DESIRE 101- Part 8

Sharing Secrets
Copyright © 2002


Like the rest of creation, secrets have something to teach us. They whisper the same message that our bodies declare- the mystery of exchange. This message lies in the way we go about telling or not telling our secrets. The more terrible the secret is, the more meaningful the fact that we have shared it. We feel honored when another person trusts us with theirs, and we are very careful about who we entrust our secrets to. With many serious secrets we literally place ourselves or others into the hands of another person. Maybe this explains the strong desire to talk to someone else when we’ve become vulnerable in a new way. Can you think of why this might be true?

Have you noticed that when you have a crush on someone, it’s never enough to simply enjoy the attraction yourself? For some reason, when we are attracted to another we feel an almost overwhelming need to let them know. How crazy is that? Often we keep it to ourselves, but that’s usually out of fear. What are we afraid of? We are afraid of being rejected…of being ridiculed.

Even with this danger, we often go ahead with it. The desire is that strong. Why would God place such a desire in our hearts? You know the answer: Once again he’s allowing us to channel his glory.

Look how God has set this thing up. We dread the potential rejection because we are offering our hearts. The rejection couldn’t be more serious. It’s a rejection of us. But in order to enjoy this exchange, we have to place ourselves in the care of the other. We hand ourselves to another and wait to see what they will do with us. We hope that they will cherish us and then return the gift by placing themselves in our hands by letting us know that they enjoy our attention.

Can you see the Circle Dance going on here? Someone pleases you; You entrust yourself to them by letting them know; They are excited by your gift and they trust themselves to you by letting you know; You’re excited further by their response….

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world where everyone handled you with compassion and love? The Genesis story describes such a world. There Adam and Eve loved each other unselfishly. They were safe in each others care. There’s a detail in the story that points this out. Adam and Eve were both naked, but neither was ashamed.[i]
Does this make sense to you? Our bodies aren’t simply “clothes” that our spirits wear- having little real significance. Our bodies reveal us as persons. To be naked before another is to be exposed and vulnerable as a person. It’s not unimportant that our redemption involved our Lord being stripped by his tormentors.

If this is true of our bodies in general, it is especially true of those parts of our bodies that most powerfully speak of our calling to be gifts to others- our genitals. As soon as we reach an age where sexual energy and value are felt, we instinctively keep that part of ourselves covered.

We also feel a special interest in that part of another person’s body. We are drawn to look. We want to see. Sometimes, even…we may feel a strange desire to be seen. Do you see the good principle behind this- what it was about “in the beginning?” Can you think of various evils that have changed it into something else?

God was so enamored with this way of showing forth his Perichoresis that he decided to make it a part of just about every living thing. It’s everywhere. One of the most obvious but overlooked examples is in the beauty of a flower. Did you know that plants have both male and female parts…that plants have their own sexuality? Do you know what the flower itself is? It is the sexual part of the plant. It’s a plants answer to our own genitals; and our God didn’t leave this for Plant Scientists to figure out. If you look closely at a blossom- a lily or orchid, say- then you’ll see both men’s and women’s bodies there in the parting petals and the upright pollen-bearing stamen.

It’s a favorite theme of God the Artist. Don’t let anything I’m about to say cause you to forget that.

Now, the moment true love ceased to be “the way things are just done” in Eden, Adam and Eve felt the need to cover themselves. They were ashamed and afraid. No one told them to be. They simply knew.[ii] Obviously they must have felt something within themselves that hinted at what the other was capable of, and it scared them.

What were they feeling? This new experience couldn’t have been physical attraction for the other. This had been their gift from the beginning. Aphrodite didn’t enter the garden along with sin. She was one of God’s original creatures.

In fact nothing new had entered at all. Rather, something had left. That something was pure love. In the beginning the man and woman enjoyed each other within the context of love, but now selfish “use” became an option. The great circling dance suddenly became a potential slaughter where one person devours the other. This is how the world we know was born and how secrets became a dangerous thing to share.[iii]

A man once wrote in his diary, “You will be loved the day when you will be able to show your weakness without the person using it to assert his strength.”[iv] Those days are no longer a natural part of the world. Our instinctive shame and aversion to appearing naked speaks of the awful truth we know about ourselves- we’re all werewolves at heart; but it also functions as a protection against those who would reduce us to “feed” for their belly.

We all have a desire to be truly and totally seen by another and to be accepted and loved not only in spite of what they see, but because of what they see. That is what marriage allows for. There are few things that are as meaningful as undressing for the first time before your husband or wife. It’s a dangerous place to be. It’s as if we’ve chained our arms and legs to a pillar and wait to see what sort of being will approach from the darkness. But it’s pretty exciting, too. Really that’s what every act of love is…sharing our bodies just makes it all so visible and real. That was God’s intention.

