Is Christianity a Straightjacket?

The following post is adapted from Tim Keller's The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism  (Riverhead Books, 2008) on the question: Is belief in Jesus and Christianity the enemy of freedom?
                                                                                                                                                       

Love the Ultimate Freedom, is More Constraining Than We Might Think

In many areas of life, freedom is not so much the absence of restrictions as finding the right ones, the liberating restrictions. Those that fit with the reality of our nature and the world produce greater power and scope for our abilities and a deeper joy and fulfillment. What then is the reality we must acknowledge to thrive? What is the environment that liberates us if we confine ourselves to it, like water liberates a fish? Love. Love is the most liberating freedom-loss of all.

One of the principles of love -- either love for a friend or romantic love -- is that you have to lose independence to attain greater intimacy. If you want the "freedoms" of love --the fulfillment, security, sense of worth that it brings -- you must limit your freedom in many ways. Human beings are most free and alive in relationships of love. We only become ourselves in love.

Freedom, then, is not the absence of limitations and constraints but it is finding the right ones, those that fit our nature and liberate us. For a love relationship to be healthy there must be a mutual loss of independence. It can't be just one way. Both sides must say to each other, "I will adjust to you. I will change for you. I'll serve you even though it means a sacrifice for me."

At first sight, then, a relationship with God seems inherently dehumanizing. Surely it will have to be "one way," God's way. God, the divine being, has all the power. I must adjust to God -- there is no way that God could adjust to and serve me.

While this may be true in other forms of religion and belief in God, it is not true in Christianity. In the most radical way, God has adjusted to us -- in his incarnation and atonement. In Jesus Christ he became a limited human being, vulnerable to suffering and death. On the cross, he submitted to our condition -- as sinners -- and died in our place to forgive us. In the most profound way, God has said to us, in Christ, "I will adjust to you. I will change for you. I'll serve you though it means a sacrifice for me." If he has done this for us, we can and should say the same to God and others. St. Paul writes, "the love of Christ constrains us" (2 Cor 5:14).

A friend of C.S. Lewis's was once asked, "Is it easy to love God?" and he replied, "It is easy to those who do it." When you fall deeply in love , you want to please the beloved. You don't wait for the person to ask you to do something for her. You eagerly research and learn every little thing that brings her pleasure. Then you get it for her, even if it costs you money or great inconvenience. "Your wish is my command," you feel -- and it doesn't feel oppressive at all. From the outside, bemused friends may think, "She's leading him around by the nose," but from the inside it feels like heaven.

For a Christian, its the same with Jesus. The love of Christ constrains. Once you realize how Jesus changed for you and gave himself for you, you aren't afraid of giving up your freedom and therefore finding your freedom in him.