Secrets are like black mold in your soul — menacing, toxic, metastatic and nearly impossible to eradicate.
Someone has said that the measure of your spiritual wellness is inversely proportional to the number of your secrets. It was that way with me until the day I finally had to “fess up.” That was when I unconditionally surrendered my life to the Lord Jesus Christ, trusting Him with my secrets, believing His Gospel and receiving eternal life.
In an instant, the weight of the world came off my shoulders.
Up to then, those secrets were holding me back. I figured that if God really knew me “warts and all,” He would be the one running and hiding, not me. How backward I had it …
“Hide and Seek” is a game we’ve been playing since the dawn of time. But its roots aren’t so funny.
Going back to our beginnings, when Adam and Eve blew it with God and ate fruit from the forbidden tree we read in Genesis 3:7, “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves waist coverings.”
Their first instinct was to hide under their handmade “flimsy fashions” as they stood in the glare of their guilt, nakedness and exposure.
Then, in verse 8, “they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”
Not satisfied with hiding under clothes, they tried to pull all the trees in the garden over themselves to avoid detection by their Creator. Their scalding shame had to be covered up, so they thought.
Thus, we have the birth of the game that we all still play today where we do the hiding and God does the seeking. As written in verses 9-10: “Then the Lord God called to the man, and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ He said, ‘I heard the sound of You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so, I hid myself.’”
Aren’t you glad God agreed to play Hide and Seek with our forebears? He could just as easily have said, “Forget it, guys. I warned you. You knew what ‘surely die’ meant? The experiment with My imagers has failed. I’m going back to Heaven where my rule is never challenged, and I can get a little peace and quiet.”
Finally, our two newly minted “victims” embarked on a downward spiral of recriminations in verses 12-13, “The man said, ‘The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me some of the fruit of the tree, and I ate … the woman said, ‘The serpent deceived me, and I ate.’”
Fingers pointing everywhere except to themselves.
The rest of the Bible is about what God had to do to redeem His wandering children back from the slave market of sin. It was Adam No. 1’s rebellion and cover-up that broke fellowship with God, and it was “The Last Adam” (Jesus Christ) who provided the way back to God, but at great cost. As noted in 1 Peter 1:17-19, “with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”
So, what’s the big deal about secrets today?
Psychologist Michael Slepian writes in his book, The Secret life of Secrets:
“… our deepest secrets can wreak more havoc if left untold than if shared with someone we trust … In general, we would all be better off with fewer secrets … some downsides of walling off: First is the pure cognitive burden.”
Slepian defines secrecy not as a behavior but as an intention, a desire to hide information — even if it requires no active misdirection … Secrecy isolates us, often needlessly.
“Opening up to others is how we become known and opening up to others is how we learn about ourselves, as well,” he writes. “Sharing your inner demons gives others a chance to help tame them.”
Those “monsters in our closet” play havoc on our inner life. Slepian concludes, “If you have a secret that is bothering you, consider sharing it with someone you trust.”
For me, that Someone was, and still is, Jesus:
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let’s hold firmly to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things just as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let’s approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace for help at the time of our need.”
— Hebrews 4:14-16
— D.C. Collier is a Bible teacher, discipleship mentor and writer focused on Christian apologetics. A mechanical engineer and internet entrepreneur, he is the author of My Origin, My Destiny, a book focused on Christianity’s basic “value proposition.” Click here for more information, or contact him at don@peervalue.com. Click here for previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.