Romans 2 NLT
And this is the message I proclaim—that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret life. (16)
Africans are amazing, complex, multi-faceted people. I have spent my life learning their culture and growing to love them, and yet, I often feel like the more layers I peel back the more I have to learn. You can spend your entire life trying to get deeper into a culture and people, but in the end, you realize you will never truly be an “insider.” This is especially true with Africans. One of my best (and Godliest) Zambian friends once told me, “There is a secret life to every African that nobody knows but himself.” So, I asked, “what about your wife or your family, are there things they will never know about you?” His answer was, “Yes.” I was shocked when I heard this, but it told me a lot about a continent that is so adept at warmly welcoming you and making you feel like an insider, while still keeping you at arm’s length.
It is easy for those of us who are from the West (and perhaps too transparent), to judge those in Africa as being deceptive. Our cultural perspective is to “put it all out there” and tell everything we know and share every detail of our lives (whether people want to hear about it or not). Social media has only served to fan the flames of our self-absorbed transparency. We tend to value “openness” and assume that those who have secrets are somehow not worthy of trust. Yet, when I look at this text it tells me that everyone has a secret life and we will all be judged because that life is not hidden from God. Perhaps our African friends are just less hypocritical about having a secret life than we are.
While we tend to share everything we know with whoever will listen and put our lives out there on social media, we usually put forth an image that we want others to see. We don’t expose our doubts, our fears, and our failings to the world—we keep those locked in the secret vault of our hearts. What we think is transparency is often just a thin veneer we show to the masses, but only God knows the real person below the surface. He sees your heart; He sees your secret sins that you keep from those closest to you; He sees your secret life and keeping it hidden from others doesn’t mean it won’t be exposed and judged. The good news is the Christ who will judge is also the Christ who will forgive if you come to Him in honest repentance. Let His light shine into the dark corners of your heart and remove those things that you are afraid for the rest of us to see.
