To Know and To Be Known

Driving to work this morning I stopped at the convenience store for my Baptist mixed drink (1/3 diet Dr. Pepper and 2/3 diet Coke). I noticed a guy pretty much like most guys. Heading to work, getting a cup of coffee and maybe a pack of cigarettes, expressionless face. He just looked like the silent type. No time for nonsense. No desire for chit chat. I could see him on a deer stand or tossing back a brewski in a bass boat. A man of few words.

And that's when it started. My mind started running through all sorts of ideas. Why did he choose to be so silent? What caused him to pull away from communicating?

Then I thought about a friend who is a marriage & family counselor. When my soon-to-be ex-wife Unit #2 and I were seeing our fourth marriage counselor (yeah... four, she found issues with all but the last one), I asked my counselor friend for help. This new therapist and I didn't know each other beyond 50 minutes every other week and I wanted to get real help. I didn't want to waste any time. So... was there anything my lifelong friend could share to enlighten my therapist? Well, nothing but one very telling statement. “Todd, you're a communicator and you married two women who don't wan to communicate.” I know, not normal for guys to be communicators. Hey, I was born that way. But, I also have worked hard to truly communicate and not just run off at the mouth like some.

Remembering that opened the floodgates. My mind was off to the races.

So many folks fall into one of two camps: non-verbal or hyper-verbal. Either they don't talk much at all or they talk all the time. And in a lot of cases, neither is really communicating. For the non-talkers, I see a lot of them trapped inside. They tried talking in the past. They tried opening up and sharing themselves. But somewhere along the way, they got hurt. Bad. To venture out of their emotional turtle shell is too painful to consider. You can try to get them to talk but for some, it's been so long that I wonder if they remember how. It's like that part of their brain atrophied over time. While I understand that not all people are as verbal as me, I don't believe God wire us to never relate at all. That looks like damage from the journey.

On the other hand, I see a lot of folks who go overboard on talking. The constant chatter keeps the focus bouncing on everything except the stuff that matters. These are the types who talk incessantly about this and that and the other thing... always avoiding their true hearts. Sure, they may talk about themselves a lot. Many are pretty self-centered. But, do they ever really talk about the stuff that matters?

People hide behind masks. We want to protect our 'real selves' from being hurt so we put out a mask, a 'modified self'. But what is really going on? What is it we really want? What are we trying to avoid? I think it can be summed up with our desire to know and to be known. I think this is at the core of every soul born.

OK, remember this was all part of my train of thought while driving to the shop, a 40 minute drive.

When a conversation appears to be heading toward touchy territory, you may hear someone say “don't go there!” Whatever it is, it's off limits to discussion. A tragedy, a reminder of a painful past, a secret... something is hidden and we think should remain that way. But, to me, hiding anything sounds like bondage. Freedom means having nothing to hide. But, easier said than done.

What type stuff am I talking about? I think it all comes down to being accepted- to being known. We feel insecure about something...so we hide it. We feel shame about something... so we hide it. We have been hurt by something in our past and don't want to go through that again... so we hide from it. The bottom line is... there's something about us we don't want known for fear we will be rejected.

Deep down, I truly feel we long to be known... and still accepted. I frequently joke that my former girlfriend, a Franciscan nun, knows me better than either ex-wife... and she still loves me! And that means all the world to me! I revealed myself to two women and was rejected both times. But not with 'the nun'. I revealed my true self to her and she accepted me. Easier said than done.

We long to know and be known but that's impossible if we aren't dealing with truth. If I put on a mask to hide my imperfections, you aren't knowing the real me. You're knowing a layer of something added on top. You can't build on that. It's like in building a house. You have to scrape down to something solid before you can build a foundation. Otherwise, everything you build may come crumbling down in time, built on other stuff. What I see are a lot of people building relationships on masks. And knowing that what we see isn't real, deep down we know that we can't put our full weight on that relationship. It won't hold up. When we try to trust and get hurt in the process, we quickly learn to not count on relationships.

What will hold up? What in life is solid enough to build a life on it?

In John 14:6, Jesus said “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” To know and to be known, it is important to be dealing with the truth. He is the Truth. Simple as that. When we boil it down to just Him and me... God the Creator and His created... we as humans have our first taste of knowing and being known.

When I think about my relationship with the Lord these days, it's all about getting to know Him. As I know Him, I learn to trust. It's about building a relationship more than just learning facts and scriptures. And I don't have to understand everything... I trust Him.

