Embrace who God made you to be, and what he calls you to be in his Word.

I remember going to basketball camp as a youngster. Part of the expectation of basketball camp is that you will hear at least one speech per week telling you that if you just practice enough, you can be the next LeBron. I am sorry to report that though I dribbled until my fingers were nearly skinless, I did not become the next LeBron.

(I have, however, visited Cleveland, so there’s that.)

You may never have shot a corner three-pointer, but chances are you have heard something similar. We’ve all heard this kind of message: “You are amazing. You are a star! You can be whatever you want! There are no limits in life for you.” Many of us have heard this formulation so many times that it’s second nature to us. We naturally assume it’s true.

This kind of thinking is embedded in modern culture. It’s not just a cheesy mantra, though. It’s a spiritual system in its own right. In my book Risky Gospel, I even give it a name: “narcissistic optimis- tic deism.” I think this is the new “moralistic therapeutic deism.” The basic view of narcissistic optimistic deism (or theism) is this:

• Life is fundamentally about me.
• I deserve for life to get better and to allow me to achieve all my dreams.
• God exists to bless me and make my dreams come true.

If this sounds like a Disneyfied Christianity, that’s because it is. All that’s missing is a little flying insect with a magic wand. A major outcome of this way of thinking is this: you end up believing that you don’t have any limits, and that if someone suggests that you do, that’s a bad thing. People who might offer constructive criticism are in reality “haters.” They’re in the wrong, and you’re in the right, because if your heart feels it and wants it, it must be good.

This perspective is disastrous for our spiritual health. It fails to account for our fallenness, our inherent sinfulness, which means that every part of us has been corrupted by the fall of Adam (see Isa. 64:6; Rom. 3:10–18). This perspective has influenced the way many people look at their bodies and lives. They say, “I can be whatever I want to be.” Being a man or a woman doesn’t end up meaning anything. There’s no structure or order to life.

There are many outworkings of this problem. If a couple is married and the man doesn’t feel like working, then he stays home. If the wife doesn’t really want to spend much time with her kids, she doesn’t. If a teenage boy feels like a woman, then he’s free to embrace womanliness. If a twentysomething woman is attracted to other women, then she should act on that instinct. Narcissistic optimistic deism tells us that whatever we want to do or be, that’s great. God is the great cheerleader in the sky. No matter what we do, he’s for us. He endorses all our appetites and commends all our instincts.

This view has as much to do with the biblical God as cronuts do with Genghis Khan. Too many people today tragically follow a fairy tale god. The God of Scripture is not our life coach. He is our Lord. We’re used to this word as Christians, and so it loses its edge. This divine title signifies that God is our master. He is our sovereign. He is our ruler. He sets the tone for right and wrong. He calls us to account for our sin.

As Christians, we need to read the Scripture, and we need to read the times. We cannot help but see that our self-obsessed age is offering us theology, a way of understanding God and ourselves. It’s telling us that God is small, that he has no real priorities of his own, that he isn’t wrathful toward sin. Time magazine famously asked, “Is God Dead?,” in 1966, sparking a decades-long cultural debate. Notwithstanding the “New Atheism,” I think the answer is clear for many people today: God is not dead. He’s quite alive. But the God that people believe in is not the God of the Bible. He’s a dream-granter, a success-bringer, a life-enhancer, the best buddy you could ever have. He doesn’t merely wish you goodwill; he has the power to snap his fingers and make all your troubles go away.

In such a time as this, Christians need to make clear that God is not small. He is not domesticated. He will not suffer us to reimagine him. He is the Lord, the Most High, the Maker of Heaven and Earth. He is active in the world, and his gospel brings both bad news and good news. It informs us that we are sinful and destined for eternal judgment (Rev. 20:14). It calls us to be re-created (Col. 3:1–10). Our chief need is not affir- mation but Christ-powered transformation (Rom. 12:1–2). When it comes to our sexuality, we have God-appointed limits. These limits are not bad; they are good, and good for us. This matters for the toughest questions the church faces today, many of which are anthropological, directly related to our humanity. Men are called to be men. Women are called to be women. We are not free to choose our sexual predilections. We do not have the authority to remake our gender.

The gospel opens our eyes to the goodness of our manhood and womanhood, and the corresponding beauty of living according to God’s design. We are not exhilarated by breaking free from God’s wise and life-giving limits. When Adam and Eve failed to listen to God by disobeying his commands and ignoring their divinely man- dated boundaries, they fell, and we all fell with them (Gen. 3:1–7). It was not life that came through their recklessness, but death.

Everywhere around us our culture celebrates rebellion and narcissistic willfulness. The Scripture calls us to something better, and this call envelops all our identity, including our manliness or womanliness. Don’t try to become something you’re not. Embrace who God made you to be, and what he calls you to be in his Word. That, and not the selfish creeds of a Disneyfied age, is where you will find true happiness and true liberation.

Adapted from Designed for Joy: How the Gospel Impacts Men and Women, Identity and Practice edited by Jonathan Parnell and Owen Strachan, © 2015, pp. 17-19. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.org.