Written by Daniel J. Brendsel |
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Without confidence in one’s standing before God, the solitary silence can be downright terrifying. For there I am alone with my God and Lord and Judge. And how can the real me, which I try so hard to hide, feel anything but shame and terror before One who sees in secret? 

“The truth about a man lies first and foremost in what he hides.” So wrote the French novelist, art critic, and statesman André Malraux in 1967, in a weighty diagnosis of the human predicament (Anti-Memoirs, 5). Malraux was on to something. We may broadcast what we want to be known for, but we hide what we are.
We might think first of the dark side of this insight. We may keep the skeletons safely in the closet, our secret sins and hidden idolatries, thinking to ourselves, “If others knew who I really am, they’d despise me.” We well know that we are what we hide.
But there’s a positive side to the insight as well, and our Lord may be said to commend it. Jesus encourages us to hide, in a manner, what’s closest to our hearts: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). We face a common and strong temptation to do what we do to receive the praise and admiration of people. The appearance of righteousness can easily become more important to us than righteousness itself. But true righteousness, we might say, isn’t merely something we show, but also and especially something we hide. Thus arises Jesus’s exhortation to practice righteousness—almsgiving, prayer, and fasting—“in secret” (Matthew 6:2–18).
Call to Secret Prayer
Jesus’s words and warnings about almsgiving, prayer, and fasting clearly overlap. We are to take care lest our motivation for them is the ephemeral reward of others’ esteem (Matthew 6:2, 5, 16). But prayer seems to be central among these three, and not only because it’s sandwiched in the middle. For one thing, Jesus spends twice as much time addressing prayer as he does almsgiving and fasting combined. For another, when it comes to prayer in the middle, Jesus warns against a second problematic motivation in addition to seeking others’ admiration.
“When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (verse 7). At root, it seems, “the Gentiles” pray to acquire things of want and felt need, thinking prayer to be simply a means to that end. But additionally, they presume that the divine needs goading to deliver the goods. So, they heap up many words—perhaps thinking that God needs to be informed of our grocery list of needs, or that long-winded eloquence may impress him to act, or that abundant articulation of “truth” is required to pass a threshold.
Jesus blocks off all such wrong ways at the trailhead: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (verse 8). Apparently, we don’t need to pray long to inform God. Neither are long prayers needed to butter God up for generosity and care that he isn’t already inclined toward. For the Father’s knowledge of our need signals his intention to provide for us his children, whom he loves more than he loves larks and lilies (Matthew 6:25–34), and to whom he would never dream of giving rocks or serpents in response to prayer (Matthew 7:7–11).
Secret prayer doesn’t secure the loving orientation of the Father toward us. In Jesus’s outlook, the Father’s loving attention and wise intention to meet our truest needs precede our praying and invite it. We don’t need to enter the prayer closet anxiously angling after our good.
Centrality of Secret Prayer
If prayer isn’t best thought of as merely an effort to get what we desire or need, and if it’s to be done in secret where no one else is looking, then what motivates it? Is it not simple love for and desire to commune with the Father who sees in secret?
We are what we hide because what we do in hiddenness—in secret, in the closet, when no one else is looking—is what we love. And we are what we love.
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God is concerned not only with heart motive—although that is certainly central—nor is he simply concerned that people worship him alone—although that is, of course, true. He is also concerned that his people worship him in the right way, which includes not worshiping in ways that he has forbidden or inventing new ways to worship that he has not commanded.

In the Old Testament Law, God gave his people very specific instructions about how they were to relate to the people around them, including in their culture and worship practices.
Deuteronomy 12:2–8 reveals important principles in this regard. God commanded that the people destroy the places where pagans worshiped, including their altars, their pillars, their images, and even the names of the places. This is clearly more than simply insisting that they worship Yahweh rather than false gods; this is stark evidence that God rejects worship that imitates pagan worship in any way. Everything in pagan culture embodies religious commitments, and those elements that are imbibed with pagan religious meaning must be rejected for use in worship. One might ask why they had to destroy, for example, the altars and pillars; wouldn’t these be useful even for the worship of the true God? Yet God commanded that they be destroyed. He summarized his desires with the words, “You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way.” Instead, they were to listen to his instructions and find a place of his choosing for their worship.
Yet the people disobeyed these principles even as they waited at the foot of the mountain for Moses to return from receiving the law tablets. The golden calf incident is a terrible failure for this newly formed worship community, but unfortunately one that foreshadows many other failures in the days and years ahead. Fearing that Moses would never come back, the people demanded a physical representation of deity, just like the pagan nations had. Aaron complied, forming a golden calf, similar to the practice of both Egypt and Canaan, and the people celebrated with an orgiastic festival so noisy that it sounded to Joshua’s ears from a distance like “a noise of war in the camp.”
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Most of us, I think, are genuinely aiming to find some balance in these things. We aren’t looking to speak only about what the world will applaud us for saying. We aren’t spoiling for a fight and looking to always wade into controversial things. We aren’t necessarily seeking to keep our heads down in the hope nobody asks us anything that might get us in trouble either. We should be suspicious of those believers who are always falling into one of these camps.

All of us Christians like to think that everything we do is thoroughly biblical. We all genuinely believe we speak when and where the Bible speaks and we are more measured when and where it doesn’t. But it is telling what we are often willing to speak up about.
Some of us are very happy to speak up on matters that our culture also consider to be problems. We readily call out issues that large sections of society agree with us on – particularly those issues that garner respect for our ‘bravery’ in speaking out – and tend to major on these. I, for example, find that people are generally quite supportive when I speak on issues of mental health or racial inequality. These things can get the likes and clicks from many outside the church.
Others of us are very happy to speak up on things that our culture generally do not consider to be problems. We are quick to call out those things that we perceive our culture will largely not give us any great plaudits for mentioning. We are keen to raise issues such as abortion or sexual ethics that go against the overwhelming consensus. These are the things that tend to receive the ire of the those outside the church.
It is interesting to me when there are folks who only ever seem to be in one or other of those camps. If the former, it feels like they are keen for approval and are desperate to be applauded. If the latter, it feels like they are spoiling for a fight, all of the time and love the controversy. John speaks about the former group when he says:
Many did believe in him even among the rulers, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, so that they would not be banned from the synagogue. 43 For they loved human praise more than praise from God.
John 12:42-43
Jesus himself has this to say:
Woe to you when all people speak well of you, because this is the way their ancestors used to treat the false prophets.
Luke 6:26
To the latter group Paul says:
As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.
Romans 12:18
And similarly:
Reject foolish and ignorant disputes, because you know that they breed quarrels. 24 The Lord’s servant must not quarrel, but must be gentle to everyone, able to teach, and patient, 25 instructing his opponents with gentleness. Perhaps God will grant them repentance leading them to the knowledge of the truth.
These things do not mean, of course, that we can’t speak on issues. Of course we can.
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