American is known as the “land of the free” because we’re blessed with many liberties, including freedom of religion and speech — both of which I’m exercising in this article. But our contemporary American understanding of freedom often results in selfishness. We buy into the mantras “the customer is always right,” and “have it your way.” The result is a belief that we can operate autonomously, without considering anyone else. Or, we become narcissists, whose excessive self-love gives us license to think, feel and do whatever we want. This warped brand of American freedom can easily lead to self-worship — which separates us from God. It lessens our conviction to strive for God’s will, and can even taint our efforts to share our faith with others.

The apostle Paul said Christians have been purchased for a price — Jesus’ death on the cross. By God’s grace, our sin has been forgiven and we now enjoy eternal freedom. But this doesn’t grant us personal autonomy. We have new obligations, as Paul writes in Romans 6:18: “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness” (italics mine). Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified in Christ, and no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul gave up his personal desires, and expectations about his life, to pursue God’s will. He was wholly devoted to God’s purposes.

The Declaration of Independence says God endowed us with the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” But as Paul’s words indicate, if we’ve committed our lives to Christ, these are rights only to the extent that they’re understood as tools designed to serve God. Sadly, Christians often override submission to God with autonomous living or selfishness. Maybe we have no plans to get breast implants, but plenty of our other endeavors are justified by our contemporary American perversion of freedom. Perhaps we have decided — although we’d never say it aloud to our Christian friends — that our money is our own. We’ll give a pittance to support our church, or other ministries, but decline to give sacrificially and keep the largesse to spend as we please. Maybe we’re refusing to speak to a friend or family member after a relatively minor conflict. God commands us to reconcile with one another, but we don’t want to. In these cases, we’re elevating our desires over God’s design for our lives. Any number of factors can contribute to these attitudes: greed, pride and materialism included. But each is also justified by a belief that we’re free to operate as we please.

Our self-focus can taint even some of our most sacrificial acts of service, like international short-term missions trips. Many of the thousands of trips Americans take every year are initiated and implemented to bring about spiritual growth for the missionaries. Of course I think short-term missionaries should grow spiritually. But there is no Biblical model for using evangelistic work as a discipleship tool for those doing the work of evangelism.

Organizers of the international journey have no problem with prioritizing the life change of the missionary in the endeavor. Several years ago, the leader of a large missions organization told me that transforming missionaries is his top priority. “We tell the people who are leading our teams that we’re building kids, not buildings,” he said. “The purpose isn’t just what we’ll do for these people, but what these people will do for us. There is not a single purpose in our missionary work … but to us this is the first purpose.”

A YWAM staffer who’s organized hundreds of international trips told me he’s heard youth leaders say that, bang for the buck, a short-term missions trip is the most effective way to create life change in a teenager. You gotta take a kid out of her comfort zone, give her an experience, help her to see poverty and provide service to the poor. This is certainly legitimate fruit of the trip, but it’s not a biblical motivation for sending kids overseas.

Somehow, we’ve inserted ourselves into the Great Commission, where Jesus says: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” But the Great Commission is supposed to be a selfless calling. A sacrificial commitment to the Great Commission would dictate that we submit our preferences in order to best fulfill Jesus’ instructions. Instead, we have what might be the first evangelistic movement in Church history that often elevates the needs of the missionary above the people he or she is trying to reach.

The underlying selfishness behind the trips is revealed in the phrase uttered by nearly every returning short-term missionary: “I couldn’t believe it, we went there to minister to them, but I realized that they were the ones ministering to us.” God certainly uses missionary work to change even the most selfless Christian’s life. But if this is the primary “takeaway” value of sending Americans overseas, then we might be missing the point of missions.

It’s possible that I’m being too critical. After all, it’s good that missionaries have their lives changed on the trips. Plus, they’re sacrificing their time to serve others, and indigenous people do come to faith through the ministries. But the fact that God uses our most feeble efforts doesn’t validate our methods. In part, it’s a stewardship issue. Short-term trips are being taken en masse at great financial cost. Some experts on the movement estimate U.S. churches send about 420,000 short-term missionaries annually — at a cost of $1,000 to $3,000 per person. This translates to $420 million to $1.2 billion spent every year.

This issue of stewardship intersects with the question of effectiveness. According to missions experts and long-term missionaries I’ve talked to, short-term missions trips are not the most effective means of fulfilling the Great Commission. Clive Calver, president of World Relief (the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals), said recently that he doesn’t need short-term missionaries to help his organization share the love of Jesus and battle the AIDS epidemic in Africa. He needs money. World Relief has a network of African staff people and each of them can be supported yearly for about $1,600 — about the cost of a plane ticket from the United States to Africa. It’s possible the money being spent on short-term trips that make our experience a top priority could be more wisely spent supporting long-term missionaries or indigenous Christians.

In some cases, applying our narcissistic understanding of personal freedom to missionary work can undermine a short-term trip. In the New Testament, missionary work was reserved for mature followers of Christ. But when trips are designed to strengthen the missionary, it can mean inviting immature Christians in hopes the experience will help them grow. Some friends of mine went on one trip where the team included a young cohabitating couple. The trip’s organizers hoped the journey would be transformational for the couple’s faith. But the couple’s presence created drastic conflict for the entire team, because they didn’t share the same understanding of how their faith should apply to their lives. It likely also caused confusion for the indigenous people the group was trying to reach, who were aware of the conflict. Upon their return, the couple was lovingly confronted, but they became angry and left the church. I’m not saying this is a universal example of the failures of short-term missions. But this situation arose because so many of today’s short-term missions models take the liberty of making the missionary’s life change a priority in the enterprise.

Allow me to clarify. I’m not saying that all short-term missionaries are selfish or misguided. And I’m not saying short-term missions work should cease. But it’s troubling how we’ve taken the freedom to insert our own personal needs into the Great Commission. It shows the degree to which we’ve allowed our contemporary understanding of freedom to become a license for doing what we want — even when it comes to God’s work.

As Americans, we’re blessed with incredible civil liberties. But as Christians we must continually submit ourselves to Christ so we don’t live with a sense of entitlement that would be contrary to God’s will. In cases where we’ve interpreted our American freedom as living however we please, we need to repent, refocus and realign ourselves with God. The purpose of the Christian life is to surrender to God and walk in the Spirit. Then we’ll exhibit the fruit of His spirit in everything we do.

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