Yesterday, I sat with my wife at the kitchen table and shared with her my desire for a particular bird feeder that was a little out of my budget this month. Moments later, I opened Facebook to find adverts for on-sale bird feeders thrust at me at an amazing rate, and I anticipate this salvo of ads will continue over the next six weeks. For this reason and others, we as a nation are running toward privacy faster than ever before. Understandably.
The death of the dance floor
To wit, I recently read that young people are dancing less than ever (for better or for worse, I suppose). Why? Because they’re afraid they’re going to be recorded. In fact, they probably will end up on someone’s socials somewhere; as a result they stay planted, frozen in place, even at clubs and concerts. This has been called the “extended chilling effect.” Oh, and driving — there’s another one: solar-powered cameras are being mounted on roadways almost as fast as Meta is gathering tidbits of information when you use your Ace Hardware loyalty card.1 It’s unmistakable — privacy as we know it is essentially disappearing.
I say all of this to commiserate and sympathize; I too, feel my identity being stretched, sized up, and sold by The Man Behind The Curtain just like you do, and it’s both unsettling and a little bit frightening. All because we wanted to share pictures of our kids with Grandma on social media.
Wait – Is this about Facebook and my Kroger card?
Despite that intro, I’m actually not writing this piece to bemoan the loss of our privacy in an ever-encroaching digital world that can literally change price tags on grocery shelves in real-time based on who you are.2 No, this little essay is actually going to encourage the opposite, against all cultural instincts or personal reservations, no matter how effectual they may be. Before you light your torch or sharpen your pitchfork, please let me assure you I’m not talking about needlessly sharing your details with TikTok or X or any other institution that sees you as a dollar sign with lungs and a heart. Nor am I talking about letting your guard down and acting foolishly and airing your dirty laundry to whomever is willing to listen.
In fact, I’m tempted to write a whole section on what I’m not saying in hopes that I won’t be quickly misunderstood, but I’ll instead simply state that I’m not encouraging recklessness or unwise levels of transparency, and I’m certainly not advocating for the abdication of private time with the Father and others, like family and close friends (we’ll touch on that later). No, I’m trying to persuade you about something much older, much nobler, and much more essential.
I’m writing to submit to you that the Scriptures do not allow for Christians to be, in general, what we’d consider to be “private people.” Instead, I think the complete inverse of that is true, and I want to very briefly argue that here. In short, privacy isn’t something to be guarded until it’s violated; rather, it’s something to be sacrificially surrendered until it’s no longer a personal hideaway from other people, especially believers.
No incognito MODE for the early church
Demonstrating this shouldn’t really be a gargantuan task; in fact, only a cursory perusal of the early church and their practices easily indicates that there was an openness, a vulnerability, a deep and thorough accountability among Christians that is all-but-lost today. Granted, theirs was largely a more social (agrarian? impoverished? survival-by-sticking together?) culture, but I don’t think their principles should be written off as obsolete and tethered tightly to their chronological or geographical zeitgeist.
The first and most obvious marker of intentional openness and vulnerability among the church was the overt and radical hospitality exchanged between Christians (and followers of YHWH long before the Incarnation). But please keep in mind that the hospitality in Scripture extends quite a bit further than what we might see in Downton Abbey or even under our own roofs. No, Biblical hospitality was about much more than being served bread and drinking wine together. It was about belonging to one another.
In Peter’s first letter, he gives the church a simple directive: “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.”3 This is about more than just whining that you have to have people over when you’d rather be soaking in a tub or playing golf. No, Peter knew that letting people into your space — physically and emotionally and otherwise — is by nature intrusive. So he here commands us to banish the “my home is my castle” mentality and instead embrace the mindset that God had toward Adam and Eve when we created the world: “My home is your home. You are home when you are here.”
