Faithfulness in an Inside-Out World

For the last three years, I have wrestled with the fundamental problem of our age. To call it “autonomy” would be too trite. Neither is it a “worldview” because it’s something regularly lived out without any kind of stated ideology. It is rather an inside-out approach to life.

Defining the Inside-Out Approach

Recently, a Singer sat down with an Interviewer to discuss her divorce. Their real names are irrelevant to my point.

The Singer, a former wife and current mother of one, said, “I realized I just wasn’t happy.”

The Interviewer said, “You knew you weren’t happy. And you wanted to bring a happy version of yourself to your son… that’s the best thing you can ever give to a person.”

She agreed, “It’s as loving to stay in the marriage, even though you’re unhappy, and you do it for the kids… it’s just as loving to leave, and find your own happiness, so that your kids really know who you are.” (Notice the two uses of “loving” here.)

The Singer continued, “My husband did nothing wrong. It just wasn’t right for me anymore. I didn’t want to end up like a lot of people I knew. I wasn’t miserable miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first.”

She was aware of how this would impact her son. She said, “I’m still not fully over it — of me choosing to dismantle my child’s life for my own. It makes me very uncomfortable. I know when he becomes an adult and realizes more, he’ll be furious with me… just furious.”

The Singer justified her actions with a cultural creed: “If you’re not feeling everything, then you’re missing everything.”

The message given to the world during these four minutes on screen is this: if your inner self isn’t feeling it, if you’re not happy 100%, then you need to do something different. Your greatest obligation is not to the God who made you, the man you committed to, or the son you gave birth to. No, your greatest obligation is to your inner self.

This is just one example of the Inside Out Approach, which has three main tenets.

First, the inner self, and feelings in particular, are prioritized above all other externals. Many modern cliches speak to this: what’s on the inside is what counts; be true to yourself; follow your heart, etc.. All “outside” materials and people are devalued, including money, possessions, children, institutions, and more. 

Some have noticed this and called it modern Gnosticism, as it harkens back to a belief critiqued by the early church. But when Paul tells Timothy to avoid gnoseos in 1 Timothy 6:20, he is speaking against false inner knowledge, rather than inner feeling (“Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knoweldge/gnoseos). 

Ancient gnosticism (if we can even call it that, since no group referred to themselves as “Gnostics”) is similar to the Inside-Out Approach in that both value the immaterial over the material. But ancient gnosticism was about hidden knowledge, whereas in modernity the value is the subjective desires. 

In today’s age, people are to find out what’s inside first, and then they are to express it outward. Charles Taylor describes this as “a culture of authenticity,” which means:

that each one of us has his or her own way of realizing humanity, and that it is important to find and live out one’s own, as against to surrendering to conformity with a model imposed on us from outside, by society, or the previous generation, or religious or political authority.

Secondly, the Inside-Out Approach is self-centered individualism. Even your son's life can be “dismantled.” It’s not just for the sake of inward feelings; it’s your inward feelings. 

The Singer rationalizes her decision based upon her aim for happiness. The mind is still involved. But the heart and mind have a problem. Romans 1:21 says the people “did not honor God as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Notice the two-fold turn. The heart with its passions is “darkened,” and they are “futile in their thinking.”

This “two-fold turn” is repeated later on. Romans 1:26; “God gave them up to dishonorable passions.” And in Romans 1:28, “God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” Romans 2:8, in the ESV, says this dishonorable passion and debased thinking is lived out in “self-seeking.”

Who does the singer, in her mind, belong to? Herself.

Where does the singer find meaning? Herself.

Where does the singer find happiness? Herself.

This is what it means to have an Inside Out Approach: the elevation of the inner self, with its dark heart and futile thinking, above any externality. Self-belonging. Self-made meaning. Self-happiness.

The third aspect of the Inside-Out Approach is a nagging sense of discomfort. Like a shirt flipped the wrong way, something is wrong – the snugness of the collar on your neck, the way your stomach sticks out more than usual, or even, as I once experienced, the inaccessibility of a zipper on a pair of dress shorts. As the Singer said, “it makes me very uncomfortable.”

More than a light-hearted mistake, however, the Inside-Out Approach has societal, personal, and moral repercussions. For example, it’s the reason why so many people support gender transition in minors: their inner desires take priority over their material body.

