As a person with intellectual disabilities, I experience significant differences from most people in the ways that I process information. One of the most important of those processing differences is my dislike of secrets. I’ll be clear: I don’t like secrets because I want to share my life, including all the relevant information about my life, with my loved ones and colleagues. Because they require both brevity and substantive barriers to access, secrets are among my least favourite parts of adult life. Secrets mean that there are things that you and I can’t share. I usually find that knowledge quite frustrating.

Having said that, as an adult, I don’t find every secret problematic. For instance, I can keep a small gift bag with a stuffed toy meant for a child hidden in my office, and I no longer need to contort myself to protect sensitive personal information. I’m just clarifying my own strong preference for the sharing rather than withholding of information; that position has both professional and personal consequences! For instance, withholding professional information in a job-posting or competition can disadvantage people with disabilities, making us feel excluded or inferior. There’s a growing subfield of organizational psychology related to reforming organizations’ hiring practices for the sake of accessibility. Similarly, keeping personal information from people with disabilities can exclude us in a different way: it might make us feel like our companions don’t trust us, even though friendships and other strong relationships are founded on trust. I know how it feels to have people keep themselves at arm’s length, but I’ve made efforts to retain people’s sensitive information because I recognize the value of strong relationships. That’s one of the things God wants for all of us—to be part of a healthy, flourishing Body (1 Cor. 12:21-27)!

He can disclose secrets to human beings, and even uses secret things to form people (in a spiritual sense).

My experiences with the negative aspects of secrets may have caused me to overlook some of the positive uses of secrets in the Bible. A short examination can show us that the Scriptures can help us to keep secrets appropriately and compassionately, with sensitivity to people’s diverse needs. The Bible has many insightful verses about secrets and hidden things, usually in two distinct ways. First, there are some Scriptures that point out God’s sovereignty over the “hidden” things. In Deuteronomy 29:29, the author declares, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and to our children for ever, to observe all the words of this law” (NRSV). In the Psalms, David doubles down on the manifestation of God’s glory in secret things, relating God’s use of clandestine materials to his formation as a person: “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth” (Psalm 139:15, NRSV). Finally, in Jeremiah 33:3, prior to an Assyrian invasion, God tells the prophet, “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known” (NRSV). So, according to some Bible passages, God has power over secrets. He can disclose secrets to human beings, and even uses secret things to form people (in a spiritual sense).

Second, Jesus nuances the Old Testament view of secrets as hidden materials belonging to God. He teaches using parables (Greek, parabola), elliptical stories that have an indirect or allegorical meaning not accessible to everyone. For instance, after telling the Parable of the Sower, Jesus says to his disciples, “‘To you it has been given to know the secrets [or mysteries] of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given” (Matt. 13:11, NRSV). Again, before he sends his friends out to proselytize in God’s name, Jesus counsels shrewdness in their dealings with the wider world: “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16, NRSV). Lastly, we cannot skip over Jesus’ swearing his friends to secrecy about his death and resurrection. after Peter confesses Jesus, the Lord “sternly [orders] the disciples not to tell anyone,” because he recognizes the political sensitivity of that information (Matt. 16:20, NRSV). Clearly, Jesus knew how to create good boundaries around information!

We can give glory to the Holy One who forms us in secret. 

Thus, it seems to me that—as little as I like secrets—God has at least two purposes for them. First, God has power over secrets, and can use them to form people spiritually. If we knew everything about how we were made, human beings would be extraordinarily powerful! Because we don’t, we can give glory to the Holy One who forms us in secret. Second, Jesus creates relatively healthy boundaries around secrets: he uses parables like the story of the Sower, or the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), or the Lost Son (Luke 15:11-32), to disclose part of God’s hidden goals for the world and its people. He also counsels his friends to be shrewd, and sometimes secretive, especially when they tell others about his impending death and suffering. The Scriptures can help us to see that God has specific uses for secrets, and that when they’re healthily applied, they can work to our good.

Photo by cottonbro studio