So why do we hide?
It’s not like we don’t know the importance of relationships. As leaders, we implore people to share their lives with others and remind them about how vital it is for them to know and be known, to love and be loved.
We even ground these things in theological truths. We tell them that God has created us for relationships. That God is a community of persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and that he has no experience or identity apart from community.
So why are these reasons insufficient?
Why do they do so little to draw us out of our hiding?
By hiding, I am referring to our refusal to let others know about our suffering for sins committed by us or against us, or the pain that we keep hidden from their eyes. You may have reasons not mentioned here. In fact, I am sure you do. But I have discovered two things that coalesce to keep leaders hidden.
BUT FIRST, A CLOSER LOOK AT THE COURAGE CONVERSATIONS REQUIRE.
I was 14 years old when I first watched porn. This was in the days when it was mostly accessible through VHS. I had no idea that the pixelated images that seared my memory would also puncture my heart, and that its poison would linger even after Jesus decisively saved my soul.1
And yes, even after I started preaching.
My first invitation to preach came from an Indian Pentecostal church in Philadelphia in September of 2002. I wasn’t invited because I was good. I know this because I had never preached anywhere outside of my local Indian church in Oklahoma City, and nothing (thankfully) was ever recorded to be able to reach anyone outside of those walls.
But I had a lot of zeal. In those days, due to a scarcity of young Indian leaders, they rewarded passion for Jesus over precision with his word. And so, as I continued to get invitations to preach, an itinerant ministry was born.
But over time I developed a habit. And not simply a habit of preaching on the weekends and watching porn when I returned home. I developed a habit of hiding — of not letting anyone know about the hidden sin and shame that coiled itself around my heart.
Recently, a friend commented on the courage required to bring the darkness we live with into the light. She is absolutely right. Telling someone about my worst failures required courage. It meant facing my fear of losing the ministry that I had developed. It forced me to face the possibility that the people who had heard me preach would not only question me but the Christ that I had proclaimed. In an honor shame culture, it meant that I would possibly lose the community that named me. All of this was terrifying. It made me want to normalize the dissonance between who I was publicly and who I was privately.
When you constantly lose the fight everywhere else in life, accomplishing things in ministry can provide the false sensation that you are finally winning at something. And that feeling can be addictive as well. It can be the counter evidence that argues that maybe we are not who we are in the dark. Maybe our success proves that God isn’t so bothered by our sin and condones our secrecy.
Indeed, it is an act of mercy when the almighty God works through our brokenness and gives us some success. But it is an even greater act of mercy when he allows us to find no satisfaction in that success, when our discontent creates a longing in us for truer things, and when he gives us a heart to love the light more than we love the darkness.
I can’t tell you when it happened exactly, but sometime around 2007, God granted me this mercy. The Holy Spirit working through the Gospel, community, repentance — again and again — allowed me to finally experience freedom.
And it all started with a conversation.
There may be several reasons why you would rather hide than have a conversation. And I can think of two.
WE LACK RELATIONSHIPS THAT CARRY AUTHORITY
We assume the reason we hide is because we don’t have anyone that we can trust with our pain. But that may be overstating it. Not everyone we know would seize the opportunity to betray us. We know people who are trustworthy. They just may lack authority.
In his book, Strong and Weak, Andy Crouch observes that everyone was created to be both strong and weak. We flourish when we experience great authority (strength) and great vulnerability (weakness) simultaneously. Experiencing only one of these can lead to danger. People who experience great authority without any vulnerability often exploit others. People who experience vulnerability without any authority are often exploited.
As leaders, we are called to empower people in a specific area of our knowledge, specialization, and gifts. We may lead them precisely because they are growing in the authority we currently possess. So we pastor and parent. We manage and mentor. We counsel and coach. And we do it for people who currently lack the authority that we have.
