Control, Insecurity, and the Human Condition
Copyright 2013 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
All human beings are “control freaks” to one degree or another. It is a function of the insecurity that came into our race’s existence after the catastrophe we call the Fall. In our fallen state we somehow feel like we will die inside if we are not in control of our own lives, and often also with much of what comes into contact with our lives. Actually the very opposite is true. It is only in surrendering control of our lives back into the hands of our Creator and Redeemer God that we are saved from the insecurity that stems from the very real prospective of both physical and spiritual death.
Insecurity is woven into the very fabric of the existence of sentient creatures that have corporately and willingly cut themselves off from the only Source of any real and enduring security. In every human heart there exists, whether consciously or unconsciously, a dread of loss, pain and, ultimately, of permanent retribution for our wrongs. One of the primary ways we try to ward off this rightful dread is through convincing ourselves that we are somehow the “masters of our own destiny.” This effort manifests itself in the drive to control our environment, ourselves, and others.
We can fool ourselves fairly easily into the illusion of control over our environment living in the 21st Century West. Comparatively few other generations in the history of humankind have had the daily experience of flipping a switch on a wall and instantaneously turning night into day or getting into a car and travelling many miles from the place of their birth. Only the last generation has had the astonishing ability to call up what seems like nearly the sum total of all human knowledge by plugging words into a search engine.
The spirit of our age also implies that, with the right amount of self control, we can become virtually whoever and whatever we want to be. “If we can dream it we can do it” is one of the most accepted illusions of democratic capitalism in an age of upward mobility and choice virtually unknown at any other time in history. The fact that an aspiring Olympic athlete can shatter a bone and be forever unable to compete or that an idolized actor can die in the same kind of car wreck as one of his or her fans always seems to be left out of the “human potential” equation. All the self-control and self-effort in the world cannot prevent an accident, or any other number of unfortunate circumstances, that can end a worldly dream in an instant.
Then there is the one kind of control that even our modern society generally disapproves of, but can also be part and parcel of warding off personal insecurity: the control of other human beings. This kind of control can range from the subtle power of emotional manipulation to the actual physical enslavement of another. Yet this kind of control is at least as problematic as the others because the controlled often break the bonds of the controlling, many times with disastrous results for the latter. It is not a permanent answer to insecurity either; only a good way to end up being hated or worse.
All of these types of control have some fatal flaws. They are derivative; meaning they are contingent on power that is not intrinsic, but given to us by dint of living in an affluent and technologically advanced culture. They are temporary; being liable to sudden and irrevocable loss through unforeseen circumstances. And they are often unethical; at least when achieved through the illegitimate possession of others.
But above all else they are all forms of idolatry that fallen human beings use to banish insecurity through the assumption of godlike powers; powers that we were never meant to have apart from being in right relationship with the one true God of the universe. We were not made to control anything apart from our role as regents over God’s creation, and that role is only legitimately reacquired through submitting our lives to Him through surrender to, and faith in, His Son Jesus Christ. It is in the salvation only He offers that we are truly set free from the insecurity we bequeathed ourselves through corporate and individual disobedience to our Maker.
There is no other way.