Freedom (and Submission) Isn’t What You Think

Absolute freedom is absolute chaos. Ask any child of a permissive parent.

This is a guest post from Noelle McEachran. Relevant to everyone, because everyone is under some type of authority. You can’t ask your kids to obey you while you yourself are in rebellion.

Photo by Magda Ehlers

When people today hear the word submission, especially in a biblical context, they tend to bristle. Tell a modern American that wives are called to submit to their husbands or that children should obey their parents, and you’ll likely get an outright “absolutely not.”

But maybe the real problem isn’t the concept itself. Maybe we’re reacting based on a misunderstanding—specifically, a misunderstanding of what freedom actually means.

The Modern View: Freedom Without Limits

For most of us in the West—especially in America—freedom is defined as the removal of all restrictions. We think of it as doing whatever we want, whenever we want, with no interference. Any type of boundary or obligation feels like a threat to our autonomy.

So naturally, when the Bible talks about submitting to authority, to many it feels outdated at best—or oppressive at worst. But what if our definition of freedom is completely upside-down?

A Cultural Snapshot

A good example of this cultural mindset in action can be found in the New York Times best-selling memoir Untamed by Glennon Doyle, published a few years ago—a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. The author, who had once written a book about loving and supporting her husband and kids, later left her marriage, embraced a new identity, and began a relationship with another woman.

In Untamed, she recounts this transformation—and begins the entire book with a story from a zoo. At the cheetah exhibit, the author watches Tabitha the cheetah run a trained path for the zookeepers. But instead of clapping like everyone else, she feels queasy. Here’s what she writes:

“The taming of Tabitha felt familiar… Day after day, Tabitha has to continue to chase on the well-worn narrow path… obeying the zookeeper’s command… unaware that if she remembered the wilderness, she could tear the zookeeper to shreds.”

She imagines the cheetah thinking, “Something feels off… she has a hunch that everything is supposed to be more beautiful… more like the fenceless, wide-open savannahs.”

That is how many women today talk about their lives—even Christian women. This idea that the wild, unbound, self-led life is true freedom is widely accepted. It seems to capture the ache for something more—the suspicion that structure is stifling, and that real joy is found outside the lines. But is that true?

They have it exactly backwards.

The Problem With the “Wild and Free” Myth

There’s just one problem: the cheetah metaphor doesn’t actually prove the point it’s trying to make. Even a superficial examination reveals plenty of holes in this argument.

Radical feminists, cheetah-like, broke their restraints and in a rush, ran headlong into the wildness, crying: “I am woman, hear me roar!”

But what they discovered next was that the wild and free life was no less confining. Yes, the trained cheetah is restricted. But a wild cheetah isn’t any more “free.” It has no one feeding it, no protection, no care. It lives under the harsh laws of nature—hunting or starving, fighting or dying. That’s not real freedom; it’s just a different kind of bondage.

Additionally, the cheetah’s “freedom” results in tyranny for other animals.

As C.S. Lewis once pointed out:

The real alternative is tyranny: if you will not have authority, you will find yourself obeying brute force.

In fact, the author of Untamed didn’t leave submission behind either—she simply exchanged one form of it for another. She traded a monogamous marriage with a man for a monogamous relationship with a woman. If submission is enslavement, then she only changed cages.

Here’s the truth: authority and submission are inescapable parts of life. If we’re not submitting to someone else, we’re still submitting—to our desires, our fears, our emotions. What moderns consider true freedom is actually just “me-first” autonomy. Feminism, like the Cheetah, pursuing “freedom from all restraint,” often leads to becoming a tyrant ourselves. Everyone must answer to our will.

The idea that we can be entirely free from all authority is no more than an urban legend. A modern myth.

“It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”

—Chesterton

Freedom apart from submission does not exist.

We see the truth of this everywhere we look. Think about sports: a player isn’t free to enjoy the game unless they follow the rules. A musician isn’t free to play beautifully unless they submit to the discipline of practice. A dancer doesn’t become expressive until they’ve mastered form. Even in traffic, we’re only free to drive safely because we submit to traffic laws.

The key isn’t to reject submission—that’s manifestly impossible—but to discern which kind leads to life and which leads to destruction.

Biblical Submission Is Not Tyranny

The Bible never says women should submit to all men. It doesn’t say wives should obey their husbands if they’re asking them to sin. It certainly doesn’t promote abuse or blind obedience. And submission is never a one-way street. Men are called to submit to God, to serve sacrificially, to lead with humility and love.

Even Jesus, who is God, submitted to the will of the Father. In doing so, He demonstrated that biblical submission is not about inequality or inferiority. It’s about trust. It’s about relationship. It’s about aligning ourselves with something greater than our own whims.

So What Do We Do With This?

1. Don’t fear restrictions.

When you give your children boundaries, for example, you’re not limiting their freedom—you’re providing them with the only environment where real freedom can flourish. The child who’s never been told “no” is not free, but far more deeply enslaved to self and likely miserable.

2. Embrace the beauty of limits.

Don’t be afraid to live within structure. Don’t be afraid to say no to your kids, your impulses, your culture, even yourself. There is joy in the discipline. There is peace in boundaries. This is what the Psalmist meant when he said:

The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

Psalm 16:5-6

Boundaries and prohibitions are an assumed part of life, yet the psalmist calls them “pleasant.” There is some rare gift here that seems to fly over the heads of many moderns.

3. Redefine freedom.

Stop chasing the savannah. The real wilderness isn’t freedom. It’s chaos. The richer, fuller life isn’t out there somewhere, past the lines. It’s found inside the boundaries of love, obedience, and yes, even submission.

The problem isn’t that the Bible’s view of submission is oppressive. It’s that we’ve forgotten what centuries of history have taught us.

We’ve forgotten what real freedom really means.