You see, radical, true hospitality is, for some of us, a massive, daunting risk because it lets people see the real you, the unfiltered version of your life. It’s much easier to bring food to someone or have months in between visits from other believers so the house can be perfect. (and in this way, it’s possible to be very private even while having people in your home around your table or in front of your TV). This is why hospitality meant so much more than spending time together in a sanitized, polite environment to the early church. It meant doing life together — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Consider the example of Acts 2, where the believers didn’t even keep their bank accounts to themselves, let alone their calendars or setbacks or personal struggles.4 Why, look at Abraham — his hospitality was downright interruptive. He allowed his entire day, his food, and his privacy to be completely and wholly hijacked by three people he didn’t even know. He didn’t have anything to hide, and he even wanted them to stay longer! For Abraham, his hospitality was an aggressive-but-joyous imposition on his own privacy for the good of others. From this we learn that hospitality isn’t something that only the early church practiced by necessity; no, it is fundamentally hardwired into what it means to be a follower of God.
Ok, they did life together. So what?
But hospitality isn’t the only marker of the willful laying down of of lifestyle of privacy in the Christians of yesterday. No, we also see a kind of raw accountability clearly present in the early church. Paul once reminded the church of Galatia to bear each other’s burdens5, but this is predicated on us actually knowing about the burdens of others to begin with! There was an openness and a transparency in the early church that would probably look alien and outlandish to us today. Downright weird.
But to them, it was worth it to allow the intrusion of others into their personal lives if it meant that this would also help safeguard their relationship with God in Christ. They understood that privacy was very often the enemy of spiritual health. Consider James, who told us to “confess our sins to each other” and “pray for each other.”6 Today, that’s fairly radical, but since when did we allow time and culture to dictate whether we obey Scripture or not? Now, granted, this might have played out a little bit differently then than it practically does today, but today this might look like accountability groups, phone apps that share what sites we’re visiting, calendar syncs to share what we’ve got going on, or even notes on the fridge that keep others posted on our whereabouts. After all, what have we got to hide?
Now, this isn’t some inexorable axiom (some people are just introverted, and that’s cool, and some folks are preyed upon because of status or wealth, and I get that, too), but I confess that a good many times I’ve heard “I’m a pretty private person,” I’ve seen sin emerge in their lives in one way or another that wouldn’t have had the opportunity to fester if they’d only opened up and let someone else in. I suppose it’s darkly fitting that my most recent article before this was about pastoral scandal. What if Garth, the pastor of whom I wrote then, had simply let others in on his calendar? What if he’d made it so he couldn’t get away with long absences, poor spending (read: stealing from the church coffers), and other travesties? What if he’d simply said “no” to the modern Nehushtan7 of privacy?
See, I think the obsession with privacy — though understandably heightened by the presence of people who’d love to steal and use your Social Security Number online — is an unhelpful one, and one that actually works contrary to God’s design for how his people are to flourish and grow in righteousness. When it comes to credit card numbers online, a lack of privacy is a dangerous and foolhardy oversight, sure. But in the Kingdom, a lack of privacy is the first step toward accountability or, if overtaken in a sin, being restored.
That’s two down…
But it’s not only hospitality and accountability that clue us into the kind of openness and vulnerability that is baked into the design of the church that Jesus built. It’s support. You’ve already heard Paul’s words to the churches at Galatia about bearing each other’s burdens, but also consider his words to the churches at Corinth when he said if one suffers, we all suffer together, and if one rejoices, we all rejoice together.8 This doesn’t work if it’s inhibited by privacy.
Now here’s a really good one that I invite you to consider deeply. In Acts 2, we read of how God’s grace was so much at work in the church’s life that there were no needy people among them — they all sold whatever was needed in order to take care of each other.9 And the obvious (if not repetitive by now) point here is that if someone is too private to share their needs, this can’t happen. Think about the information required for this to work: for there to be “not a needy person among them,” the community had to know exactly who was short on rent, who was hungry, and who had a surplus. In our world, we find talking about our bank accounts more taboo than talking about our sex lives, but the early church viewed “financial privacy” as a barrier to surviving and flourishing as a community.
But now look just beyond the obvious point with me: what was enabling this? That’s right: God’s grace. It was God’s grace that transcended the barriers of privacy and possession to create a radically beautiful and amazing Humanity 2.0, as it were: the church. So I submit to you that the humility and vulnerability and openness required for the surrender of privacy is actually a fruit of the Spirit, wrought about in those who have a mind to be like Christ, who certainly lived his life like an open book!
