The Practice of Secrecy
He that seeketh no outward witness for himself, it appeareth openly that he hath committed himself all wholly to God.
– Thomas à Kempis
When I first met my now-husband, he said to me, “I’m the kind of guy you’ll be more impressed with the more you get to know me.” I was fascinated—not only by the oddly paradoxical hubris of that statement—but by the idea that he would do anything but put it all out there to impress someone he was trying to convince to date him. But from the start, that was his way: showing up to our first meeting in a functional visor and thrifted T-shirt, gamely continuing casual “just friends” phone calls when I said I needed more time. And slowly but surely, I discovered the truth of his statement.
I was living at the other end of the spectrum, in a place where people dropped the “H-bomb” (“oh, I go to Harvard”—rather than the less-flashy but ubiquitously-understood “I go to school in Boston”). I was a master image curator, so skilled in succeeding at the outward things that gilded one’s reputation in the academic world that it was difficult to tell where the reputation ended and the real me began, like the chicken-and-egg question. Was it my inherent brilliance that led to these accomplishments? Or was it the accomplishments that had come to define my worth, when inherently all I was really good at was playing the game? Or both?
I eventually stepped off the beaten path, but the fact is, there is always a part of me that thrives under external motivation, that comes most alive when other people notice whatever I am doing. And that’s not necessarily bad, but there is a very keen double-edge to it all.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 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” (Matthew 6:2-4). This is interesting—he is saying, yes, when you do things for the sake of being seen, you can come to rely too much on the praise of others. But there is something even deeper going on. You are beginning to praise yourself to yourself. Your right hand gives, and your left hand congratulates it. Perhaps you begin to believe you are who you appear to others to be. So Jesus says—don’t even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Remove even that layer of performance.
Rather, he says, “when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). The word for “room” there means “inner store-chamber,” like a closet, a place where external observation is completely removed, a place where we are alone with God. Jesus is saying, go into this place, and ask yourself: do I have a life here? What does my faith look like in the spaces where no one else sees?
That is what matters. That is what will be rewarded. Whenever my desire for others’ accolade supersedes my desire for the accolade of God—whenever my concern for how others perceive me supersedes my concern for how God perceives me—that is when my penchant for performance becomes disordered.
One way we can check a disordered need for visibility is to practice the discipline of secrecy. Dallas Willard defines this as “consciously refraining from having our good deeds and qualities generally known, which, in turn, rightly disciples our longing for recognition.” We strive to keep or even make our accomplishments hidden. We deny ourselves admiration or attention from others. We may do this in several ways:
purposely resisting the urge to tell others our accomplishments
asking God to show us areas where we tend to need acknowledgement or accolade
finding ways to serve that don’t require letting others know what we have done or why we have done it
taking a break from social media
highlighting the accomplishments of others rather than bringing up our own
We don’t do this as a way of humble-bragging, of demeaning or devaluing ourselves—we do this as a way of acknowledging the truth that God sees what we do and that alone is enough. We tame the need for fame, justification, or the attention of others. We may learn to accept misunderstanding without the loss of peace or purpose. We let God decide when our deeds will be noticed rather than determine that ourselves, trusting that if our light is true, it will like a city set on a hill not be hidden (Matthew 5:14). We are led into the joy of honoring others, learning to genuinely enjoy their successes.
Thomas à Kempis writes:
Thou are not the holier though thou be praised nor the more vile though thou be blamed or dispraised. What thou art, that thou art; that God knoweth thee to be and thou canst be said to be no greater. … For a man not to wish to be comforted by any creature is a token of great purity and inward trust. He that seeketh no outward witness for himself, it appeareth openly that he hath committed himself all wholly to God.
I am not holier though I am praised, nor more vile though I am dispraised. What I am, I am: and that God knows. God sees what I do, and that alone is enough. In the practice of secrecy, we allow those truths to fill the inner void.
