Keeping a secret
‘Can I trust you to keep a secret?’
‘I want to share something with you, but it’s a secret, can I trust you to keep it a secret?’
When asked to keep a secret I wonder how it makes you feel.
Is it something that makes you feel good about yourself or special because you are being trusted? Does it boost your confidence because you have been asked to participate in a secret action? Being allowed to share a hidden comment that you have been entrusted with shows that you are a person who can keep a secret.
Some folks such as counsellors and priests are professional secret holders, they hear many things and professionally are expected to hold onto what they hear.
There are of course good secrets and bad ones. Good secrets can be such as buying presents for folks, be it in the build up to Christmas or birthdays to come. It can be particularly hard to keep a secret from a very inquisitive family member or someone close to you. Keeping news of a pregnancy, ‘don’t say anything until we are sure…’ Good secrets can help build our character, and strengthen and affirm our relationships. Good secrets can also make us feel important, the fact that someone wishes to share a confidence with you means that you are trusted.
Negative secrets; history is littered with them. Take Auschwitz-Birkenau, the horrors of the secret that was behind its walls were only revealed after many years.
Negative secrets can create personal stress, straining the fibre of the individuals being. Keeping a negative secret, let’s say a deceit that by implication is soul destroying, creates a burden that alters and redefines who we are. It is character changing. On life’s journey we may have been asked to keep a secret, occasionally we may be the person that shares a secret. But there are also times when some secrets cannot be shared. A step out of line, an action that has crippled and destroyed a life and is unable to be shared. It can cast a long shadow.
In Marks Gospel Chapter 9 v 7-9 three disciples are asked to keep a secret. Potentially this could have caused a problem with the other 9 disciples, there is nothing like a secret withheld to create tension! We are told that they kept the secret to themselves. There was a caveat in being allowed to share this secret and it centred on the leader of the group (Jesus) who felt that he could invest in and trust these three disciples to keep a secret.
The secret was this: ‘In a quiet and remote location Jesus was lit by a brilliant light and God revealed to the disciples His relationship to Jesus. Remarkably two ancient warriors for God also appeared. God said,
‘This is my son, whom I love. Listen to him’.
Mark 9:7-9 (NIV)
This is the secret they had to keep. This is the trust being placed in the relationship.
They had to keep the secret until Jesus was killed and buried but, very importantly, they also had to keep it until he rose from the dead; and then they could share the secret.
There are good secrets and bad secrets.
The good will always be good.
The bad can cripple us and redefine us.
Thankfully the disciples no longer have to keep the secret, it reaches out and blesses us even today.
But why was this recorded? That we might know the Son of Man who came to forgive us for those acts that handcuff us, those acts that destroy us and so we can understand that Jesus paid a price to liberate and free us from all sin, even those sins which we like to keep secret.
Jesus never ever, told us to keep secret our relationship to him; nor did he say, keep the gospel message secret. He gave us a message of liberty and hope which is the free gift we can share with everyone.
Image Credit: krakenimages