When gender reassignment surgery first started gaining popularity in the 2010s, I was surprised. It wasn’t until I began reading various historical accounts that I began to realize the scale and impact of the Inside-Out Approach, where the gender-sex distinction is just one example. 

When “What’s Inside” Took Priority

Philosophers in 1580 A.D., like Michael De Montaigne, rejected aspects of the common good for individualized contentment and belonging to oneself. Ann Hartle noticed the startling contrast between the vision of the self in Montaigne versus Aristotle (500 B.C.):

Whereas Aristotle, in his discussion of “the best city,” writes, “one ought not even consider that a citizen belongs to himself, but rather that all belong to the city; for each individual is a part of the city,” Montaigne says that “the greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.”

In Aristotle’s vision, all are bound to the city. In Montaigne’s, each is bound to himself. Montaigne’s individuality was fresh in the sixteenth century, but today, it’s the water we swim in.

Timothy Keller summarized it this way:

The modern therapeutic self is a recent approach to identity. We are to look within at our desires — especially our sexual ones — and then determine (Freud) or create (Foucault) who we are, not allowing anyone else to validate or define us or make us feel guilty.

Many have written well on the rise of modern individualism, including Charles Taylor, Carl Trueman, and Tara Isabella Burton. The change to the Inside-Out Approach occurred because of thinkers like Foucault, yes — but it was also, as we will now see, due to technologies like the Espresso Machine.

Consider what it would have been like to drink coffee four hundred years ago. Ethiopia and Yemen were the only places where it was grown; getting the beans was hard! Once you had them, you’d roast them in a frying pan over a fire. The beans would crackle like popcorn. Fun, but time-consuming. Then you’d let them cool, grind them down with pestle and mortar, strain them, and boil them with water for fifteen minutes. Finally, after all that, you’d get your sip of coffee.

Compare to today. A mocha-fracca-whatever can be sent to your door in minutes with only a couple of swipes on your phone.

Internal desire: I want some coffee. Press some buttons… there it is!

I’m not commenting on the moral nature of Starbucks. Rather, I’m observing the change in daily habits which led to a new set of assumptions for how the world works. 

Consider what being a farmer would have been like two hundred years ago. You had to depend on soil conditions, the weather, and the seasons. You were well aware of your dependence on external factors. Again, compare that to today.

Internal desire: I want my plants to grow. Build a greenhouse; make it rain.

Consider what it was like to be a woman just a hundred years ago, before a Pill could block the natural consequence of sex. There are many aspects of modern medicine which are largely beneficial. For example, according to the CDC, in 1900 in the US, for every one thousand live births, six to nine women would die of pregnancy-related complications. My point is not the ethics of fertility treatments here but on the habits of going through our day-to-day lives with unobstructed internal desires. 

Internal desire: I either want or don’t want children. I go to my doctor or fertility clinic or department store to make it happen (or not happen).

Of course, even today, not all internal desires end the way we want. My point is that the default assumption of life, the standard story in which we all live, is that our internal desires lead to external change.

We habituate individual choice through our technologies. The internet and social media are easy examples. We create our own profiles, avatars, and personas. Our feelings and thoughts manipulate the digital world with ease; we’ve become accustomed to this Inside-Out Approach thanks to the hours we spend on our apps.

This is a new experience compared to a millennia ago, but as we saw earlier, it is not a new sin. Adam and Eve also placed their desires above God’s instruction. Here’s Genesis 3:6, (emphasis mine):

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

Living Inside-Out is new in some ways but not others. Modernity has given new ways of being trained in self-belonging, self-created meaning, and self-made happiness.

The origin of the modern Inside-Out Life is found in thinkers and technologies. The thinkers, like Montaigne, Rousseau, Freud, and Foucault. And technologies, like coffeemakers, social media, and the Pill.

On the one hand, we are habituated into this warped lifestyle, unaware of its pervasiveness. And yet, with some reflection, we all recognize the Singer’s two versions of “loving” contradict. Something is wrong. And the consequences are severe. 

The Cost of Living Inside-Out

The Inside-Out Approach heightens anxiety, destroys friendships, and flattens sex.

In his book You Are Not Your Own, Alan Noble writes:

“To be your own and belong to yourself means that the most fundamental truth about existence is that you are responsible for your existence and everything it entails. I am responsible for living a life of purpose, of defining my identity, of interpreting meaningful events, of choosing my values, and electing where I belong.

