., of course.
If you want to understand why a bunch of students in checkered scarves are defending an explicitly terrorist organization, you need to understand that they are operating within a story. Specifically, a marxist story. The marxist story has given Gen Z kids the kind of epinephrine injection the materialist story never could. Watch them. Listen to them. Behold as their grandiose adjectives clash jarringly with their light blue medical masks. Witness the final incarnation of innumerable professors’ progressive grievances. And yet the marxist narrative has an appeal. It’s a story we feel we can be “heroes” in.
This democratization of story is a recent phenomenon. At one time in the West, there was broad acceptance of a metanarrative, i.e., a single overarching story under which all other stories find their meaning. At one time existential questions weren’t something you sat down with and tried to figure out from scratch. They were something you discovered in the context of the biblical metanarrative: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Eschaton.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, however, the West underwent many changes. One of the not-good changes was the abandonment of the biblical metanarrative. We decided we didn’t want a story in which God was the Independent Creator and we the Dependent Creation. We wanted our own story. One where we could be “free” to pursue our potential as individuals. And so we embarked on the roller-coaster of hell known as the psychological age, which Carl Trueman summarizes in the idea that “human flourishing is found primarily in an inner sense of wellbeing … and that who we are is largely a matter of personal choice not external imposition.”
No longer does human flourishing take place as we align our dreams and desires to God’s world, according to God’s Word. Instead, it occurs as we realize our agency as autonomous individuals.
Free to Die
Freedom, for the modern mind, is often conceived as sheer autonomy. No one to give us boundaries, rules, or goals. No one telling us what to do or forcing us into binary categories of right and wrong. What could be freer than that?
But let’s look at it another way. Is the child truly “free” who runs away from the “external impositions” of home and out into the deep, dark forest? In one sense, yes. He is free from rules; free from bedtime; free from brushing his teeth. Most importantly, he is free from having to eat those awful bagged kale salads with the dressing that tastes like Elmer’s glue. But let’s look a little closer. He’s also free to starve; or be eaten by wolves; or to fall down a ravine; or to die from exposure.
Let’s take this experiment even further. What about Robin Hood? Could he be “free” outside of Sherwood Forest? Could Winnie the Pooh and Co. really be “free” outside the hundred acre wood? What about Ratty and Mole? Could they be “free” away from their river, that “sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh?”
The answer is a resounding no. These characters find their purpose, identity, and life within the story they were written into. Outside of that story, they are hollowed-out ghosts — only “free” to blow away like dust.
Look around. Do we see the “liberated” plunging into epic quests and adventures? Are they risking life and limb for some great cause? Are they centres of ingenuity and innovation? Again, no. We see young men losing themselves in video games, porn, and antifa. We see young women losing themselves in social media, pet parenting, and feminism. And it all stems from the lie in the garden — that alternate story the devil proffers, “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”
It’s the same old lie. And it leads to the same old deathful dead end. Leave the good, time-tested way, and there’s a better path just over there. But there is no life, there is no story, apart from our Creator.
So is it worth it? To get married? To follow Jesus? The answer is yes — worth the loss of all things, in fact. But don’t just take my word for it. Open the Scriptures and see for yourself.
A vital dig down to the roots here, brother.