People talk about love all the time. The people we love. Places we love. Things we love. But the question becomes, if there is so much love out there, why am I afraid to tell you who I am? John Powell thinks there are a few reasons for this phenomenon in our culture and has written about it in his book by the same title, “Why am I afraid to tell you who I am?”
The first reason is the Cliche. We say things like, “I love pirates”, because we saw the movie ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ and we feel like we know enough about them to enjoy their company. Now, at this stage, it is key to know that while people do not know much about each individual pirate, they use generalizations in order to make a connection with the pirates that they encounter. People at their heart want to know and be known by those people around them. So, when we meet a pirate, we try our hardest to make an instant connection through what we think we know. That is “cliche”.
The second thing that happens in building a relationship is Fact. We start to say what is true of us as a person to navigate the pirate label that we’ve been given. Things are said like, “Yes, I am a pirate, but I was born in Iowa and grew up in a small town.” Facts enable us to work through the Cliche’s that we have towards each other.
As we learn facts about each other, we develop an opinion. This is when we start saying what we think about the pirate in front of us after we get to know how his Iowa small town background effected why he became a pirate.
It is at this point when we can touch our toe into the space of Emotion. We have a new opinion, we make a few statements, and we fall “in love” with our new pirate friend. What we do not often realize about our culture in general, is that we do not like this place very much. We quickly run back to the cliche, gather a few new facts and build our next opinion. This type of lifestyle is much safer. Well, it feels safer anyway. But we do not realize that we have not reached the final place of being known and truly loved.
If we do not run back to the beginning, back to cliche, we can get to the final place of transparency. This is the place where you are able to go to a friend and say, “when you said that thing in the group the other day, that really hurt me.” and you are able to work through it and grow from it. It is the place where someone knows something (bad) about you and you allow them to invest in you without running away.
Our culture does not provide us with the necessary capacity to live in either emotion nor transparency. If you’ve only lived in the west, you will have to exercise this in order to make it normal. This is so true of us that when we do have an argument or momentary deep conversation, we feel like we suddenly have a connection when in reality we just dipped our toe past an opinion. In First Priority, transparency can take a while. When you are uniting the local churches, not only are there the personal relationships to develop, but the idea of theological differences hangs over those relationships. It leads to, “This pastor is Church of Christ or Southern Baptist or Reformed, I wonder if he believes ________?” To develop transparency, it takes time. It takes the intellectual flexibility to stand in relationship united in Jesus even if other things do not jive.
Peace for the moment,
Brad Schelling
2 Timothy 2:2
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