On Being Known

“Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can share its joy.” Proverbs 14:10

“. . . then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

While visiting with friends this past week, our four year old offered to pray for the meal. As is the case with all small children, his prayer was uniquely precious. It touched upon the cross, sin, resurrection, thankfulness for the meal, and ended with his own particular idiom of “thanks for everything you got.” When he finished, we broke out in pleased laughter. It appeared to me however, that Jake didn’t quite understand our laughter. I praised him briefly while at the table, but on the way home I thought it might be good to affirm him once again. I’m glad I did. When I mentioned his prayer, he said quietly, “I was sad after I prayed because everyone was laughing.” Ouch. Jill and I explained that we were laughing because we were so happy about what a good job he did—similar to how he laughs when he is excited about the thought of doing something fun. This logic seemed to dispel the dark clouds and all was well. Apostasy averted.

It struck me however, how lonely that must have felt for him. As an adult, I have a rich context of relationships in which I can share my thoughts and feelings. But Jake’s world is so small, and his network of relationships does not extend much beyond Jill and I. We are the ones he confides in, the ones he tells his secrets to, and the ones he shares his hurt with. At a mere four years old, his self identity is still strongly tied to his family identity. Our world is his world. But in that moment at the table I saw him withdraw into himself, confused and hurt by what was happening and uncertain of how to process it. What’s more, Jill and I were viewed as culprits. We were the only world he knew, yet it no longer seemed prudent to merge his world with our own. He carried the burden alone and did not share his hurt with us. And while the issue at hand was easily corrected, I realized afresh how lonely life can be inside one’s own mind.

Each of us longs to be known—to have someone outside of us know us in the deepest way and embrace us as we are. And well we should. We were made by God to be creatures of community, to know and to be known, to love and to be loved. But the ravages of sin have not been without effect. There are things that we each experience, both joys and pains, that no one—not even our spouses or our closest friends—can fully understand. The deepest part of who we are is trapped inside, the limitations of human frailty and fear making it ours alone. And though we seek to fill the consequent emptiness with fragile human relationships (sometimes illicitly), or to dull the loneliness through materialism or pleasure (always vainly), there is no finite reality that is capable of plumbing the depths of our souls or assuaging the sense of disconnection that we feel. No one shares our world in the fullest sense. No one can. If we allow ourselves to embrace it, the reality of the fallen human condition is one of disconnected aloneness.

Yet the reality of the fallen human condition is not the reality of the risen Christian condition. Jesus promised us before He left that He would not leave us alone. And indeed He has not. He has come to us through His Spirit. In Christ, God draws near to us and fills our lives with His infinite presence. Every hope, every thought, every fear, every joy, every sin, every triumph, every last twist and turn of our soul is intimately known. Truly He knows us more intimately than we know ourselves. And even while we wait—with a certain appropriate loneliness—for Christ to come again, He waits with us. He is present with us even in the spiritual loneliness created by his absence.

I am profoundly grateful for the presence of God in my life. He is for me a constant presence—a never ceasing companion and a self-identifying reality. I draw my identity from who He is and what He thinks of me. My world is His world. Voltaire once remarked, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” How true. Humans cannot live as they were meant to live while remaining trapped within the caverns of their own minds, each carrying alone the weight of their own souls. We need to be known in our deepest secrets, our darkest fears and our most desperate hopes. In Christ we are known.

Do not withdraw into a solitary world of your own making. Share your lives with others as you are able. But when others cannot enter into your world, do not carry your burdens alone. God is ever-present.

Thoughts on 1 Peter 3:7 and the "Weaker" Vessel

“Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered.” 1 Peter 3:7

In my estimation, marginalization and oppression can ultimately be traced to a combination of sin and raw physical power. White Europeans oppressed Native Americans both because they wanted to, and because they could (they had greater physical superiority through weaponry and numbers). We in the United States enslaved Africans for the same reason. It is latent within the fallen psyche for the greater to oppress the weaker. Simply put, to the strong goes the spoils.

In my mind, this same dialect between physical power and oppression applies to the relationship between the sexes. In 1 Peter 3:7, Peter refers to the woman as the “weaker” vessel. It seems evident that the weakness Peter has in mind is physical (as opposed to moral, intellectual, or spiritual weakness). It is because of this weakness that women so often suffer under the hands of men. And I am not referring simply to physical suffering. Historically speaking, virtually every culture has marginalized women. At a root level, it is because men are physically stronger than women that women are marginalized. If women possessed the same physical power as men, oppression and marginalization would be not take place. Of course, the relationship between physical power and oppression is masked in our civilized, Christian/post-Christian, law-abiding culture. But the privileged status of women within our culture is only there because of the thin veneer of civilization that masks and restrains the Beelzebub that lies beneath the male psyche. It is in fact, only in a civilized culture that protects the equality of women with the use of force that we can even have a discussion about the equality of men and women. So what are we to make of the inherent physical inequality that exists between men and women? Should we be for it or against it?

Lest we suppose that the greater physical strength of the man is a product of the fall, it seems evident that the vulnerability of the woman is part of God’s original design. Too often the complementarian/egalitarian debate gets lost in a discussion about what should be, rather than embracing what is. Peter is not saying that women should be vulnerable before men; he is saying that they are. There is nothing that we can do to change this reality. I often get the sense when interacting with egalitarians that they resent the vulnerability of the woman before the man. For many egalitarians, equality of power is the ultimate goal. As long as the woman is vulnerable before the man, the egalitarian goal has not been realized. Complete independence from the dominance of men is what this form of egalitarianism seeks. But God does not desire the woman to be independent from the man (or man from the woman). He detests the abuse of power to be sure, but the imbalance of physical power is by his design. I fear that many egalitarians are balking at an inevitable God-ordained inequality, when what they should be fighting against is the abuse of this inequality.

In light of such chronic abuse, one appropriately wonders why God created women with an inherent physical weakness that so easily translates into marginalization. Why make one sex vulnerable before the other? I think that there is no way of satisfactorily answering this question—or the questions regarding “gender roles”—without considering the typological relationship that exists between human gender and the divine anti-type. God created the woman to be vulnerable and dependent upon the man as a reflection of the Church’s vulnerability and dependence upon Christ. It should not be our goal to help women be less vulnerable before men—which is physically impossible anyway—but rather to work toward the realization of the image of Christ’s self-sacrificial relationship to the Church.

Women by their very nature will always be vulnerable before men. The call of Christ is not to pursue an ill-fated attempt to abolish this vulnerability, but rather to protect and honor women in the midst of it . The man is to use his God-given strength for the exaltation and honoring of the woman. This is the way of Christ, who used his greater power for the exaltation and honoring of his beloved.