mea culpa

for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. (Matthew 10:26)

Is there a right to privacy anymore?

Analysts of the most recent (of the long line of) sex scandals involving prominent elected officials find fertile ground to raise this most difficult question: is everything we do really everyone else’s business? What a Congressman does on his or her own time, however disgusting, is his or her own business, as long as it’s legal, after all.

Why should we care? Why should we even know?

It’s kind of an interesting question. Public officials are accountable for acts that affect their public office, for corruptions and crimes that degrade their official status, but does that apply to everything they do? Is the state of their marriage, their relationships, their personal peccadilloes the business of anyone but themselves?

In this age of tabloid journalism, we are besought on all sides by titillating stories of our favorite celebrities and least favorite politicians, and we are hooked. We are addicted. We are fully obsessed. The only thing more fun than reality TV is the daily soap opera that is real life itself. Now in the digital society, we can know everything about everyone, and the more lurid the detail, the greater our lust for it.

But our great enthusiasm for this distraction masks the real spiritual dilemma. While we celebrate the demolition of the privacy of others, we live in great fear for the exposure of our own. We join in the laughter at others, lest the bright light turn to our own lives.

Because here’s the dirty little secret: we all have one.

And what would we do if it became known? What would we do if the world around us, the people we care about, the ones we depend on and whose affection we seek, found out the truth about us? What would we do if the closet door sprung open and the skeletons came tumbling out, the smallness and pettiness and dirtiness of our deepest minds and hearts were shown?

And worse, what would we do if God knew how we really thought and felt and acted?

Oh …

For that is both the conviction and the freedom of our secret lives – that God really does know everything about us, every hidden sin, every expressed and unexpressed desire, every shameful weak moment. Though we would lock them deep into the abyss of our secret selves, he knows them, considers them, judges them.

And loves us still.

To be exposed to public ridicule and contempt is the greatest punishment that this world has to offer. As it should. There is a difference between right and wrong, between good and bad, even in this world. Married men should not be sending lewd and naked pictures of themselves to strange women. None of us, public nor private, should be involved in, connected to, approving of such behavior. None of us should be doing in private what we do not wish to have know in public. There does not need to be any excusing.

But there is a greater judgment than facing the TV cameras. It is the confession of the truth about us to the highest and holiest power, it is the admission of our shortcoming to our maker, that is most fearful. But it is exactly that one, who knows it all before we can speak it, before we can admit it, before we can even know it ourselves, who opens his hands in grace and loves us, not just in spite of our secrets, but because of them, who offers us a new reputation and new identity and new life for the sake of Jesus Christ.

Sin boldly, said Luther, but be even more confident in the mercy and forgiveness of God. Let go of the secret guilt and step out into the light of the new day.

There is no privacy before God, after all. There does not need to be.