The Euphoria of Lawlessness

And the allure of the gospel

Photo by Cam Adams on Unsplash

(A seven-minute read.)

I was chatting with a new friend recently who was recounting his religious journey. Raised in a strict Christian home in the Bible Belt, he now considers himself to be a Pagan—not a Pagan in some general sense, but a literal Pagan who practices, as he labeled it, “earth-based spirituality.”

Slowly learning his story has been fascinating, but what has jumped out at me the most is the relief he’s expressed because he’s now a part of a spiritual movement—which, he pointed out, is one of the fastest-growing spiritual movements in the world—that has absolutely no rules or requirements.

Indeed, everyone is allowed, and even encouraged, to pursue their own spirituality in whatever way feels best to them. Each person is given permission to determine right and wrong for themselves.

There is, in short, no absolute or objective standard to which everyone is beholden and by which anyone is judged.

My friend is, of course, just one of a growing number of people in the West who are putting traditional religion in the rearview mirror and gravitating toward more open-handed and less-dogmatic spiritual expressions.

I have many other friends who reflect the same pattern: they were raised in strict religious environments—whether Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, fundamentalist Christian, Roman Catholic, or otherwise—but have now joined the “nones” and embraced a spirituality that requires very little of them.

They are, in many ways, the prototypical “postmoderns” we hear so much about—people who no longer feel enslaved to “absolute truth” or accountable to external authorities.

And you know what?

It feels euphoric to them.

There’s a certain elation that comes from not being accountable to anyone or anything anymore. There’s a level of joy that stems from not having to meet the exacting demands of a deity or his representatives.

Indeed, it’s liberating, freeing, emancipating.

But here’s the temptation for those of us who may be in a different boat—those of us who’ve remained committed to ordering our lives around what we deem to be timeless and objective principles: we may be tempted to assume that such people, these “nones” who’ve abandoned objective morality, have gone this direction because they simply want to live lives of rebellion toward God or they don’t want to surrender “sin” in their lives.

That’s the sentiment I seem to hear the most from people who remain devoted to traditional forms of religiosity. These postmodern and de-churching people, we’re led to believe, are just completely debauched and (perhaps irredeemably) sold out to lives of lasciviousness and sin.

I think such an assumption would be a mistake though.

Heavy burdens and the commandments of men

To be sure, there are no doubt some people who simply want to indulge their pride and selfishness, and who don’t want to give up pet practices they know to be wrong.

But I think the vast majority of people we’d place in the postmodern category have gravitated there because, among other things, they’re reacting to religious—and perhaps even non-religious—environments that are high on shame and low on love.

Simply put, many are rightfully rebelling against religious systems whose primary currency is guilt, control, and coercion—religious systems that strictly enforce man-made rules, and are absent the motivating power of love.

Interestingly, I’ve been reading C. S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy lately, which is his account of the early years of his life and how he ultimately came to faith. I was intrigued to note how, despite becoming a Christian when he was a child, he left faith when he was 13 or 14, due partly to his frustration with not being able to pray in a way he thought was expected of him.

He’d go to bed every night trying to achieve a certain kind of prayer, only to meet with failure—and feelings of guilt and inadequacy. He’d then try again, only to fail again, and be driven to despair again.

And this would last late into the night—all due, he says, to the “ludicrous burden of false duties in prayer.”

When he met the Matron of his school, who was a wonderfully kindhearted woman who also practiced the Occult, he found his inspiration and exit.

He soon transitioned, in his words, from “I believe” to “one does feel.” There was now “nothing to be obeyed, and nothing to be believed except what was either comforting or exciting.”

And “oh,” he explained, “the relief of it!”

Euphoria!

To a young conscience beleaguered by feelings of guilt, shame, and inadequacy, unbelief felt cathartic.

But my question: when had God told him he had to pray in just such a certain way?

When did God, for that matter, tell my Muslim friend that she has to pray five times a day while bowing down to Mecca—and that he’d be angry with her if she didn’t?

Or when did God tell my Pagan friend that he couldn’t be a pastor—as he originally intended to be—because he had tattoos (as he was told by the Christian college he attended)?

Jesus faced and confronted this type of religiosity in his day as well, rebuking the religious leaders for binding “heavy burdens” which were “hard to bear,” and laying them on people’s “shoulders” (Matthew 23:4). They were “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:9), which led people to despair and on a path away from faith.

Truly, when we lay human-derived rules and restrictions on people, and attribute them to God, we often ultimately turn people away from God and the true principles of his law of love.

This is precisely what Ellen White proposed over a century ago when speaking about the leaders in Christ’s day:

These learned men placed before the people their own ideas, and made patriarchs and prophets responsible for things they never uttered. These false teachers buried up the precious jewels of truth beneath the rubbish of their own interpretations and maxims, and covered up the plainest specifications of prophecy regarding Christ. They made the keeping of the commandments of God appear to be a rigorous round of ceremonies, so needless and foolish that the force of God’s law was destroyed. They heaped exactions upon the commands of God that could never be met, and thereby lessened respect for God.

When people thus rightfully reject the traditions of man, they often end up rejecting the God those traditions are attributed to—and then become overwhelmed with a sense of euphoric relief.

That’s because lawlessness feels like ecstasy when we’ve been harassed by people trying to control us through regulations attributed to God. Rebellion feels like liberation in response to fear-based coercion.

So that’s why, as I’ve hinted at before, I don’t get too worked up about people who don’t seem to believe in “absolute truth” or “objective morality.” I’ve detected that many—though certainly not all—are just reacting to shame-based approaches to religion and guilt-ridden forms of spirituality.

What I also find is that many of these people are no longer committed to traditional approaches to ethics, but have nevertheless committed to a way of life that truly values others and treats them with kindness, equity, and love.

They have, in many ways, embraced the “weightier matters of the law”—justice and mercy of faith—even while neglecting the less weighty matters.

Indeed, their lives often demonstrate, though certainly imperfectly and inconsistently (like the rest of us), that the law has been “written in their hearts,” as Paul explains, even if they’re not consciously committed to the God from whom I believe that law originates.

At the same time, when they’re presented with a version of God—and a version of spirituality—that isn’t shame-based, and focuses more on the principles of other-centered love, it captivates their attention and produces curiosity.

Truly, as I’ve written before, (God’s) love travels well—and it’s the only thing that can surpass the euphoria of stepping into a life of lawlessness.

So it’s why I’m (imperfectly) committed to living a love-centered religion rather than a shame-based religion—a spirituality that values people more than rules and ideas.

Will you join me?

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil (PhD) candidate at the University of Oxford, focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.