(Do you remember how in the story Adam and Eve’s fear and shame with each other was reflected in their shame and fear before God? I’m sure that by now you’d expect that to be the case. Our first and greatest desire is to be able to stand before God totally open and unafraid. Isn’t it wonderful that in Christ we can?)

Remember how sometimes people’s need to have real communion with another leads them to settle for the powerful but fleeting feeling lovemaking can provide? In a similar way people- especially women- try to satisfy their need to be truly seen and accepted by exposing themselves to anyone who cares to look. They dress immodestly. The reactions they get show why this is a mistake. The men that gawk don’t see them as persons at all. They see them as “feed,” and by dressing in this way on purpose these women seem to be saying that it’s ok to view them in this way. It shouldn’t be surprising that selfish men go on to treat them in dehumanizing ways.

As long as no one gets hurt, it’s easy to think that there is no harm done. Everyone enjoys admirers. Everyone wants to be seen- really seen. But the problem isn’t in being seen. The problem is that we encourage others not to see us. The issue isn’t that others see too much; the problem is that others don’t see enough. They see only our bodies and never our persons.[v]

There’s another thing going on here, too. Women act immodestly because of the easy and almost instant power it gives them over men. We’ll talk more about this in a moment, but I believe it is the nature of the Feminine to receive…and then complete and glorify what the Masculine begins. The Masculine may have priority at the beginning, but the beginning is always for the Feminine. There’s no Oak without an acorn, but the acorn is meant to grow into a mighty Oak. This means that more often than not, men do what they do for the attention, the admiration or the respect of women. There is hardly an exception. This is how God intended it to be, but think about the power that’s the birthright of every little girl, and how, as Spiderman would tell us, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

When a woman dresses immodestly, she is using that power in an unloving way. She is not only encouraging men to use her, but she is using men by tempting them to be less than fully human. Both are a terrible mockery of the kind of concern we are called to. Both dirty us as men and women.

I hope you see that the problem here isn’t with nudity, the desire to be seen or enjoying the beauty of another’s body. Each of these things is terribly important in the right place. The problem is in taking them down and using them as something other than what God has created them to be. The result is always hurtful- especially to ourselves.

Immodesty is not only a denial of humanity in general, an invitation for others to view us as less than a person, it is a denial of the calling of womanhood in particular. Women instinctively know this. That’s why you see them dressed as immodestly as imagination will allow and yet they’re constantly tugging up on their tops or frantically reaching to hold down the barely-there skirt when the wind whips it up. Seems a bit schizophrenic, doesn’t it.[vi]

Masculinity and femininity are great mysteries. It’s unlikely that anyone will ever pin them down with an exhaustive definition. But, unpopular as it is, I believe there is much that can be learned from the shared experience and beliefs of mankind as a whole. Our modern arrogance wants to write off as superstition the traditions and views of others- especially those who have gone before us. But when you find civilizations as diverse as the globe and history itself agreeing on an image, you’d better give it a serious look. What we casually want to dismiss as stereotype, I suspect we ought to be appreciating as archetype. It also seems likely to me that our bodies and their roles in love making that have much to teach us. After all, they are the great images of male and female. Some have defined masculinity as activity and femininity as passivity. While I think it is wrong to expect to find feminine traits only in the female and masculine traits only in the male (remember it takes both ways of being human to properly image our God. So we should expect to find both in every human individual), a healthy marriage bed will dispel the passive/active view.

Maybe a more helpful summary would be one of initiation and reception. When a couple makes love, its very happening depends on the man energetically going outside of himself. Likewise the woman graciously receives his offering into herself. This initiation and receiving is fundamental and foundational. Without both there can be no making love.

It’s not as tidy and simple as “initiation” and “reception” might lead us to believe. His going out isn’t violent nor is her reception passive and weak. Even more, he gives in such a way as to receive and she receives in such a way as to give. But there is still a difference. A woman can never do for a man what he does for her, nor can he give to her what she gives to him. There are certain defining limits that come with being a man or a woman and each should be exalted and gloried in.

At the most fundamental level a woman was created to create and preserve life. She was formed for nurturing. A man’s arms are strong and hard; but her shoulders and arms tend to be soft and comforting- even for her husband. Her breasts give nourishment. A child literally lives on the body of its mother. But greatest of all, every woman is a home. Her body itself is a place of growth, safety, peace, and nourishment. Every human being had as their first home, the body of a woman. That is what a woman is. A man can never be that. A man can never mother a child. Every woman is an image of our original home, Eden. Women are the great image of creation itself. They are the masterpieces of God’s work, summing up all people, both male and female, by just being who they are. In this sense they are worthy of the greater honor.[vii]

Women proclaim the glory of all that is worth dying for- receiving the gift, nurturing life, preserving shalom and the overcoming of superior strength through beauty, wisdom and goodness. Men image the initiating of the gift and the sacrificing of strength for all that it is good, true, and beautiful (philosophers call these transcendentals).

