Secrets can be healthy and helpful, as I will explain later. Yet shameful secrets can be horrible and harmful, and especially disgusting when children are involved.
I read in the local news of a 75 year old grandfather who was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for molesting his grandchildren. The man is a well-known member of a local megachurch. The judge said, “Now this community you lived in and deceived, they’ll have to fight disillusionment.” He added, “It’s unlikely the tears you’ve ripped into your good and decent family will be mended for some time, if ever.”
Security was ramped up for the sentencing because of bitter feelings among some of the man’s seven sons over the conviction. The whole situation came to light after the granddaughter confided in an older sister. A niece from Ohio testified that the man had molested her more than 40 years ago.
As I read both the biblical account of Rahab and the news story, I thought of the writings of Paul Tournier with insights about secrets. Tournier was a Swiss physician (1898-1986) who left his medical practice to become a pastoral counselor and author. I became interested in his books in the 1970’s and collected a number of his works. I feel when I read his shor
t books that I am having a personal fireside chat with a friend.Paul Tournier wrote in To Understand Each Other:
“We need to see that universal sickness, that innumerable throng of men and women laden down with their secrets, laden down with their fears, their sufferings, their sorrows, their disappointments, and their guilt. We need to understand how tragically alone they find themselves. They may take part in social life, may even play a leading role there, chairing club meetings, winning sports championships, going to the movies with their spouses. Yet what eats away at them from within is that they may live years without finding anyone in whom they have enough confidence to unburden themselves.”
One of the most famous quotes of Tournier is from his book, Secrets. He wrote, "Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets." In the book Tournier explains the ways in which giving and receiving confidences influences maturation, marital happiness, and spiritual growth. I am indebted to Mennonite Herald for a summary of how Tournier describes the role of secrets in three stages.
In the first, there is the need of secrecy. Children begin to resist telling their parents everything; they discover they want to have some choice about what they share, or with whom. “To have secrets, to know how to keep them to one’s self, to give them up only willingly,” Tournier says, “constitutes the first action in the formation of the individual.” Kids love to have secrets because it is something they know and their parent does not. No longer does the parent seem omniscient. A child realizes they are a separate person from their parent. And no one, he writes, “reaches maturity without secret anguishes, secret searches, and secret remorses . . .”
The next stage is sharing one’s secrets. Kids love to let you know that they know a secret. If keeping a secret is “an early assertion of freedom,” choosing to tell it to someone else is “a later assertion of freedom, of even greater value.” The double action of refusal/withdrawal and surrender/communication is a “delicate and significant game,” says Tournier, “one of secrecy and of openness, of silence and of speech.”
When personal disclosures are made, in a counseling situation perhaps, or in a marriage or friendship, something “essential” and liberating can take place for both the revealer and the recipient. There are secrets “especially burdensome,” however, which bind us in shame, but which we must risk telling. In marriage, Tournier writes, “the couple must strive for [transparency] at the cost of confessions which are always new and sometimes very hard.”
The third, most powerful, stage is telling our secrets to God. But why tell Someone who already knows everything about us? The answer also concerns freedom and relationship. “God respects our person. . . . He is waiting for us to choose him as confidant.” God speaks too; the essence of the biblical message is God’s self-revelation.
To enter a dialogue with God, Tournier reminds his readers, is “no small affair,” for God speaks but also keeps silent, reveals but also hides. The apostle Paul told the Athenians that God, though “not far from any one of us” also determined we should “reach out for him and find him” (Acts 17:27). This seeking also involves waiting, and secrecy (Matthew 6:6). Isn’t it something that Jesus already knows your secrets but loves you anyway?
Charles Lehardy at AnotherThink made some insightful comments about secrets that I have adapted:
The arrest of a sex offender makes headlines, but this sad story is all the more interesting because of the Jekyl and Hyde nature of the man’s life. How is it possible for a man to lie so convincingly, to hide his secret life so effectively that even his family is deceived?
In truth, it happens every day. And if we're honest with ourselves, many of us will admit that our lives bear some resemblance … Most of us have secrets. Some of us lead double lives. We may not hide an illicit relationship, but we're every bit as careful to keep certain facts, experiences, or attitudes hidden from the light of day. I'm talking about things we've buried deep in our hearts: prejudices, phobias, shameful memories, moral failings, lies.
Keeping such things hidden does not remove their power. Secrets are corrosive, like sulfuric acid—they burn gaping holes in our soul. Secrets are explosive, like nitroglycerin—they can utterly destroy relationships and reputations. Paul Tournier has it right when he calls us tragically alone, without finding anyone in whom [we] have enough confidence to unburden [ourselves].
Secular postmodernism has left us with no priest from whom we can obtain forgiveness and relief. Psychiatry has failed to take away the guilt that dogs us. We're afraid of honesty, worrying that it might bring scorn instead of understanding, disaster instead of healing. Instead of unburdening ourselves, we hunker down and add another padlock to the basement door.
The word "secret" comes from a French phrase meaning "to sift apart"—an apt description. We divide ourselves in two, one part of us public, the other private. We set about scrubbing and cleansing our public persona, lifting and botoxing it to perfection, perhaps hoping that with enough plastic surgery, the world will see us as we wish to be seen, not as we are.
To speak plainly, most of us are accomplished fakes. But it's also true that most of us are tired of faking it—we'd love to be transparent, if only we could be certain to find love and acceptance.
Isn't it ironic that we find it so much easier to have sexual relationships with near- strangers than to strip our hearts bare and speak honestly about the doubts and dreams and hurts and hopes that are at the very core of our spiritual beings? Sex is our substitute for true intimacy, but it's no good—in the end, sex is merely sex.
There were two women. One, a married woman, had secretly taken a lover. She was caught and hauled into the public square by the authorities. The crowds of the curious laughed and jeered. She was humiliated and terrified, because the penalty for adultery was death.
The authorities challenged Jesus to carry out her execution by stoning her to death. He quietly considered the situation, and then he offered this famous challenge, "All right, stone her. But let those who have never sinned throw the first stones."
When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to her, "Where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you?" "No, Lord," she said. And Jesus said, "Neither do I. Go and sin no more." (John 8:9-11)
The other woman was a prostitute, someone much sought after in the dark but shunned in the daylight. She had been listening to Jesus and had found a new understanding of God. She had discovered unconditional love, mercy, forgiveness and the hope of a fresh start in life.
In gratitude, she crashed a dinner party, weeping with joy, and began bathing Jesus' feet with a jar of expensive perfume. The dinner guests were scandalized that he would allow such an earthy woman anywhere near him. Jesus answered them.
"Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn't offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn't give me a kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume. I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love." Then Jesus said to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven… Your faith has saved you; go in peace." (Luke 7:44-50)
Isn't it time to unburden yourself? Isn't it time to pour those secrets, those shameful thoughts and deeds, on the cross of Christ? Jesus is ready to hear your confession. Jesus offers unconditional forgiveness and a way to start fresh again—the way of the Good News, the way of faith.
"Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let's not let it slip through our fingers. We don't have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He's been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let's walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help." (Hebrews 4:14-16, The Message)
Imagine how good it will feel to let the fresh air of God's grace and mercy into that musty old basement. What are you waiting for?
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