Misconception about Christianity #4 - Straightjacket

Another common objection I hear regarding Christianity is how it stifles people's freedom and individuality.  Here is the basic logic flow:

1) I have strong personal convictions about my lifestyle and about what is right and wrong.
2) The Bible condemns some of these personal convictions.
3) Therefore, Christianity would be a straightjacket to my personhood.

The crux of this logical flow is that it assumes that our personal convictions about how to live are unquestionably correct.  If this were so, I would agree that Christianity is a straightjacket, but there is a second possibility.  What if God has a fuller, better idea of the kind of person we are supposed to be?  Jesus strongly advocates this:

"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." -John 10:10

This notion is also prevalent in Proverbs, with the following verse being mentioned several times:

"There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death."

From these verses, and several others like them, we can see that God does not intend for faith to come at the expense of a full life here on Earth.  But then why does what God wants often seem undesirable from a human perspective?  I would argue that this conflict of desires is largely due to our selfishness and our shortsightedness.

A superb analogy is parenting: a mother is constantly correcting her toddler's actions and not letting him do things that he desires to do.  The child desires to play with the electrical outlet, to drink the drain cleaner, or to play at the top of the stairs, but the mother condemns these activities in favor of others that seem less desirable.  What is the mother's motive here?  To stifle her child's individuality?  On the contrary, from an adult perspective it is perfectly obvious that the mother is fully supportive of her child's individuality and personal interests, but has to regulate and refine them for the sake of the child's safety and well-being.  The mother is helping her son to fulfill his true potential in a way that he would be incapable of doing on his own terms.

It is the same with God.  He is not trying to restrict us, but rather protect us and harness our fullest potential.  Let's use the common objection of sexual repression as a case study.  From the perspective of many non-believers (and sometimes even believers), God and the Bible can be a straightjacket regarding our sexual desires.  But what is God's real desire in prohibiting extra-marital relations?  To make us repressed and miserable?  Obviously not, for the Bible teaches that "it is better to marry than to burn with passion" (1 Corinthians 7:9).  This verse is clearly stating that God desires for us to be sexually satisfied and does not desire for us to be repressed.  But why can we only have sex within marriage, isn't that also repressive?  Perhaps from a primal and shortsighted perspective, but multiple studies have revealed that married people have more sex and are more sexually satisfied compared to singles.  There are also many other factors which could be articles to themselves, but in brief:
1) People who wait to have sex until they marry have a higher level of communication and romance during their courtship that builds a better emotional base for their marriage.
2) Waiting until marriage will prevent any sexual baggage with prior partners that can cause significant marital and sexual difficulties.
3) Waiting until marriage prevents any sexually transmitted disease or unwanted pregnancy
4) Not allowing sex outside of the marriage will remove possible temptations to have an affair, which can destroy entire families from the inside-out.
I could list many more, but the point is that God does not require us to wait until marriage to somehow punish us or restrict us, but rather to give us the fullest possible quality of marriage and sexual intimacy.

Actually, marriage itself is a great analogy for how God is not a straightjacket when viewed with the proper context.  Marriage has a great number of prohibitions and restrictions, yet the vast majority of people on Earth desire marriage as a positive thing.  Why is this?  Because only by operating within these restrictions can you fully commit and love your spouse for the rest of your life.  Take away the restrictions, take away the commitment, and you have lost much of what makes love and marriage so special in the first place!  It is the same with God, the commitments and the restrictions that He requires for a relationship with Him are there to maximize the impact of our relationship.  He only prohibits things that affect our spiritual, emotional, or physical well-being, while at the same time giving us the unconditional love and emotional security needed to be able to live our lives to the fullest.