Now, follow me here... this is where it gets exciting to me.

Knowing God means I'm also known by Him. That means bringing it all out into the open with Him. I know we all understand God sees all and knows all, but emotionally we still try to hide a lot from Him. But, how liberating it is when we finally realize at a core level that He truly loves us through and through. Even the stuff we'd rather hide from Him! Now, we have the foundation for a relationship. We are already known by Him and we are getting to know Him as well. In the process, I feel we also get to know ourselves better.

Based on the freedom of this relationship, not having to hide anything anymore, we can grow in relationships with others. This is where I feel God wants to do a special work within Christians. If we are all enjoying open and free relationships with our Father, that sets the stage for some pretty open and free relationships with fellow believers. Well, at least on paper.

I've seen it in practice from time to time. I think about the folks who used to gather at The Barn in Mer Rouge. Here we saw a group of believers come together to know Him and know each other. Through the years they became family. It wasn't a church, but it sure functioned like one. It started as a Bible study at my cousin Molly's house. The crowd outgrew the living room so they took over a barn out at the farm, thus the name “The Barn”. Actually, old timers probably still remember it as “The Glory Barn”.

When I think of my times at The Barn, I first think of the worship. There was always great teaching but there was first a whole lotta praise and worship. The focus was on Him... celebrating how wonderful our God is! Building on this foundation of worship and solid Bible teaching, relationships were built that in many cases were closer than family. After a while, the folks of The Barn formed Christian Life Fellowship, an official ministry. That grew to include a Christian summer camp for kids.

Most folks refer to the folks out at The Barn as “The Fellowship”. And that's really what it was. But not in the sense of what I see at most churches. Fellowship usually means food spread out on a table and folks eating too much while smiling and always making sure their emotional masks don't slide down and inadvertently reveal too much. Not so with The Fellowship. These folks were truly involved in each others' lives. They shared a common heartbeat.

This can be illustrated in running the summer camp. As the older generation literally started dying off, new folks came in and started taking on responsibility. One of the biggest challenges was that little stuff was written down. The people involved initially were so connected on a heart level that they didn't have policy manuals or procedures written down. They just knew what the others would want to be done... and they did it. They communicated on a regular basis and worked through the inevitable issues. But most of all... they knew and were known. And based on this knowing “in Christ”, they trusted each other.

Nowadays, new blood has come in and while that's a good thing, they don't have the history of the old gang. Policies and procedures rightfully need to be written down. It's a new chapter. But, the old one sure was a great example of relationships as the body of Christ.

Watching folks in the Fellowship, I saw people feeling safe to be known. As relationships grew, masks weren't just taken off but thrown away entirely. As fellow believers, I saw them love and accept each other within a context of grace. I saw true authenticity displayed in the friendships and close relationships of the folks involved in the Fellowship. They truly knew each other.

While true fellowship is great, it is only as good as the individual relationships of the folks involved with their Lord. I confess, I was a slow learner on this one. I always enjoyed a passionate relationship with Jesus as a single guy. In that relationship, I found my identity. I found acceptance and grace. But, it didn't take long after getting married to try that same stuff from my spouse in lieu of my relationship with Him. Not just “not good”. Disastrous.

By not going to Him first, I wasn't getting my essential needs met... core stuff that can only come from a relationship with Him. And, by going to a fallible person instead of Him for my identity, I clearly set myself up for a fall. They couldn't deliver the goods, no matter how hard they tried.

Hopefully, I've learned that the most essential relationship in life is the one on one time I have with my Lord... with my heavenly Father. Based on that, I'm not only equipped to serve others but I'm not looking for something out of them they can't provide. Now we're just free to be... real. Being known by Him first, and knowing Him as a result, we can now enjoy knowing and being known by others. We can relax and be real. Friendships are now within the context of Jesus Christ making a way for each of us to cry out to our heavenly Father “Abba... Papa!”

Knowing and being known by Him also takes the pressure off of our other relationships. Secure in our identity in Him, we can now feel more free to just enjoy other folks and to also be used to touch them on His behalf. We aren't the solution. We are only part of His provision in the situation.

This seed of thought has spun off into some other side shoots which I'll write about more. But for now, enjoy thinking about how God knows you better than you know yourself. And He loves you just as you are. And as a result of Jesus taking our place on the Cross, we can now know God as well. What a deal!