Fighting, Taking Flight, and the Invitation to be Known

by Scott Sauls April 2, 2018

The French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once spoke of the discomfort of being seen. In his words, “Hell is to be looked at.” With our many flaws and secrets, we are unsettled when we find ourselves beneath the gaze of another. In the presence of others, eye contact is awkward and self-consciousness is consuming. We want be known and seen on the deepest level, yet we tremble in fear at the prospect of being seen and known.

Do you identify with Sartre? I do. Isn’t it true that we all have dark secrets that, if discovered, would make us want to disappear? When the worst things about us are exposed, we face a dilemma—Do we strike back, defend ourselves and shift blame, or do we live transparently and in humility before God and others? God’s grace and forgiveness through Jesus empowers us to face the worst in ourselves. It frees us to invite redemptive, character-forming scrutiny from God, others, and our own hearts, and it does so without crushing our spirits.

Jesus was crushed for us. We are no longer condemned! Since God is for us, no person and no thing can be against us! On the cross, the grubby, pestering tentacles of shame lost their grip on us once, for all, and forever. How are we to integrate this wonderful truth into our lives? The first thing we must do is recognize and own our native instinct to hide our secrets from—and to put our best foot forward with—God, others, and ourselves. This has been true since the beginning of time. Adam and Eve, our first parents, were the first to run and hide. The rest of us have been imitating them ever since.

The “Fight” Impulse

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God pursued them to confront them. “Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” God said. Adam replied, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” As absurd as it seems, Adam fights with God. He blames the woman, and also God who gave her to him, for the mess he had made of his own life. He covers himself by shifting blame to the woman.

How much like Adam we are! Isn’t it true that when our offenses are exposed, we look frantically for someone or something to blame? How often do we pin responsibility for our flaws and sins on a parent, a spouse, an employer, a church, or even God himself! When we are found out, the natural impulse of our hearts is to construct a desperate narrative that says the problem with the world is not inside of us, but outside of us. Like Adam, we convince ourselves that we are victims.

The “Flight” Impulse

We are also told that Adam and Eve, once called out for their transgression, ran and hid from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Similarly, if we are reluctant to fight, instead we take flight from exposure. We avoid people who are aware of our flaws. We erect force fields of denial around ourselves and make it clear that the people in our lives must never “go there” with this or that issue. Rather than repent, we tell ourselves that “it’s complicated.” We retreat from the friendship. We fire the therapist. We leave the church, or the job, or the marriage, and all the other places where someone decided to go there with our “don’t go there” character deficit. When we do this, we miss out on opportunities for reconciliation, healing and freedom.

Mercy that covers our shame—exposed but not rejected.

Seeing how defensive and aggressive and offended and offensive we are, God responds with mercy instead of scorn. Recognizing the fear and frailty that compels us to fight or take flight, he offers another way—a life-giving way—to face the sometimes unbearable human necessity of being known.

Jesus is this way.

Jesus—who loved us when we were unlovely, who died for us while we were still sinners, who prayed “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” and whose other-worldly love compelled him to be Hosea to Gomer, the faithful Husband to a whore so that the whore could become his Queen—this Jesus is the way out of fear and frailty and defensiveness and blame-shifting and covering up and running and hiding and fighting and taking flight.

Jesus is the Giver of a new, fertile environment—a new Eden if you will. But this particular Eden is everywhere that the Spirit of the LORD is—and the Spirit of the LORD is everywhere. And where the Spirit of the LORD is, there is freedom. Freedom to be seen and gazed upon down to the core. And loved. At the same time. Freedom to be known better even than we know ourselves. And not rejected. At the same time. Freedom to be simul justus et peccator…sinners embraced as saints, charlatans embraced as heroes.

With Jesus, we are free to own that we are worse than we ever dared think, and more loved than we ever dared hope. With Jesus, we can be “beneath the gaze” that so terrified Sartre and that has so often terrified us, and know that through Jesus, the scornful gaze of shame has given way to the smiling gaze of Abba. What does this mean?

Free from the Fear of Punishment

God’s punitive anger, because it was turned against Jesus on the cross, will never be turned against you. Before he breathed his last, Jesus cried out, “It is finished”—tetelesthai—an accounting term meaning “paid in full.” If your trust is anchored in Jesus, you never need to fear his frown. God has no anger left for you. Unburden yourself, because God has already unburdened you by absorbing your burden on the cross! The death you should have died, Jesus died instead so you wouldn’t have to. There is no condemnation in Christ (Romans 8:1-2). Because Jesus said, “Father, let shame fall on me so that shame would never fall on them,” you can rest easy. Because of the cross, your day of reckoning has been moved from the future to the past.

That’s right. Your judgment day has already happened.

Yes, it’s true. It really is.

What could be better?

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared at Scott's blog and is used with permission.