Air Therapy
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. 1 Corinthians 13:12 NASB
Fully Known – Sitting next to a total stranger in an airplane makes it easier, doesn’t it? Easier to talk about your troubles, your failures, maybe even your shame. Why? Why can we be more transparent with that person in the seat next to us but hide from the ones at home? Why are we afraid to really reveal our true selves without masks to those who know us best? The answer is obvious. I’ll probably never see that person sitting next to me again. We just happened to cross paths. Now we will go our separate ways and those shared secrets will remain secret. Anonymity. That’s why? Air therapy is based on probable anonymity. But when we get home? Oh, that’s different. Now what we share will become a part of the relationships we treasure. Now we will have to live with the consequences. Now we will be known.
How carefully we maintain an ego-protecting image even with our closest friends and family. Why do we do this? Because we are afraid? Of what? God tells us 366 times “Do not fear.” Why does He have to say this so often? Do we really accept the dangers we face with self-revelation or do we pretend we’re okay in order to protect our fragile existence? When we read Paul’s longing to be fully known, does that scare us or comfort us? Or do we spiritualize this desire, removing it from its deeply personal implications so that it remains at a distance from the way life is now. Oh, it will be great to be fully known—in heaven. Then all the consequences will be over with. No need to cry about it then. We’ll be saved. Does that mean saved from the embarrassment and humiliation of being fully known? But God already fully knows us. Are we embarrassed and humiliated before Him? He sees us as we really are. How willing are we to embrace the picture He sees of us? I suppose this question could be phrased differently: “How willing are we to love ourselves as God loves us?” I suspect that answer is quite disturbing. We know God knows, but we don’t actually accept that what He knows is really who we are. We pretend that somehow He is also one of those people at home, the ones we have to hide from.
Imagine what you would tell God if He just sat in the seat next to you on the flight to somewhere, and you knew that whatever you told Him would vanish with Him at the next connecting terminal. “So nice to talk with you. Have a great day. Oh, and by the way, I’ll never have to see you again.”
God prohibited Adam and the woman from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Of course, He did that to protect them, not to restrict them. That much the serpent got wrong. But doesn’t this imply that God knows the difference between Good and Evil, that He has experienced the Tree and that’s why He knows we can’t handle what it brings? If God knows things, then He has to know this too, and that means there’s nothing about your involvement with the Tree that He doesn’t already know. Not just as theory, but as living reality. He knows. He knows what it’s like to go through the things that you wish had never happened. He doesn’t know them as your history. He knows them as intimately as you do, as personally as you do. He knows. That’s why He can sit in the seat next to you and listen. That’s why you don’t need to be afraid.
But there’s a big difference between knowing you don’t need to be afraid and actually being vulnerable enough to tell someone what’s really troubling you, isn’t there?
Maybe you need to take a flight somewhere and see who’s in the seat next to you.
Topical Index: fully known, epiginṓskō, afraid, vulnerable, 1 Corinthians 13:12
“He knows. He knows what it’s like to go through the things that you wish had never happened. He doesn’t know them as your history. He knows them as intimately as you do, as personally as you do. He knows. That’s why He can sit in the seat next to you and listen. That’s why you don’t need to be afraid“
And He loves me anyway? I have trouble accepting this kind of Love ……or any kind of love for that matter……as I easily apologize for myself, my obnoxious behavior and how annoying I am at least 1000 times a day…..This- and yesterday’s TW – are so different and very paradigm-shifting (to me) than the god I was introduced to as a child.
This is doubly powerful for me, as I just flew yesterday. SEA to DEN. In an aisle seat. The person next to me spent the flight watching movies. No air therapy there. Across the aisle, my daughter and her daughters. I am contemplating…
I was remembering this morning about my childhood and family secrets. I was brave enough (trusting enough – um, GULLIBLE enough?) to attempt to share with my first grade classmates. I spent the rest of my elementary years as a pariah. My brother, on the other hand, was able to keep his childhood friendships because he DIDN’T tell. I know from personal experience just why we don’t tell. Statistically, we all instinctively know from experience that most others cannot handle truth well, and because they can’t, the relationship fractures further. We all pretend to not have problems so as to be able to be as close as possible – not as far as possible. I think we all pretend because we all still need to love and be loved, but because the world has no answers, I think most of us agree to mutually avoid the questions.
What are the questions? “Can you recognize my problem?” “Can you help me with my problem?” “Can you sympathize with me in my problem?” “Is it OK with you that I have a problem?” “Can you give me hope with my problem?” “Do YOU have a problem?” “Do you know how to fix my problem?” I think we can all see this problem. Relationship is built on the substrate of vulnerability, but the world punishes vulnerability. We can see the grapes of love hanging on the Vine, but because we cannot actually pick them, they become the grapes of wrath for us. What we cannot see is that we must become a part of the Vine – a part of the solution – before we can be free to love and be loved. We are not sinners because we have tried and failed to love; we are sinners because we are refusing the only Answer to our problem.
I think that because we are hardwired for love, sin has no choice but to lie to us; to present itself as righteousness before we are even motivated to sin. We are deceived. People who are lied to are victims. Therefore I have suspected that we are all victims of sin in the eyes of impartial justice. I think we are all, at least in some measure, UNINTENTIONAL sinners. The slain sacrifice for unintentional sin therefore applies to all of us. If we had known the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, we wouldn’t have fallen for the lie. That includes Adam and Eve. They sinned because of love, too. They were deceived, too. So are we.
God knows our nature because He created it. He knows that we all want love; that none of us want to be evil; none of us want to be dead, either. I think that is why He gives us the chances He does.
I think the some of the biggest deceptions I have fallen for tell me versions of the lie that I am inherently ‘bad’; that I deliberately want to be ‘bad’; that I have no choice but to be ‘bad’, and that it is ‘all up to me’, and that I have already ‘failed’. The other class of deceptions that I find myself falling for are: that is not really ‘bad’; you did not really do it; wrong is not really wrong; etc. One class appeals to my shame; the other to the pride I employ to hide that shame. Both classes are lies. God knows the real truth about me. He knows why I fall for the temptations. If I could see myself, as Skip says, through His eyes, I would see that both pride and shame are not correct responses to the condition I find myself in; both pride and shame are in themselves temptations to avoid repentance and forgiveness.
God knows the truth He wants me to know – that I have been deceived: that I really did want love, even if I didn’t know I did – therefore, that sacrificial Lamb was slain for me. Halleluah!