Monday, May 30, 2016

Salty Secrets

Secrets, secrets are not fun.  Secrets, secrets hurt everyone.

Nothing is more true for me personally.  I learned early to focus on what I looked like to the detriment of what I actually was.  I kept secrets, hid motives, pretended, lied, and concealed.  Most addicts have learned the seduction, power, and pain of the double life.  It remains a tendency I surrender each day.

But secrets to Jesus can be something different.

There are three fabulous exceptions to the rhyme above: Giving, prayer, and fasting.  "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.  Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (Matthew 6:3-4)  This is followed by prayer in 6:6, "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.  Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." and fasting in 6:18, "so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

Jesus teaches us to keep secrets, to not practice these three things to be seen and rewarded by the rest of humanity.  Incredibly, this strong injunction to keep secrets comes directly on the heels of Jesus teaching on being both salt and light.  We are to season the world with our presence and be a lamp on its stand, a city on a hill.  We are to let our light shine before others, THAT THEY MAY SEE OUR GOOD DEEDS and glorify our Father in heaven.  That sounds like bragging, right?  How do we keep our good deeds secret while putting them on display for everyone to see?

So, why the juxtaposition?  I believe it is because we are created to shine and shine brightly.  Each of us has a brilliant beauty set in us by our Creator and quickened by grace.  We have God's thumbprint of eternal destiny, marking us for eternity with explosions of passion, glory, love, and happiness.  But the glory and the light shine here on God--our work here is to "glorify our Father in heaven."  It is not to glorify ourselves.  And Jesus is especially concerned with the things we do under the pretense of glorifying God but actually seeking our own glory.  Fasting, praying, and giving are things whose very power is unleashed in secret.  They are transactions with our Creator--secret times of intimacy with Him alone--done only for the reward of growing closer to Him.

When we do good deeds, lets call them God deeds, for our own glory they cease to be God deeds.  The only way our deeds stay in the Kingdom is to keep them secret.  Jesus wants us rewarded by our Father, he wants us to shine brightly, to join the invisible Father in his works of grace in the world, by becoming invisible ourselves.

And here's the flip side.  I sometimes keep secrets to protect myself.   I don't want others to discover my sin, to know what I am up to, and to conceal my true motives and activities.  Those secrets are damaging.  They are self-protective concealments of evil.  Evil is always to be confessed and given up.   It is to be brought out into the light and burned up in grace and humility.  Pride is our pitfall, and Jesus is trying to throw us a lifeline from our frail humanity always bent toward ambitious and selfish pride.  However, when my secrets are good ones, pride becomes my ally, rather than my enemy.  I bask in God's smile with a performance acted out on a stage for an audience of One, bowing to his standing ovation.  When our good deeds are performed only for the Lord, they can be performed in front of the whole world.

Secrets, secrets--the God ones are fun.  Secrets, Secrets--help everyone.

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