Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun . . .

Good thing Kady Bram is continuing as our guest blogger here at Strangely Dim, seeing as we haven't had a new post in nearly a month. Here Kady, a student at Northwestern College, reflects on the common practice of keeping secrets. Tell all your friends . . .

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What is your deepest or longest-kept secret? The one you want to hide forever, the one you need to tell but are afraid the world might implode if you did? I learned from my first grade teacher the necessity of keeping certain secrets after a classmate of mine wet his pants in the middle of a reading lesson. I never spoke a word of that story to anyone . . . until several years later, around high school graduation time. Funny how secrets, no matter how small, tend to stick with us.

Ours is a culture of secrets, a world in which we stock our free-time with entertaining television like CSI and Desperate Housewives that thrive on the intrigue of hidden, juicy secrets and the drama that unfolds when those secrets are revealed. We may enjoy hearing about the secrets of others, but having our own secrets shared with the world can be uncomfortable at best because secrets are often accompanied by a sense of personal shame, and shame demands we protect ourselves. So we hide our regrets and hope that no one ever finds out.

What was it that initially bound our culture to its nature of secrets? Perhaps, ironically, it was and is our societal commitment to individualism. As independent individuals, we compartmentalize everything--even the burden of our secrets. We hoard them in a place that no one else is ever allowed.

We have a lot to learn from the first ever secret-keepers--Adam and Eve--whose humanity we share and whose mistakes we perpetually repeat. We, like they, take some forbidden fruit and eat it, and the enlightenment that follows fills us with panic, regret and shame. We keep--sometimes even fiercely protect--our secrets deep and dark, even avoiding acknowledging them to ourselves, so that we can live life without facing our shame--choosing instead to accept a sense of fear that drives us to bury our secrets deeper. God, of course, knew all about Adam and Eve's sin--their secret regret--and patiently offered them the opportunity to confess their mistake. But they tried to cover themselves and the evidence, effectively erecting a barrier of blame between themselves and God. Secret shame becomes visceral, a living part of our sinful nature that, even today, we doggedly maintain.

We pretend that each of our secret regrets is uniquely bad, and therefore must be carefully guarded from the knowledge of those around us. The truth, however, is that we share a history of secrets like we share a need for oxygen. That frail, shameful framework of our humanity can lead us to the other thing we share--our common need for freedom from our secret burdens, freedom attained when we confess our shame openly and welcome an intimate friendship with a common Savior, the one who shows us the Way, who is the Truth, and who gives us Life.

Posted by Dave Zimmerman at May 11, 2009 12:52 PM