But Wait! Jesus got some alone time, right?
To be sure, in the midst of all of this, it is paramount that we also understand that we need to have some alone time. Jesus did10, Paul and his companions almost certainly did, and we’re even commanded by Jesus to have alone time, at least for times of prayer, when we make our petitions known to God the Father11. But please keep in mind that there’s two kinds of privacy under review here: one is a spiritual discipline, and the other is often a defensive and sheltered general posture that often serves to escape accountability, hospitality, and support. The former is needful for communion with God, but the latter is conducive toward concealment of self, and it inevitably tends toward self-destruction.
Or, to let Dietrich Bonhoeffer tell it, “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community. He will only do harm to himself and to the community…But the reverse is also true: let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Each by itself has profound perils and pitfalls. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and the one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation and despair.”12 Not too bad, Mr. Bonhoeffer. Not too bad at all.
Winding down now…
So in conclusion: With the right people, share your shortcomings. Share your calendar. Share your trials. Share your salary. Share your budget. Share your temptations. Share your life. Make it so hospitality is welcomed and generosity is shown, and no flimsy excuses or escapes from these have any quarter in your lifestyle. Make it so sin doesn’t have any dark crevasses in which to hide. Make it so you can provide and receive support without the inhibitions of appearance or other barriers. You should have — and desperately need — private times with God and with your family, to be sure, but you should just as certainly have an very open, vulnerable, and probably what we’d call “exposed” life besides. This is the Way of the Kingdom, without doubt.
It’s no question that “Big Data” wants to scrape, harvest, and use your data to exploit you. Christians, on the other hand, give our data to each other to provide for, protect, and support one another in the church. It’s time to trade isolation for community, and exchange the shelter of privacy for the freedom and liberation of accountability and unfeigned intimacy. It’s time to put down a tiny, hand-held screen and instead pull up to a wide-open table with others. It’s time to surrender the arrogance and self-aggrandization that comes with being self-sufficient and “kept to oneself” and instead give yourself to others and become part of a community, transparently and honestly, shortcomings and all.
Lastly, consider Jesus — he transcended everything in every way, and yet he chose to wrap himself in time and flesh to “tabernacle among us.” And, as it’s said, “tents have thin walls.” Jesus himself exemplified and perfected the very ideas of hospitality, accountability, and support, all of which require a radical level of transparency, honesty, and vulnerability. None of this can happen if we’re more engaged in protecting our assets (this isn’t just money; we’re talking time, clout, and more) than giving them away, or if we’re more interested in protecting our image rather than projecting a truthful and vulnerable one to our church community.
Here’s the big idea: in the Kingdom, wisely and appropriately sharing your browser history, besetting sins, budget problems, or even bank account isn’t a violation of privacy — it’s spiritual liberation and formation in more ways than one.
- Yes, this is actually a thing. Check out the Meta Conversions API documentation. ↩︎
- Watch this short video if you want to be unsettled. ↩︎
- “Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.” I Peter 4:9 (NIV) ↩︎
- “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,” Acts 2:44-46 (NIV) ↩︎
- “Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:1-2 (NIV) ↩︎
- “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” James 5:16 (NIV). And yes, I’m fully aware the KJV says “faults,” and I’ve heard more than a sermon or two on how it should say “faults” instead of “sins,” but the best translation is “sins.” I especially like Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of this in The Message, which reads, “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed.” ↩︎
- The Nehushtan was a name given to the brass serpent in that Moses made way back in the deserts of Arabia — it was something that started out good and was used by God, but was later idolized and used in very bad ways. It had become a god unto itself. ↩︎
- “…so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” I Corinthians 12:25-26 (NIV) ↩︎
- “And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.” Acts 2:33b-35 (NIV) ↩︎
- Luke 5:16, Matthew 14:23, etc. ↩︎
- Matthew 6, etc. ↩︎
- Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community. Translated by John W. Doberstein, HarperOne, 1954. ↩︎
