Selfless Self-Disclosure
A few years ago, a young woman joined our Wednesday morning Bible study in the middle of the semester. I will call her Maria. She had a toddler with her—an adorable little girl with curly hair.
In the following weeks, Maria attended Bible study weekly but participated only a little. She mostly listened. Occasionally, Maria would chime in or ask questions.
One morning she asked the other ladies to share how they deal with the feeling of darkness creeping in or fear that would not go away. That’s all she asked, without giving any context or sharing her personal story.
I was the only one in the room who was aware of the background to her question.
A GRIM DIAGNOSIS
A few weeks earlier, I invited Maria over for lunch to get to know her better. During our meeting, Maria told me that the little toddler girl was her second child. Her first daughter died within a year after her birth from a genetic disorder. She was born overseas, where Maria and her husband served as missionaries. Within months after her birth, their daughter developed her first symptoms.
Medical tests revealed a grim diagnosis. All children affected by this disease die before turning two. The family moved back to the U.S. and gave up their dreams of being missionaries to provide their dying daughter with better medical support. There was no cure for her genetic condition.
The whole time we talked, Maria’s girl played quietly in the room. I mentioned to my friend that her daughter was the most well-behaved toddler I had ever met. Maria said that all kids with that genetic disorder are great babies. They rarely cry or fuss. I looked at her in shock. Maria’s second daughter also had the same disease. She was almost two years old and could walk, talk, and, by all other accounts, acted like a regular toddler.
Maria briefly told the story of conceiving again, giving birth to her second girl, and discovering that she too was diagnosed with the same genetic condition. When their second daughter was only a few months old, they applied to participate in a gene therapy study to restore the broken gene responsible for the disease. Their daughter was accepted, along with fourteen other infants. At that time, these babies were the only ones in the world to receive treatment.
Maria said her daughter had lived to this day only because of that experimental gene therapy, but no one knows the long-term effects. The girl is now a healthy five-year-old and continues to thrive.
MEEKNESS ON DISPLAY
While this medical breakthrough is an amazing story in itself, I kept thinking about how Maria handled her experience publicly. During Bible study meetings, she never talked about her struggles, fears, or even joys of seeing her child beat the odds. How easy would it have been for her to become someone other women listened to or even looked up to if she had spoken more from her traumatic experience?
However, Maria never shared her story with the rest of the group before moving away to another town where her husband got a new job. Some might say that sharing her painful experience could have been therapeutic for her, or it could have benefited others who struggled similarly.
True, but it could also open the door of temptation to draw attention to self rather than God and to use this experience for personal gain. And what of the little girl? How would mom’s continued disclosure affect her in the long run? For one reason or another, my friend chose to remain unknown and disclose her tragedy only to a very small circle of people.
“People are compelled to talk about their personal experience, allowing it to become the arbiter of truth and the basis of asserting a position of authority.”
It appears as though the Christian culture today is going in the opposite direction, following a broader secular trend that embraces self-disclosure. Everyone is eager to tell their story. People are compelled to talk about their personal experience, allowing it to become the arbiter of truth and the basis of asserting a position of authority.
Again, following a wider secular trend, self-disclosure is often encouraged as a therapeutic necessity for one's emotional health and flourishing. In contemporary Christian literature, especially non-fiction, self-disclosure is promoted as highly marketable content. Should we be surprised then that celebrity culture has gained a strong foothold in contemporary American Christianity?
DISCLOSE WITH CAUTION
But is self-disclosure always bad? Certainly not. It should, however, be employed with caution. Self-disclosure is simply a tool that can be used selfishly, therapeutically, or for a much greater cause. It can be a powerful tool that helps an individual—whether a friend, pastor, author, or speaker—to connect with others, in order to open the door for truth to be delivered.
Ironically, self-disclosure can achieve such high purpose only when it points to something that transcends self and reveals that which is true not only of that person but also of all of us. A great example of helpful disclosure is Augustine’s Confessions. There is hardly any other person in the history of print who went to such great lengths to bare his soul before God and the rest of the world. His Confessions should convince anyone that original sin is real. Indeed, it has convinced countless people throughout church history.
“Paul’s self-disclosure always directs our attention to something bigger than himself.”
However, long before Augustine, the apostle Paul made self-disclosure an essential element of his writing. No other writer of the New Testament talks about his past or present struggles and hopes as much as the apostle Paul. In that regard, his writing is remarkably modern. He even goes so far as to say, “imitate me” more than once (1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1; Phil. 3:17). Paul’s letters are peppered with personal references and are never purely dogmatic (Col. 1:2–2:5; Phil. 3:7–16; Gal. 1:11–24).
In case some were to accuse him of using self-disclosure to bolster his authority, Paul adamantly declares Jesus, not his own experience, to be the source of his authority. Nor does Paul mine his experiences to procure some universal truth. He places the truth squarely outside of self and his experience. Paul’s self-disclosure always directs our attention to something bigger than himself, namely to the truth of Jesus and the transformative power of the gospel.
SELF-DISCLOSURE TO THE GLORY OF GOD
I often think of Maria and look up to her as an example of humility. Even though she never tried to impart her spiritual wisdom, she nevertheless taught me that not every personal experience, however fascinating, should be offered for widespread consumption or used as a foundation for spiritual authority.
It takes self-discipline, spiritual maturity, and a clear sense of divinely appointed call to ministry to wield the tool of self-disclosure well in order to teach something important about all of us and give all the glory to God.
Vika Pechersky is the author of the Bible study Colossians: The Gospel, the Church, and the New Humanity in Christ (Wipf&Stock). She is currently working on the Bible study guide for the book of Philippians. Vika serves women and children at McLean Bible Church, Montgomery campus in Rockville, Maryland. You can follow her on Twitter.