I Don't Want You to Know Me

I don't want you to know me. Not the real me. In fact, I work really hard so that you won't know me, and indeed so that you can't know me.

If you knew me, you'd know my faults, fears, and failures. I mess things up, I have selfish tendencies, I'm not up to snuff in some basic character issues, I get angry, I don't always eat right, and I say stupid things. It's embarrassing. "Aha!" you say - "I already know plenty of your faults." Yes, you do. You know the faults that I don't keep totally secret. You don't know my worst, ugliest, most disappointing, shameful faults. I don't let you. They are part of me, and since I have successfully hidden them from you, I have successfully prevented you from knowing me.

If you knew these things about me, you probably wouldn't like me. The faults I let you know about may be annoying, but they usually don't prevent people from liking who they think I am. But the faults I hide - wow - if you knew them, then you wouldn't like me. Or at least not nearly as much. People with my secrets aren't really likable ... not really.

Instead, I tell you just enough to fool you. I actually want you to know my lesser faults, because then I can fool you that I'm being "transparent." I'll let you know about my molehill problem so that you won't bother to ask about my mountain problem. I give you a splinter to distract you from the plank. To be honest, you're pretty easy to fool.

In other words, what I present to you is a false me. It's a projection of a person, an image of someone who doesn't exist, a catalog of qualities good enough to make a phantom likable. Who you think I am isn't even a person. You can't have a real relationship with an unreal person, so you don't have a real relationship with me, no matter how often I tell you I appreciate our "relationship."

You see, I'd rather you knew a false me than the real me. I'd prefer that you like a false me than be disappointed with the real me. I don't want to be rejected, so I don't allow the real me to be accepted. I can coast along pretty well if you like the person I project to you, and then I can pretend that you really like me. But you don't ... because you don't even know me.

I do this because I falsely get my identity and acceptance from you. I know intellectually that my identity is in Christ and my acceptance from God by grace through Christ. I know all that. And yet I still vainly try to get my sense of self from you. If I truly did get my identity from being in Christ, and if I truly did accept my own acceptance by grace from the perfectly gracious God, then I would let you know the real me ... the accepted me who knows who he is. But I don't. Instead, I put on you responsibilities that belong only to God.

I don't want you to know me because you're my idol. I don't idolize you in the worship-y way, but I look to you for something only God can give. Thereby, I foolishly make you my idol.

I'm sorry for putting you in such an awkward position. It's unfair to expect you to provide what only God can. Plus, it never works. I can't be known by idols.

Read this again to see if you find yourself in this composite (but not totally fictional) character.

Mini-megalomaniac-based Acceptance

Many of us have heard of the phrase "performance-based acceptance." Set in contrast to "unconditional acceptance," performance-based acceptance is the requirement that someone perform to a certain standard before you are willing to accept him or her. For example, a dad who doesn't truly accept his daughter unless she gets all A's on her report card, or a woman who doesn't accept a another as a friend unless she wears a certain grade of clothing. Certainly, there are more subtle (and more destructive) forms than these rather simplistic examples - such as a husband who won't love a woman unless she compares well to some impossible, airbrushed image.

Most of us know what it's like to be a victim of this. Sometimes, we're guilty of it. But there is a form of performance-based acceptance that I find even more poisonous. To coin a phrase, I'm calling it "mini-megalomaniac-based acceptance." A megalomaniac is a severe psychological disorder where someone has delusions of divinity in various forms. What I mean about "mini-megalomaniac-based acceptance" is a refusal by Person A to accept Person B unless Person B thinks like Person A does. More than just expecting the person to meet a standard of behavior or performance, it is more narrow, and more like a megalomaniac. My way of thinking is divinely right, and all who think differently are less acceptable.

We see it in our toxic political environment. Some people cannot be friends with others who think differently about politics. Some can't even have a civil discussion. It's a severe form of performance-based acceptance: you must think like the mini-megalomaniac Me before I will accept you.

We see it in marriages. A wife thinks about life in a different way than the husband, and he can't see how she could possibly think that way. He begins to accept her less and less, until he just doesn't accept her. All because she dared think unlike how he thinks. He can't see how another way of thinking is valid (or acceptable), and his opinion of her diminishes (less accepting). He creates an impossible standard, because we are wired to think in certain ways, and that rarely ever changes for anyone.

Imagine if God required us to think like He does before He's willing to accept us. Given that we can't think like He does, we immediately see the impossibility. And yet, we can apply the same impossible standard to others.

Grace is the reality that while we were still rebellious sinners against God, Christ died for us out of God's love for us (Rom 5:8). He accepts us - not in the since that He just waved His hand and we can all enter into heaven, but that He does not require us to perform or to think like He does before He's willing to love us completely and offer us salvation. Not even God in His true divinity displays any hint of megalomaniac-based acceptance.

Others think differently than you do. Does that disqualify them from your love? It doesn't disqualify us from His love. That is grace.