Pastor, here’s how to answer “Nobody can tell me what to do.”

You’ve heard it in a counseling appointment that went sideways, in a comment thread under your sermon clip, maybe out of your own mouth: “Nobody can tell me what to do.” It sounds like independence. Unmasked, it says something much bigger: “I am my own god.” It’s a sermon of the serpent, and it’s getting louder. Here’s how to hear it, and how I answer it as a pastor.

What pluralism is

As I use the word in this series, pluralism is the ideology that every self is its own sovereign authority. It grows right out of relativism. Once authority moves inside and truth becomes subjective, you have to make yourself self-sovereign. And while relativism says everyone’s truth is relative, pragmatically people believe their own is superior.

The shift is slight, but you need to see it. Relativism was passively agreeable: we all just get along. Pluralism says, “You must agree with me, or you’re a bad person, or this isn’t a safe space.” The agreeableness failed because there was no truth under it. So now, if you tell someone what they believe or what they’re doing is wrong, you’re challenging their sovereignty, and the reaction is anger.

The serpent’s question

The serpent’s promise in the garden was “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:5). Pluralism takes that promise at face value. Its version of the question is “Did God really say He gets to tell you what to do?”

Notice the parallel. Satan himself wanted to be worshiped. In the wilderness he offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world “if you will bow down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). Self-worship always sounds like him.

Step 1 — Name self-worship plainly

Technology compounds this. We have millions of self-sovereigns filming themselves, posting about themselves, liking photos of themselves, and evangelizing their own truth every single day. It’s self-worship and self-adulation at scale.

Name it from the pulpit, without anger and without apology. You’re not attacking people. You’re telling them the truth about a throne they were never built to sit on.

Step 2 — Show them the chaos they can’t fix

Here’s the hard part of being your own god: you don’t only have to create your own truth. You also have to solve your own problems. The framework you generated creates chaos, and now you have to calm the anxiety that chaos produces. You’ve traded an external, ordered truth for one that depends on your fluctuating emotions and perceptions.

So the culture says, “Look within yourself. Find it within yourself. Fix it from within yourself.” You’re creating a framework that’s destroying you, then looking inside for the thing that will redeem it. It simply does not work.

Step 3 — Offer them a rock

It’s like a drowning person grabbing more water. You can’t look within yourself to save yourself while you’re going under. You need something external, something firm and strong to hold onto, something old and true that was here before you and will be here after you. Humans can’t order their own chaos. We were never meant to.

Jesus described the wise builder as the one who hears His words and puts them into practice, building his house on the rock (Matthew 7:24). That’s the offer to the anxious person in your office. Many people right now are slaves to sin and drowning. They need the rock of Jesus Christ.

Step 4 — Check your own heart

Self-worship leaves you unfulfilled. You’re always demanding more: more affirmation, more likes, more people who agree with you. The heart becomes a pit that’s never filled, and in the end nothing satisfies.

Pastors aren’t immune to this. So ask yourself honestly: who can still tell you no? You cannot both be God and worship God at the same time. God is God, and I am not. I have to submit my life to Him and worship Him.

So yes, somebody can tell you what to do. His name is Jesus Christ, and He is Lord. He isn’t someone we bring alongside us as an equal. He is God, and we are not, and we follow Him, listen to Him, and obey Him.