Secret, Secret, I've Got A Secret

I found this really, really interesting website.

It's called PostSecret, and it's a website for people who want to reveal a secret...anonymously. All you have to do is create a postcard with your secret on it, and send it to the person who runs the site (it's actually a blog), and he sifts through all of the postcards he receives, and posts the "best" ones.

It's a fascinating website. It's like an art exhibit of people releasing their guilt, shame, and even sometimes joy as they reveal their secret. Of course, it's only a baby step because they really aren't revealing it to anyone except the blogger, but it's still interesting.

So far, my favorite one is shown up above. I can't imagine having something haunt you for over 60 years, I really hope this person has felt some of their shame disappear as a result of doing this.

We all have secrets. Whether they be small or large, we have secrets. And we hide secrets from those who know us best and love us anyway - sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully. Which reminds me of a story about a drunk husband who snuck up the stairs quietly. He looked in the bathroom mirror and bandaged the bumps and bruises he’d received in a fight earlier that night. He then proceeded to climb into bed, smiling at the thought that he’d pulled one over on his wife. When morning came, he opened his eyes and there stood his wife. “You were drunk last night weren’t you!” “No, honey.” “Well, if you weren’t, then who put all the band-aids on the bathroom mirror?”

The church should be the place where we are the most authentic, honest and open about who we are - our successes, our failures, our struggles, our joys - yet the church is where we feel the least authentic. It's one of those catch-22's: we want everyone around us to accept us for who we are, yet if we reveal who we are, we are afraid that no one would accept us. So we put on our masks and our smiles and pretend that we have our lives put together perfectly. The sad thing is that we know that everyone is acting just like us, yet we still pretend that we're perfect.

I love that line from The Count Of Monte Cristo (a great movie, by the way), where Jim Caviezel is talking to Richard Harris about Harris' past, and Harris says "I'm a priest, not a saint." Henri Nouwen believes that people minister to others best out of their weaknesses rather than trying to convince everyone of their strengths. But again, how can that happen in the church today? Can we really change into a community of people who are authentic, honest and open with who they are as people?

I think the first step is realizing that we all fail at some point in our lives and all have struggled with temptations. When we realize this, we will cease the judgmental spirit that seems to be prevalent in Christians these days.

The musician Sufjan Stevens may be the only person to ever write an acoustic folk song about a serial killer, but write it he did. On his amazing new album "Illinois", there is a song entitled John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Stevens writes:

His neighbors they adored him for his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things rotting fast in their sleep of the dead

If you know the story of John Wayne Gacy, Jr., you know what he's talking about. Yecchh. But then, Stevens goes on:

But in my best behavior
I am really just like Him
Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid

If our focus is on Christ, and if we realize that he is the only one who has successfully avoided sin in the face of temptation, maybe we should cut our friends, neighbors, family members, and fellow church attenders some slack when it comes to struggling. If we did that, perhaps we would be able to be more open and honest with each other, and we wouldn't need websites like PostSecret to anonymously post our struggles, thoughts, and secrets.