That’s a big list.

Taylor Swift has noticed something similar. She said this to the graduating class of New York University:

I know it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be, and when. Who you are now and how to act in order to get where you want to go. I have some good news: it’s totally up to you. I also have some terrifying news: it’s totally up to you.

It’s totally up to you.

That’s Inside-Out. That’s what so many people believe. And Taylor is right; it’s terrifying.

Back to Alan Noble:

If I belong to myself, then I am the only one who can set limits on who I am or what I can do. No one else has the right to define me, to choose my journey in life, or to assure me that I am okay.

That last line is powerful in the worst way. When someone is suffering, a common response is to tell them, “It’s going to be okay.” While that line can be overused, it has sound logic.

When anxious, we can lose sight of reality, stumble over our thoughts, and need a sense of groundedness. That’s what “it’s gonna be okay” can do. It can ground you in the reality that the future will be okay, whether because God is in control or because hard times do tend to come to an end. It’s gonna be okay.

But the Inside-Out Approach rejects any assurance outside the inner self. The compliments and encouragements aren’t received because each person chooses autonomy over external words, even assurance from a friend.

This affects our mental health and the fidelity of our friendships. We live in a culture where ghosting is more-or-less acceptable, where flaking out on commitments is permissible for “taking a me day,” and where work has isolated souls behind screens.

I’ll admit that living for one’s own self, and nothing external, can have a kind of adventure to it. Isn’t it fun to choose your own adventure? Sure. But as Trevin Wax argues, it’s more adventurous to get caught up in a story bigger than your own, losing yourself in it, even.

There’s a greater joy in grander stories—even the difficult ones. This is part of the solution, which I’ll describe more below. But one last area of relational problems of the Inside-Out Approach: sexual intercourse.

Christine Emba is the author of Rethinking Sex. She discussed the book with Anne Helen Peterson. While neither argued from a Christian position, they observed how the supposed “sex positivity” of feminists movements has failed both women and men.

Emba says, “Consent is an essential baseline. But it’s a floor and never should have been the ceiling.”

But consent is all the Inside-Out Approach has; a mere designation of permission from inside an individual. Once that dotted line is signed, it’s not a question of loving the other person but of gratifying the inner self. Functionally, the other person ceases to be a person — they are material to be used for inner pleasure.

Jake Meador has recognized this flaw and how it contrasts with the Christian vision. In his book, What Are Christians For? he writes,

In the Christian conception of sexuality, the self’s identity is secured ultimately in Christ but also proximally in the covenant of marriage. This securing of the self makes it possible to view sex as chiefly an act of self-giving rather than of self-realization or self-expression. It re-orients the sexual act away from our own needs, experiences, and desires and toward the needs, experiences, and desires of the other.

We need to be grounded. We must respect, live for, and belong to external realities: people, place, and authority.

We need to pursue a number of changes in our society and our relationships.

Accepting and Respecting What’s Outside

Our ultimate problem is undervaluing God. When people struggle with meaning, they increasingly look to their employment and relationships as avenues to “find themselves.” As we saw with the famous Singer, she tried to find herself through self-centered happiness. But are all lost without God. And thankfully, God has not given up on us.

God’s sovereignty did not cease after the Enlightenment. He continues to rule and reign over his creation, over every sphere of public life, and over every human institution.

Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. As people become Inside Out, they do not trust the church, the government, or the media. Some Christians, rightfully frustrated with various ills in our day, wrongly spend their lives lambasting the media, questioning the government, and treating their local church as secondary to personal ideals. They don’t realize their individualistic angst is repeating the very problem that caused so many ills in the first place.

To be a Christian in 2025 means to “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution,” (1 Peter 2:13). While there are abuses, lies, and immorality in these institutions, and while there are times and places for condemning and correction, the Christian must have a default posture of supporting institutions, doing good for them and through them, and putting their personal preferences aside.

A Christian vision for society must include all kinds of institutions, not just marriage, family, and church. These are extremely important. And we must first and foremost build there.

We must also call Christians to work with integrity in governments, schools, Big Tech, and media. This is why faith-work networks, as Timothy Keller called them, are so crucial. When Christians within certain fields collaborate, they have greater motivation to work with integrity to God rather than defaulting to their “authentic self.”

