On December 1, 1862, in the middle of a nation tearing itself apart, President Abraham Lincoln spoke words that still unsettle us today. Preparing for the release of the Emancipation Proclamation 31 days later, on January 1, 1863, which would free slaves, he ended his address with this paragraph.
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves. And then we shall save our country.”
Lincoln didn’t say rise to the moment—he said rise with it. Meaning the moment itself demands a change in us. And at the center of that change is a dangerous admission: we are enthralled. We are enthralled by inherited assumptions and ideas we no longer examine. By narratives that once served another time, another crisis, another century. Or we are enthralled by narratives controlled by political movements, corporate interests, or institutional power structures.
To disenthrall yourself is to question what you’ve always assumed was simply “status quo;” the defined state of existence. And today, the places where that challenge lands the hardest are politics, medicine, and theology—the three arenas where narratives are loudest, stakes are highest, and dissent is most costly. It is to risk discovering that some of your most comfortable beliefs may no longer be true—or may never have been.
With theology, yes, debate may exist around its doctrines, but for common men and women we have the anchor of the Bible—a fixed point that does not shift with culture, pressure, or popularity. But with politics and medicine, we are navigating systems shaped by power, profit, fear, and incomplete knowledge—fields where consensus changes, where authorities give themselves to untruths and manipulative propaganda, where yesterday’s certainties are often revised or abandoned. And yet, these are often the very areas where questioning is most discouraged and conformity most rewarded.
And God forbid if politics and medicine become bedfellows.
Disenthrallment in such spaces requires unusual humility and unusual courage: the humility to admit we may have been wrong, and the courage to keep pursuing truth even when it costs us credibility, community, or comfort.
So if unmitigated truth is our highest priority, and we take Lincoln seriously, what conclusions might we be forced to reach? And the harder question: are we willing to reach them, even if they cost us certainty, approval, or comfort?
Because disenthrallment is not an idea we feel safe in—it threatens our certainties, unsettles our loyalties, and asks us to step outside the comfort of borrowed conclusions. It offers no applause, no guarantee of approval, only the costly promise of seeing clearly. And clarity has a way of pressing on our conscience and demanding action—because once you see what is true, you can no longer pretend neutrality is an option.
Disenthrallment might leave us alone with questions we cannot outsource this side of heaven. At that point “lift up your eyes to the hills—where your help comes from.” Then dig deeper and reach wider.