Secrecy vs Privacy
I hope by now you have received a letter from me in the mail, and I hope you took time to read it. In the next few days, you'll receive another letter from a fellow parishioner, and I hope you'll read that one, too. They'll tell you their story: the story of how God is at work in their lives, and how that relationship inspires them to be generous. I promise they're good stories.
In preparing to write these letters, the writers and Vestry and I had a number of conversations together, and each time a central theme kept bubbling up: the difference between privacy and secrecy. It's a subtle but important distinction, and one that we must carefully discern in order to grow in our faith and trust and love of God.
Privacy is the way we keep personal information, well, personal. Privacy leads us to discretion around our health and personal affairs and well-being. Privacy is what leads us to only tell a few close, trustworthy friends or family members about illnesses, or life changes, or other important news. Things are private when it is unnecessary, and perhaps even harmful, to share them openly with others.
New Englanders are renowned for a dedication to privacy. In many other parts of the country, I would be among the first to learn of an illness or surgery or death in the family. Here, I am often the last to know. People's desire for privacy prevents them from telling anyone else, even me. (If you are disappointed that I haven't called or come to check on you in the hospital, chances are good that I don't know you're there!)
Privacy can be a healthy, necessary component of living in a community, and it can be spiritually sustaining and nourishing. Jesus often went off in private to pray, and he shared private encounters with men and women whose lives were vulnerable or troubled. Privacy governs the way therapists and doctors and priests preserve confidentiality. So again, privacy can be a very good, important part of life.
But secrecy is not privacy, though we often confuse the two. Secrecy is about hiding, burying and concealment. We often keep secret that about which we feel ashamed. We don't want people to know this or that about us, because it would reveal flaws or inadequacy or brokenness or sin. And secrecy, as it relates to money, is spiritually poisonous.
Many of us work under the assumption that what we earn, what we spend, what we share and what we give is no one's business but our own. It is private. But the more I read the gospels, the more I am convinced that we've gotten this all wrong. Money, and how we relate to it, is not some noble private subject solely between us and God. It is a secret we keep from one another.
Read the stories of Jesus or the stories of the apostles in Acts, and you will see that the spiritual life is radically and profoundly transformed when we finally bring money out from under the cloak of secrecy. Money, after all, is intimately tied to almost every aspect of our lives: our work, our recreation, our homes, our families, our community. It's just as Jesus taught: the use and management of our money reveals the true desires and convictions of our hearts.
But under the cloak of secrecy, the money that demonstrates our spiritual health or sickness remains hidden. Sure, we believe that God sees it, but for over 1900 years Christians lived in the belief that transparency around money is fundamentally important. Within the Church, we shared the knowledge of wealth and generosity more openly, because it demonstrated trust in one another, and an acknowledgement that faithful living has no secrets. Only in the past century, as personal wealth has multiplied many times, have we started to hide what we earn and share and give away--to keep it secret--all in the name of "privacy."
At St. Peter's we honor the confidentiality of giving, and do not disclose what people give. But I pray for the day when we will take the cloak of secrecy and shame off of money and speak more openly about what we give to God and why. Not to brag or boast. But because we want to show everyone we encounter that our money reveals the truth of our hearts: that we live by and for and with God.
