Unobscured – ChurchEdge

There is another trend taking place in the online world of anonymity. Several websites offer the opportunity to air your darkest secret. Visitors put into words the very thing they have spent a lifetime wanting no one to know about themselves. While visiting, they can also read the long-hidden confessions of others, and recognize a part of humanity that is often as obscured as their own secret — namely, I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH A MASK, A CONFLICTED HEART, OR A HIDDEN SKELETON. “Every single person has at least one secret that would break your heart,” one site reads. “If we could just remember this, I think there would be a lot more compassion and tolerance in the world.”

So often the world of souls moves as if instinctively to the very things asked of us in Scripture. “Therefore confess your offenses to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed” (James 5:16). A similar thought is proclaimed in 1 John 1:7. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” Perhaps the call to transparency is not from a God who delights in the impoverishment of his subjects, but a God who knows our deepest needs.

The hope of an online confession brings us one step nearer to meeting the need — though frightening — to bring what is hidden to light. But I would argue there is another step that is necessary. Light is not meant to be kept in obscurity; the benefit of openness is not meant to be experienced alone. The scriptures mentioned above speak of the element of community in confession, the promise of fellowship where there is courage to be real. On websites of nameless visitors, though I tell you my darkest secret, we remain nameless to one another. While it may help to know I am not the only one with a mask, my mask remains. The anonymity factor offers the glimpse of light while maintaining the security of darkness, but it also veils the very light we seek. It is like lighting a lamp and putting it under a bowl.

Jesus reminds us there is no reason to do this. When a hemorrhaging woman in a vast crowd reached out to touch the fringe of his robe, she did so anonymously. Her condition would have classified her among the unclean, and it was therefore illegal to touch anyone. She probably calculated, “If I could just touch the hem of his robe, I could be healed. The crowd will keep me hidden. He won’t be bothered; he won’t need to know.” This, of course, was not what happened. Jesus knew he had been touched and immediately called her out of anonymity. Before him she was not lost in the crowd.

While we may successfully remain shrouded in disguise from the community around us, we stand unobscured before Christ. Before the one who knit us together in our mother’s womb, we are not disguised. In his presence, none are kept in obscurity, hidden in mask or shroud. There are no shadows of anonymity that can hide us, or crowd that can keep us hidden.

And there is no reason to hide. Before we came up with a plan to improve our image or learned to pretend we were someone else, he saw who we were and was determined to approach regardless. Before we found a way to conceal our many failings or weighed the possibility of unlocking our darkest secret, Christ died for us. While we were yet sinners, God came near.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #27011]