But as Crouch notes, most of the people we lead see our authority but rarely our true vulnerability. And this is necessary. He writes,
“The drama of leadership is hidden vulnerability…to bear the risks that only you can see, while continuing to exercise authority that everyone can see…As risky as it is, hidden vulnerability is often necessary…
There are two kinds of vulnerability that must remain hidden if we are to lead others toward Flourishing. First, the leader’s own personal exposure to risk must often remain unspoken, unseen and indeed unimagined by others. And second, the leader must bear the shared vulnerabilities that the community does not currently have the authority to address. Revealing either of these kinds of vulnerability will at best distract, and at worst, paralyze the community we are responsible for, robbing them of the opportunity for real flourishing.
Because the community does not have the authority—the capacity for meaningful action—to deal with these vulnerabilities, asking the community to bear them will only plunge the community more deeply into Suffering…To disclose those vulnerabilities to the whole team is only to add to their vulnerability without adding anything to their authority.”
Everyone who leads in some capacity understands this. The people we lead see our authority but can’t see the vulnerability we experience in the decisions we make or the pressures we face on a daily basis. Whenever we actually share our vulnerability, we do so with the purpose of empowering others. We share a story about a personal challenge at work, in marriage, or in singleness so that others would know they are not alone, or that we too are human. In other words, even our vulnerability aims to help others experience authority.
But there are limits to this.
There is a reason why parents who lose their jobs would not bare their souls and weep inconsolably to their children. They know that it would only increase the vulnerability that the children already feel, and therefore, their expressions of grief would be measured. However, they may express their anguish to friends who not only weep with them, but have the authority to encourage them.
And so we return again to one of the reasons we hide. It’s not that the people in our lives are not trustworthy. It’s that we don’t believe they have the authority to lift us up. So we don’t talk to the other elders because, despite their titles, we think they lack the authority to help us with our vulnerability. We don’t confess our sexual temptations to our spouses because we think it would perpetuate their pain. We don’t talk to our friends because, “They would never understand.” Or, “There is nothing they will say that we don’t already know.” All of these statements reveal an assumption about their authority to help.
And honestly?
It may be true.
The people we know may genuinely lack the authority to help us with our suffering and shame. But this doesn’t mean that we therefore resign ourselves to secrecy. It means that we must seek people who are not only trustworthy, but also have the authority to help.
A mentor. A counselor. A pastor. A friend.
Is there anyone in your life like that? Anyone who has the authority to lift you up?
We can ask God to provide such people. Or, we can ask him help us see the people he has already provided, people who have the authority but only lack our permission.
WE LACK RELATIONSHIPS THAT CONFIRM OUR IDENTITY
Several years ago, I didn’t know why I was depressed. At first, I dismissed my grief as the typical Sunday evening blues that pastors experience. Or, as Brene Brown calls it, the vulnerability hangover. The antidote to this sadness would normally be rest, refreshment, and maybe some encouragement. But none of those things could lift the cloud of sorrow over me.
I tried to locate my sadness and concluded it was simply a desire for the approval of others. So I said things that I knew to be true. But in such moments, even reciting true things can provide little relief.
“My identity is not in my success or failures.”
“Being a ministry leader describes me but does not define me.”
“My truest identity is that I am a child of God, eternally secure his love.”
“My identity is in Christ.”
All of these things are gloriously true. In fact, there is nothing more refreshing for the wounded soul than for it to be reclaimed by these truths.
We live in an age when people feel pressured to express their individuality. Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok all serve as platforms for our highlight reels and places to let the world see our authentic, but still carefully crafted, selves. But ironically, this desire to express our individuality still finds its fulfillment in the “likes” of others.
It is no wonder that amidst such pressure, the message about our identity in Christ, not because of our performance but because of what he has done, would resonate so much in our cultural moment. It relieves the pressure. But even this truth about our individual identity in Christ requires relationships in order to fully realize its power.
This is because of how identity is formed and experienced.
In his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Carl R. Trueman reminds us that our identities are always shaped by others. He writes:
“…who we think we are is intimately connected to those to whom we relate—family, friends, coworkers. When asked who I am, for example, I do not respond by pointing…to my DNA code or to such generalities as my gender. I would typically define myself in relation to other people and other things—the child of John, the husband of Catriona, a professor at Grove City College, the author of a particular book. Circumstances would influence the specific content, but the reply would likely touch on my relationship with others.
