The Freedom to Live Fully
Society and freedom
In traditional societies, your place in the world was determined by the family you were born into. Even in good Christian society, a person from a high-ranking and wealthy family was expected to govern their castle, their land, and their servants well. If a poor person tried to become wealthy, he was considered greedy. “He should learn to be content with what he has,” good people might say. “He’s a social climber.” And even if he achieved such status, they would disdain him for being “new money.”
As a pejorative term, nouveau riche describes the vulgarity and ostentation of the newly rich individual who lacks the worldly experience and value system of old money, or inherited wealth, such as the patriciate, the nobility, the gentry, or elites.1
Fortunately, we do not live in a world with restrictions on your work or income anymore, but a more significant problem endures. Even today, in thickly woven societies, personal freedom must be sacrificed for belonging. The implicit motto of these societies is: “you are free to live as long as you live this way.”
Some people are masters at meeting such social expectations and so are praised and loved. They show up to the right things, echo the right mantras, and show deference to the right people. This is a powerful combination if it is carried out with consistency. I suspect that following this pattern rigorously even for just 5 years will launch one towards the top of almost any society. (Think about it in your own social context…)
If some people thrive in these settings, others fail to meet the expectations and so remain on the lower rungs and outskirts of the society. They do not have what it takes, it would seem. They are “mediocre” and “uninspiring” at best.
And then there are those few who cannot be put in a box but who must put others in a box. They must propose something radically different from the prevailing ideas and then need to see everyone subjected to their new idea.
In all this, the possibility of a reciprocal and conscious unity is excluded. Is the only way to live in community to constrain and restrict each other? Or is there a chance that reflective and independent people can love and collaborate with each other in freedom?
Christianity and freedom
Christianity is misunderstood today as a great imposition on one’s freedom, especially in the moral sense. We Christians must take responsibility for this misrepresentation insofar as we did not genuinely understand truth and freedom. In reality, if Christianity makes impositions, they are like the impositions of gravity. Imagine if you are walking along the edge of a cliff and someone tells you:
If you slip from this height, you will fall for 3 seconds, crash into the ground at 60 miles per hour, and die!
Such a person imposes on your freedom only in the sense of protecting your life and freedom. In fact, they do not even protect you so much as advise you to protect yourself. The laws of gravity are part of the fabric of the universe. We are dealing with the very structure of reality and the only option is to navigate it well or die.
In an analogous manner, the truth of the Gospel is not an imposition. Christ desires nothing but man’s freedom; he came to set prisoners free. Everyone knows that remaining in freedom requires great moral strength and hard work, but you do not have to struggle for the sake of conformity or belonging. The “rules” are for the sake of navigating the inherent structure of existence well. That is why Christ is not concerned with whether you “live this way” or that but that you “live” and “live fully”. He says, “I came that you might have life and have life fully.” Nevertheless, he only proposes a path and does not impose one. As a rule, you cannot impose a path of freedom. Christianity does not entail an imposition on man’s freedom but is rather devoted to man’s liberation.
The pedagogue of shame
Our brains provide us with a powerful mechanism of conformity in order to keep us united with our tribe. As a primitive rule of life, only in the tribe can you survive and do well. We do not first understand ourselves through reflection on the meaning of our life and then try to live accordingly. On the contrary, we simply accept the levels of recognition and praise we receive from society as the measure of our objective value, and we allow this to determine our actions. This is my primitive self: the sum of the value-judgments everyone else makes about me. “She is highly successful,” “He is a man of service”, etc.
This mechanism is forceful within us and its effect are not merely cognitive. One’s perceived standing in society is so deeply felt that it affects our whole being. “In age-adjusted analyses [subjective social status] was related positively to almost all health outcomes.”2 Health outcomes include both subjective perceptions of health and objective measurements of health like diabetes. To put it plainly: the way you feel about your social standing determines how long you live.
Because of just how powerful it is over the psyche, the human concern about social standing is remarkably effective at keeping society from descending into chaos. We are afraid of losing the favor of society (shame), and we do things to be liked and well-regarded by others (honor). Honor-shame is nature’s shield against lawlessness. Even a sociopath who would not bear the slightest guilt for destroying your reputation or stealing your money will temper himself for fear of being considered a bad person – that’s how gripping shame is.
Thickly woven societies have highly developed structures of honor-shame. Whether or not they are codified, these structures of the collective mind feel as real as the laws of gravity. They wield tremendous power over individuals. Even when the individual is alone, he hears the voices of shame in his mind, controlling his every move and governing even inmost thoughts. (What are you allowed to think about?) One cannot find respite from shame even at the far corners of the earth.
Personhood and truth
Just as people say we should “speak truth to power,” perhaps we should “speak truth to shame” because truth can displace shame. Through greater consciousness, reflection, and self-possession, a person can rise above the playing-field of shame.
Shame is instinctual. When you spot a snake on your path, you get an instinctual jolt of adrenaline. This instinct was passed down to you because it represents some truth about survival in the physical world: you must be ready to run with only a split-second’s notice. Like this helpful instinct, shame too embodies some truth. A group of people can quickly become a mob and falling out of favor with your tribe can happen more quickly than you can possibly imagine (e.g. through a compounding series of misunderstandings). Shame is therefore a survival instinct. Win people’s favor and be very careful not to lose their esteem.
As with all our instincts, however, truth leads the human person above them without disregarding them. By “truth”, we do not mean truth about physical survival but a higher truth, a spiritual truth, or a personal truth (i.e. truth at the level of personal realization). The human person transcends the causal chains of physical existence and so is guided by higher principles. This is why human beings (like St. Maximilian Kolbe) are capable of sacrificing their lives despite their survival instincts.
It is at this higher level of truth that Christ speaks to man in the depths of his heart. He calls us not just to “live” but to “live fully”, which means, to realize the full potential of our life as persons. Our lives do not have to be dictated by honor and shame, we do not have to live in constant fear of the tribe. We can live in communion with others through freedom. Christ speaks truth to our hearts so that we may freely choose such freedom. And since he himself is the truth that he speaks – the Logos of all things, before and beyond all things – and since he alone can lead us there, he stands before each one of us with a profound invitation saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
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Wikipedia contributors, “Nouveau riche,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nouveau_riche&oldid=1368519603 (accessed September 17, 2026). ↩
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Demakakos, P., Nazroo, J., Breeze, E., & Marmot, M. (2008). Socioeconomic status and health: the role of subjective social status. Social science & medicine, 67(2), 330–340. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.03.038 ↩