We also need explicitly Christian organizations. I know of some non-profits who have struggled to hold onto their Christian identity, as it is easier to receive government funding if you drop the name of Christ. If you lead a Christian charity, do not be careless. Proclaim Christ even if it means getting canceled. Build explicitly Christian organizations known for selfless love.

The people who “get” the problem are the ones who are already part of the solution. They serve organizations in background roles without a platform. They are the accountants volunteering to do the books, the school teachers who connect Plato with Paul, and the Christian tech workers who feel God’s pleasure when they code. They do not work for the glory of man but the glory of God.

Living Beyond Ourselves

It would be foolish to suggest that a few paragraphs might capture something of a “fix” for anxiety, depression, suicide, MAID, divorce, and all the other ugly consequences of the Inside-Out Approach. One of my favorite parts of Alan Noble’s book, You Are Not You’re Own, was how he described the inevitability of the problems in our world. Yes, life is going to be hard. We can accept this and yet remain hopeful.

If we believe Romans chapters 1-3, we’ll believe that sin remains on this side of heaven. And yet, we can taste heaven better when we live for it, working for something greater than ourselves.

There’s a reason why there are lower depression rates in church-going Christians. It’s not because they never wrestle with questions like, “who am I,” or “what do I want,” but rather because they have greater questions already answered.

It’s hard to know, as Taylor Swift put it, “who you are now and how to act in order to get where you want to go.” But as Kelly Kapic has said in You’re Only Human, “it is only when I stop thinking of myself as chiefly an isolated center of consciousness, and begin to consider my identity in terms of my relationships to others, can I start to see clearly who I really am.”

Who are you? Perhaps a wife, a mom, a Canadian, a Torontonian, or a bank teller. And sometimes, perhaps always, we must remind ourselves of our unchangeable adoption in Christ against the changeable statuses of earthly identity. But we must still take seriously our earthly callings and treat them with heavenly significance.

Immovable Faithfulness

In an Inside Out age, where choice and change are normal, perhaps Christians need to be the unmovable ones. I mean this quite literally. Christians can demonstrate their groundedness by rarely moving (despite the better opportunities that would come with a new location), by knowing their neighbors better than tourist towns, and by going to the same church for decades. How are we going to demonstrate our love for one another if we do not display a place-based patience?

Over the last few years, my wife and I have had a number of events thrown our way that gave us no choice. Due to various illnesses and medical emergencies, we had to approach our lives not on a five-year plan but a daily dependence on the graciousness of God. You grow an appreciation for what is stable when other aspects of life are not. 

In The Life We Never Expected, Andrew and Rachel Wilson recount the lessons they learned through suffering, offering hopeful reflections on the challenges of parenting children with special needs. In one chapter, Andrew writes:

For many years, I have suffered from individualistis [sic]. It’s a debilitating yet curiously common disease of the soul, and it’s especially common among young, rich, Western people. It comes in many forms, but its primary symptom is the unshakable belief that the world is mainly about me.

Suffering can teach you that the world doesn’t revolve around yourself. It can teach you the frailty of the Inside-Out Approach. Or, suffering can make you hard, blunt, and bitter. You can double down on yourself and double the pain.

I believe we all go through some kind of suffering, given the relational problems I listed above. We’re all coming to terms with this, whether we call it a crisis or not. In this world, this Inside-Out world, you will have trouble. But we do not lose hope. We are not the ones given the calling of Hero and Savior, Christ is.

Andrew says one of his heroes is a guy named Malchijah. You’ve probably never heard of him. “He sits,” writes Andrew, “marooned, in the middle of an incredibly long and dull list of names in Nehemiah 3.” The wall needed to be repaired and Malchijah was one of the ones who helped. He didn’t fix the Broad Wall or the Tower of the Ovens. He repaired the Dung Gate.

He’s not a hero. As Andrew says, “he didn’t lead Israel, kill any bad guys, or have a book named after him. We don’t actually know anything else about him. All we know is that he spent a short period of his life doing something very mundane, very smelly, and very unnoticeable: he fixed a Dung Gate.”

If Christians can each do their part in this world, however grand or minuscule it might be, it may not make the world much different, but it will give God glory. It is not about “making an impact,” which usually means something measurable and popular. It’s about faithfulness, which cannot be easily moved or altered. Faithfulness to God, to church, to family, to institutions, and our neighbors. We need faithfulness to those outside us rather than following what’s within.