The first time Alan Noble realized how warped our idea of freedom had become, he was standing in line at the DMV. The man ahead of him was loudly protesting that he shouldn’t have to fill out a form.
“This is America,” the man complained. “I can do what I want.”
It was a small scene, almost comical in its pettiness. But for Noble, a professor and author of You Are Not Your Own, it captured something profound about the American psyche: We have been trained to think freedom is nothing more than the absence of limits. No one can tell us what to do. We can chase the careers we want, shape our identities however we please, use our bodies however we wish, spend our money however we choose. From our founding myths to our streaming playlists, freedom is presented as personal autonomy without interference.
But Noble is convinced this version of freedom doesn’t just miss the point. It actually leaves us restless, anxious and exhausted. He’s written extensively on the concept of true freedom for Christians, pleading with them to recognize that biblical freedom looks very different.
“The American concept is freedom from restraint,” Noble said. “But when Christ says, ‘The truth will set you free,’ he also says, ‘If you abide in my Word, then you are my disciples.’ That means there are limits. There are things you cannot do, even if you want to. And yet, that’s what freedom really is.”
To most of us, that sounds like a contradiction. How can limits make us free? But Noble points out that for much of history, people understood freedom as the ability to pursue what is good, true and beautiful — not simply the power to satisfy our desires. Early Christians, and the classical thinkers before them, believed humans left unchecked inevitably fell into bondage, whether to vice, greed or injustice. The radical claim of Christianity was that freedom comes not by shrugging off all restraints but by submitting to the right ones.
In America, we think freedom is the power to say no. In Scripture, freedom is the ability to say yes — to God, to our neighbor, to the good.
That reversal — freedom through limits — is nearly unthinkable in our cultural moment. And it’s not without danger. The phrase “you are not your own” has been misused throughout history. Pastors have manipulated it to control congregants. Leaders of all kinds have wielded it to excuse exploitation. Noble doesn’t shy away from that reality.
“It is simply a fact that people in positions of power have used this logic to abuse people under them,” he said. But the difference, he argues, is in who we belong to. “When somebody abuses power, they’re putting their own good ahead of yours. But God is the only being for whom his good and our good are never in conflict. That’s why belonging to him is the only relationship in which we can give ourselves fully without losing ourselves.”
This reframing of freedom is not just abstract theology. It reshapes how we understand our most pressing cultural crises, from work burnout to loneliness to the mental health epidemic. Noble has witnessed the mental health crisis unfold firsthand in the classroom. His students are bright, talented and full of potential — and also deeply anxious, overextended and weary.
“I don’t discredit the reality of mental illness,” he said. “If you need professional help, get it. But the conditions of our society make mental health struggles worse. When you are treated inhumanely at your job, working 12-hour days, that is going to affect your mental health.”
The rise in depression and anxiety, Noble believes, is not just about brain chemistry. It reflects something about the structure of society itself. We are promised unlimited freedom, but the result is often endless pressure to perform and produce. We’re told to curate our identities, maximize our opportunities and hustle harder than the next person — an exhausting task that leaves many people crushed by the weight of their supposed autonomy.
“Seeing rightly, recognizing that the world is treating you as less than human, gives you space to name the problem for what it is,” Noble said. “It’s not that you’re failing. It’s that the system itself is dehumanizing.”
Still, recognizing the problem doesn’t make it any easier to escape. Our culture of autonomy and efficiency is the water we swim in. Noble doesn’t pretend there’s a quick fix.
“Our society is deeply flawed, and the only one redeeming it is Christ,” he said. “If you think you can fix society with a plan, you’ll end up with a savior complex. And you’ll burn out when things don’t change the way you want.”
What Noble proposes is less glamorous but more subversive: small acts of grace. Grace for each other when we fall short. Grace for ourselves when we collapse under the strain. And perhaps most radically, grace in the form of rest.
“What if the church were known as a place where people rest?” he asked. “Imagine if people said, ‘Whatever else you think about Christians, they know how to rest.’ But that’s not true of us. We work constantly. Even when we do rest, it’s usually just recharging so we can be more productive. That’s not rest. That’s just efficiency.”
For Noble, reclaiming biblical freedom doesn’t mean retreating from the world’s problems. It means resisting them in small, faithful ways — seeking justice without imagining we alone can save the world, offering kindness when efficiency tells us to move faster, resting when productivity demands more. It means naming our dehumanizing systems for what they are without letting them dictate our sense of worth. It means belonging to God in a world that insists we belong only to ourselves.
It may not feel like much, but Noble insists it’s the only way to truly live free.
“My task is to be faithful to Christ right here, in this moment,” he said. “I don’t get to ignore injustice. I seek justice. But I don’t carry the weight of saving the world. That’s God’s work. And that’s what makes us free.”
