Apologetics in the Lion City

A Cultural and Metaphysical Diagnosis

In recent years, many people have begun to sense that something in our way of being human has shifted. We have inherited a framework that places extraordinary weight on the individual — a framework that treats the self as the final authority, the source of meaning, and the keeper of its own worth. In an earlier reflection, I explored how this elevation of the self became our cultural default. This essay turns to the other side of that story: what happens when the self is asked to bear more than any human life can hold.

These cultural expectations show up in familiar slogans:

“Be yourself.”
“Live your truth.”
“Create your own destiny.”

They are the everyday expressions of the deeper shift I described earlier — the shift that placed unprecedented weight on the individual. These messages shape our understanding of identity long before we ever examine them. They carry the assumption that meaning must come from within, that who we are is something we must form and uphold on our own. Many people feel the pressure of this without ever fully recognizing it.

🔍 The Weight of Self‑Creation

Yet this expectation has become so normal that we rarely stop to ask what it demands of us. We inherit a way of being that treats the self as a project — something to define, express, and continually justify. The burden is subtle, but it runs deep: we are asked to generate our own purpose, secure our own identity, and sustain our own sense of worth, often without any stable ground beneath us. And because this framework is so pervasive, the strain it creates can feel like a personal failure rather than a cultural condition.

Over time, this expectation does not remain external. It settles into the inner life, shaping how we interpret ourselves and our experiences.

🌫️ The Ache of Autonomous Living

This is why so many people move through life with a quiet sense of instability. When identity depends on constant self‑definition, any uncertainty feels like a threat. When meaning must be generated from within, moments of emptiness feel like personal shortcomings. And when worth is something we must uphold on our own, every failure, doubt, or change in circumstance can feel like the unraveling of the self itself.

Many describe this not as a dramatic crisis but as a low‑grade ache — a background hum of disorientation that surfaces in moments of silence, transition, or loss. It shows up in the fear of making the wrong choice, the anxiety of being misunderstood, the exhaustion of constant self‑presentation, and the sense that life is somehow thinner than it should be. This ache is not a personal defect. It is a clue.

🧭 How Autonomy Became Our Default

The instability we feel has a history. It did not emerge from nowhere; it reflects a long cultural journey that reshaped how we understand the self.

Over time, traditional sources of grounding weakened: religious institutions lost authority, shared moral frameworks fragmented, inherited roles dissolved, and communal narratives thinned. In their place, the individual was elevated as the final source of meaning. What once came from outside now had to be generated from within.

The earlier essay traced this shift — how the collapse of transcendence flattened our horizons and left the self as the last sacred thing. Seen from the inside, however, its effects are more personal. The cultural forces that once elevated the self now leave it exposed. What began as liberation has slowly revealed its cost.

Without a shared horizon of meaning, the self became responsible for inventing its own purpose. Without stable roles or communal anchors, identity became a fluid performance. Without external authority, desire became the primary compass — even as algorithms, advertising, and social pressures subtly shaped those desires. The self was told to look inward for truth while being quietly molded from the outside.

At the same time, expressive individualism took root — the belief that authenticity requires the outward expression of one’s inner feelings. This made the inner life not only the source of identity but also the measure of its legitimacy. And because inner life is fluid, the foundation beneath the self became unstable.

All of this leaves the self in a precarious position — celebrated, yet unsupported; free, yet unanchored.

This is the unbearable autonomy of being human: a freedom so total it becomes a burden.

⚠️ The Impossible Task of Self‑Grounding

The modern self is fragile not because people are weaker than they once were, but because the framework we have inherited asks the self to do what no self can do. It asks us to generate our own meaning, secure our own identity, and sustain our own worth without any reference point beyond our own inner life. It treats the self as both origin and anchor — a role no human being can fulfill.

What once felt like liberation now reveals its cost. The collapse of transcendence did not free the self; it stranded it.

A self cannot be its own foundation. Identity cannot rest on the very thing it is trying to define. Meaning cannot be generated by the one who is searching for it. Worth cannot be secured by the one who feels its absence. When the self is asked to be its own ground, it collapses under the weight of the task.

For many, this collapse is felt long before it is understood. It shows up as exhaustion, confusion, or the quiet sense that something essential is missing.

This collapse is not a personal flaw — it is the inevitable result of unbearable autonomy.

🌄 The Human Need for a Greater Ground

This is the point where the modern story reaches its limit. The self cannot carry the burden it has been assigned. It needs something beyond itself — something stable enough to anchor identity, spacious enough to hold desire, and real enough to give meaning that does not evaporate the moment our feelings shift.

The longing people feel — for stability, for purpose, for connection — is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of design. The self is structured for relationship with what is ultimate. It is meant to receive meaning, not manufacture it; to respond to reality, not invent it; to rest in something beyond itself, not carry the weight alone.

✝️ The Christian Resolution to Unbearable Autonomy

If the self cannot be its own foundation, the question becomes unavoidable: what reality can bear the weight of human life?

The Christian claim is that the ground the self seeks is not an idea, a feeling, or a social construct, but a reality — the Source of existence itself. God is not merely a comforting concept; God is the One from whom all being flows. Meaning is not something we create; it is something rooted in the nature of the One who made us. Worth is not something we achieve; it is something bestowed by the One who knows us.

But the Christian story goes further. It does not simply assert that God is the ground; it claims that Christ is the bridge. The gap between the self and the Source is not something we overcome by effort. It is something God crosses toward us. In Christ, the Source enters the world of fragile selves, not to impose a burden but to lift one.

Autonomy becomes bearable only when it is no longer absolute.

🌱 The Pathway Back to Reality

Reconnection does not happen through self‑assertion but through surrender — not the loss of self, but the release of an impossible task. The self begins to heal when it stops trying to be its own foundation and allows itself to be grounded in something greater.

As the self reconnects to the Source, the inner pressure begins to ease. The oscillation between autonomy and fragility slows. The self becomes more stable, not because it has become stronger, but because it is no longer carrying a burden it was never meant to bear.

🕊️ When Autonomy Finds Its Place

The messages that shape us — “Be yourself,” “Live your truth,” “Create your own destiny” — are not wrong in their desire for authenticity, freedom, and purpose. But they place the weight of these longings on the self alone. And the self, when isolated from its ground, cannot sustain them.

The unbearable autonomy of being human is not a failure of willpower or character. It is the inevitable result of asking the self to be its own source of meaning, identity, and worth.

This return is not a retreat from responsibility but a restoration of proportion — the self finding its place within a larger reality.

The self becomes whole not by turning inward indefinitely, but by turning toward the One who holds its existence. In that turning, the burden lifts. The self finds rest. And the story that began with unbearable autonomy ends with peace.