The Freest Person Who Ever Lived

Fashions in language come and go. But it’s likely that use of the word “uptight” will remain fashionable for a long time to come. According to some social scientists, the “uptight” person is not neurotic, but normal. It is fashionable, it seems, to get uptight about all the things everyone else is uptight about. It is fashionable (normal), it seems, to be uptight about “getting ahead”; uptight about paying the bills; uptight about political problems; uptight about social problems; even uptight about being uptight.

The uptight person, the excessive “worry-bird,” is enslaved by an inflated notion of his or her ability to manage the future. But, we should not — we dare not — be uptight about tomorrow and tomorrow’s tomorrows. Tomorrow belongs to God. (If you want to give God a good laugh, tell Him your plans for the future).

In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul describes himself as “a prisoner of Christ Jesus” (Eph. 3:1). Yet, in his Letter to…