Men sacrifice strength for these three Transcendentals. Women overcome strength by them. Notice that a certain vulnerability is implied in being female. Strength is overcome, but not by strength. This vulnerability arises both from most women’s smaller stature, but also from the fact that a sexual encounter can leave them with a child to raise and no father to support them. This physical vulnerability isn’t simply a “fact” of being female. Its manifestation soaks through every inch of the fabric of a woman’s soul. Tenderness, mercy, grace have always been seen as being at the heart of what it means to be woman. I believe I can offer strong evidence that it was right to do so. Think for a moment: How many sexual assaults do women carry out on men? Why do you think that is? Could it be that gentleness, nurturing and mercy have a deeper home in the heart of the feminine?

On a purely physical level men have no such restraints. They are usually stronger than woman and they don’t bear children. Without the inward restraints of conscience (which is precisely what modesty trains men’s expectations towards) or the outward restraints of the law (which is all that is left in an immodest world) a man could force himself on woman after woman without any repercussions to himself. This is a hellish (literally) situation.

There have been times when these type of things happened. Understandably, women are angry about being wronged. They should be. In an effort to guarantee that it will never happen again, some women have declared not only their equality with men but also their identity with men. They seek to act as if there are no real differences- as if sexual distinction was unimportant. They have tried to protect women by denying womanhood. The extinction of The Feminine as a distinct way of being human is their agenda. They believe the salvation of the feminine comes through its denial and destruction[viii].

This is wrong headed for many reasons. Men are not women and women are not men. When men forget what it means to be a man, the answer isn’t for women to deny what it means to be a woman. Rather she must require of ever man the dignity that his gender was created to image. When the precious gifts peculiar to each are rejected, humanity ceases to be. When women begin to act as if they are on the same bestial level as men who refuse true Masculinity, when they cease requiring special respect and honor from men, when they attempt to compete in a masculine way with men- ignoring or despising their femininity- they are always the losers. It is the expectation that women require respect and honor that preserves the sexual peace of civilizations. When women say by their shamelessness and immodesty that such respect isn’t required, it won’t be offered.[ix]

Someone has said that “Women are closer to the human than men.”[x] A little thought will show that this is true. God forbid that all human beings embrace only the ideals of masculinity.

Societies are preserved by the loving protection of true masculinity. A woman’s self respect is what requires this of men. Women are the mothers, preservers, and archetypes of all glorious civilizations. Modesty is a lady’s assertion that this is true.


[i] Genesis 2:25
[ii] Genesis 3:7,11
[iii] I first learned this interpretation of the arrival of shame from John Paul the Great XXXXXXXXXX
[iv] Cesare Pavese
[v]
[vi] Wendy Shalit, A Return to Modesty (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999) pp 118-133
[vii] Thomas Howard, On Being Catholic (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997) pp 194-211
[viii] This sounds very similar to the error of Angelism. Remember how it claimed that God would save humanity by destroying a part of humanity? This common thread runs through many of the cruel ways of telling the Christian story. We call these variations “heresy” and we must be on our guard against their hurtful lessons. Like all diseases, they have some fancy names, but you don’t have to know what to call them in order to know that they are present. Gnosticism claims that salvation destroys the physical. Apollonarianism teaches us that the mind doesn’t count. Monophysites say that humanity doesn’t survive ultimate salvation at all- humanity is saved by becoming something else. Each of these doctrinal illnesses can be identified by this common symptom: Salvation comes through the destruction of some aspect of humanity. For an excellent and accessible explanation of the destructive nature of heresy see C. FitzSimons Allison, The Cruelty of Heresy (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1994)
[ix] Wendy Shalit points out the fundamental difference between the external authority exemplified by today’s campus and business sexual harassment codes, which assume men are animals saying “Down boy! Stop!”, and the internal inspiration authority that a culture of modesty creates. “Modesty, on the other hand, instead of treating men like dogs, invites them to consider an idea… ‘How could you take that which we did not wish to give?’…The argument from external authority labels a man as evil if he date-rapes or sexually harasses a woman. From the standpoint of modesty, he is behaving abominably, but more crucially, he is really missing the whole point. He hasn’t understood what it means to be a man.” A Return to Modesty p 102, 104
[x] Rilke


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