Advanced Peek-a-boo

Advanced Peek-a-Boo--July 26, 2016

"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.  What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.  Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows." [Matthew 10:26-30]

You know this already, but even when you are not looking at your feet--say, if they are obscured by a table or desk while you read your morning devotions--your feet are still there.  They do not blink out of existence just because you don't see them at the moment--which is good news for you the moment you want to get up from your reading to actually do something with your day.

It's called "object permanence."  It's the realization that the world is still there when your eyes are closed, or when your head is looking the other way.  And while it's obvious to you that, say, the tree in your front yard is still there when you are at work, that wasn't always the case. It wasn't always obvious to you--or to any of us.  We all go through a phase of development, somewhere between infancy and toddler-hood, where it finally dawns on us that the world is still there even when we can't see it. It's part of why "peek-a-boo" is enthralling to babies--they are learning that the familiar face hasn't vanished from the universe when covered up by their hands.  For all of us, there was a moment when we realized that the objects around us, and the world in which we lived, continued on whether we paid attention to them or not. 

And even though we now understand as adults that the faces playing peek-a-boo are still there when our eyes are covered, we still have a really hard time coming to terms with our faults, our failures, and our weaknesses.  There is something still so enticing about the idea that if we just ignore something we don't like or don't want to face, it might go away. And so we spend an awful lot of our energy in adulthood actively trying to pretend the objects we don't like aren't permanent. 

It's the way I can be so good at seeing other people's faults... but unable to see the same tendencies in myself.  It's the way I built a little narrative of the world and how it works... but then when any information comes my way that doesn't fit with it, I ignore it, or yell over it, or assume it must be entirely wrong.  It's the way I can give myself permission to sharpen my claws and attack others, but feel offended if someone points out the same faults in myself or those I tend to agree with.  And it's the way I choose to surround myself more and more only with people who will only reinforce what I think--whether in my circle of friends, my social media feed, or my choice of sources for news on television.

That may be a particular danger of our era--we live in an age and in a place where we have access (in theory) to all sorts of sources of information, but more and more, those sources tailor themselves to our tastes and likes, so we have to deal less and less with information or ideas that provoke us or challenge us... and so that we have to acknowledge less and less the failures and weaknesses within ourselves.  If I don't like the way one news channel tells the story, I can simply turn the channel to find one that puts a slant on things that doesn't bother me... rather than listening and seeing if there is some possible element of truth to it that I didn't want to have to deal with at first.  If I only click on or "like" stories that reinforce what I already think, the algorithms in some ethereal other place will feed me only more of those kinds of stories... until I no longer have to deal with news or ideas that poke at me.  That's part of the myth of our era--we tell ourselves that technology, the internet, and social media have all made us more connected, but that is really only a potential, a possibility.  All of those neat inventions have also made us more insulated, if we choose to use them in ways that surround us only with what we already know and keep at a distance anything "other."

So here we are in this day and age where we can make the uncomfortable things seem to disappear, because we can easily change the channel, click "unlike," or just decide not to think too much about them. We have invented a whole new way of denying object permanence... as adults.

Jesus, however, reminds us that we can't keep playing some advanced version of Peek-a-Boo for Grown-ups with reality forever.  And he doesn't say it as a scary thing--like we should all try to live in blissful ignorance as long as possible because one day the bottom will fall out.  But rather, he calls his followers to be agents of that great unveiling, that great truth-telling.  He tells his followers to be people who can be real... who can be honest... who can both speak difficult truths, but also hear difficult truths that we might not have wanted to have to deal with. 

And underlying Jesus' instruction that we be people who can live with the uncovered, out-in-the-daylight truth, is his deep confidence in the unshakable confidence of God.  Jesus tells us not to be afraid of the uncomfortable truths, or facing our failures, or naming our sins, because Jesus knows we are loved by a God who does not flinch at them either. Once we know that we are unconditionally beloved, we can bear honest confession of our sin.  Once we know that God will reign regardless of who seems to be in power today, we can face the good and the bad in our favored (and unfavored) politicians, rather than hiding or ignoring their faults while only seeing the failures of the opposition.  Once we know that we are unchangeably held in the hands of a God whose love will not let us go, we can dare to listen to other voices without be threatened--and we can consider them without being afraid, and not immediately block them out or change the channel.  Sometimes we will discover we had some learning to do.  Sometimes we will find our original viewpoint confirmed.  But we won't have run from something out of fear that the truth was too fragile to withstand a little scrutiny.  It's like the line attributed to St. Augustine: "The truth does not need to be defended. The truth is like a lion.  Let it loose--it will defend itself."

And this much is the truth: there are things in the world, and in ourselves, that we would rather not acknowledge, and they are there whether we choose to see them or not.  However, we are also loved by a God whose grace is not conditional on us being perfect peaches.  The God who holds us will be faithful even when tomorrow's news doesn't fit our preconceived pictures, even when we have come face to face with our mess-ups, and even when our old view of the world gets shaken.

Maybe it's time to stop playing peek-a-boo.

Lord God, give us the courage from trusting your love to bear hearing the truth we had been shutting out.