The Problem With One of our Culture’s Favorite Slogans

I was sent a link this week to a wikiHow piece entitled “12 steps to stay true to yourself.”  Here were some of its suggestions: 

“Don’t hide your character or preferences.”

“Speak honestly, no matter who you’re talking to.”

“Don’t pay attention to others’ opinions of you.”

“Learn to embrace your flaws.”

Now, there’s certainly something helpful in all of that. For one thing, living with a constant desire to please other people is unhealthy and utterly exhausting. No wonder so many of us are looking for a way to be true to ourselves—so much so that pieces of advice like that above have almost become common slogans in western culture.

But I want to suggest that there’s a problem with the radical “be true to yourself” individualism that we’re encouraged to adopt today: it makes it harder to get on with others. 

The Problem

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that it might make your relationships with other people harder if you just “tell it how it is” all the time and tell your nearest and dearest, “I don’t care what you think of me.” But even if we wouldn’t put it as strongly as that, most of us are living with a subtle conflict of interests. 

It seems that there are three desires which stand out as essential in modern western culture, especially among members of Generation Y and Z (those born in or after the early 1980s):

Freedom to be and do what I want: This is probably the most celebrated. We’re told to look within, discover who we are and not let anyone stop us living our dream.

Desire for achievement: We want to be excellent at what we do; we want to make a difference in this world or we want to leave a legacy.  It’s important that we live our “ best life” and become the best versions of ourselves possible.

Great relationships: We want brilliant friends who feel like family, a family that we’re friends with,  and a lover who understands me.

Three desires—three good desires, to the extent that they reflect a natural human longing for freedom, meaning and love. You could think of them as three big glasses that people want to fill to the brim.  

However, the reality is that to have them all you have to compromise. Yet in modern culture we’re in a scenario where people keep pouring into the glass called freedom so that it’s spilling over onto the table and making a mess. Meanwhile, the other two glasses are looking sadly empty.

For example, if you want to have great friendships you have to give up some freedom. If we make a commitment to spend an evening with someone then we’ll need to honour it and give up our freedom to bail out if we don’t feel like it any more. Or if a friend calls me and says they really need my help at 7am on a Saturday morning, then I’ll have to give up my freedom to lie in!

Similarly, if we want to achieve success we’ll often need to relinquish freedom. I can think of a friend who is training with the national swim squad who gets up at 5am each day to head to the pool for 2 hours. He’s very good at swimming, but lacks a lot of freedom.

What’s my point? Only to suggest this: if you follow our culture’s call to pursue radical individualism then you will actually miss out on other things which deeply desire. You may be “true to yourself” in terms of being completely free, but you’ll be false to other desires you have. I would argue that there’s a link between increasing individualism and the rising levels of anxiety and loneliness that we see among people in their teens, 20s and 30s. The current cultural narrative is that the way to happiness and wholeness is to “look within to find the true you.” But it’s not working. People are lonely, anxious and exhausted trying to function this way.

The Better Way

Wonderfully, Jesus offers a better way.  

Jesus invites you to  give up your “freedom” to come under his yoke—but his yoke is easy and his burden is light. It’s a pattern of life that works and is liveable! (Matthew 11 v 28-30) 

Jesus calls you to  deny yourself to serve others (Mark 10 v 43). As you do this you can enjoy wonderful relationships, and although you’ll lose some independence, you’ll also know a freedom from loneliness.  

And Jesus calls you to lose your life to gain eternal life (Luke 9 v 24). Rather than work to gain the whole world only to forfeit your soul, you can spend your life labouring for Jesus, safe in the   knowledge that working to grow the kingdom of God is an achievement that will last into the New Creation and will give you the greatest of legacies.  

It’s not wrong to want  freedom, achievement and relationships, but it’s foolish to keep pouring everything into the one glass.  

Jesus shows us how we can have all three when we follow him.

Matt Fuller’s book Be True to Yourself has been written to help Christians of all ages live with confidence in today’s culture. Buy it here.