To remove them from the picture is in a sense to remove ourselves, at least ourselves as we know ourselves. Again, if I ask what it would be like to be me if I had been born not in Dudley, England, to English parents but rather in Delhi to an Indian mother and father, the question is really impossible to answer for a very simple reason: I would then have been not me but someone completely different.”
Trueman is saying that our identities are not created in a vacuum but are always formed by relationships. We are who we are because of others. And so whenever we find our identity in Christ amidst the pressure to perform in other relationships, it is another way of saying that this relationship — our relationship to him — forms our truest identity.
So why couldn't it lift me from my despair?
It’s because it’s not enough for us to acknowledge this on our own. We need others to recognize this about us too. Trueman continues,
“To have an identity means that I am being acknowledged by others. To wander through a town and to be ignored by everyone I encounter would understandably lead me to question whether they considered me to be a nonperson or at least a person unworthy of acknowledgment. If I am treated by everyone I encounter as if I am worthless, I will probably end up feeling that I am worthless.”
This captures why I couldn’t simply rest in reciting truths about my spiritual identity. Even if my identity is in Christ, and not in my success and failure, I still needed others to recognize this and relate to me as such.
And this, as noted earlier, requires relationships where we aren’t the ones with all the authority, but others have authority to speak into our lives and confirm what God says is true about us, about Christ, about our identity in him, and our place among his church.
I continued to dismiss my grief as a need for people’s approval until one day, when I could barely lift my head, I received a text from someone in our church who gave me what I thought I needed at the time. He thanked me for the sermon and shared how God had touched his life through it. But it did nothing for me. In fact, I sunk deeper into my chair and wept bitterly as I read it.
A few hours later, my cousin and childhood best friend called me. We talked about sports. We talked about marriage. About parenting. About ministry. Our fears. Our regrets. Our hopes. And all of a sudden, the cloud had lifted and the sadness was gone.
That’s when I realized that the antidote to my sadness on that particular day wasn’t simply more encouragement.
I needed a friend who could see through the fog and confirm my identity in Christ amidst all the ways that I try to define myself.
You see, encouragement certainly feels better than criticism, but it will do nothing to soothe the soul of a person who only feels loved for what he does. For even if he receives praise, he is still left wondering whether he is loved for his performance or for who he is. If people love what they see, or if they love him.
But talking to someone who knew me before I was a pastor, who would love me if I quit tomorrow, and would do so while hearing the worst about me reinforced for me, without explicitly telling me, that I am not merely a pastor. I am Jason, son of James and Susan, born in India, raised in Oklahoma City, and rescued by Jesus from of a life of sin and brokenness.
I didn’t have to suffer alone anymore.
Not with these relationships.
And neither do you.
Martin Luther, the reformer, taught that, prior to salvation, we are not able to not sin. After salvation, though we are able to not sin, we still do. And one day, when Christ returns, we will no longer be able to sin. When I write that the poison lingered even after Jesus saved my soul, I mean that though I was free from sin’s power, and therefore able to not sin, I was not free from its presence. I was like a man who, being imprisoned his whole life, had to learn what it means to live with newfound freedom. Sin no longer had power over me as master but still tempted me as a mistress.
“When you constantly lose the fight everywhere else in life, accomplishing things in ministry can provide the false sensation that you are finally winning at something. And that feeling can be addictive as well. It can be the counter evidence that argues that maybe we are not who we are in the dark. Maybe our success proves that God isn’t so bothered by our sin and condones our secrecy.
Indeed, it is an act of mercy when the almighty God works through our brokenness and gives us some success. But it is an even greater act of mercy when he allows us to find no satisfaction in that success, when our discontent creates a longing in us for truer things, and when he gives us a heart to love the light more than we love the darkness.”
This really stood out to me!
So timely for me. So glad I read this posting. Thank you brother!