Superficial Intimacy

Recently I was watching a service from Granger Community Church, and the message was about loneliness. This particular part caught my attention:

"Sharing our innermost thoughts, our fears, the true things about us, our dreams, our hopes, with someone we know is harder for us than it is to share a bed with someone we don't know. We have more fear of the vulnerability of spiritual nakedness and psychological nakedness than we do of getting naked in front of another human being. Adam and Eve, maybe they wore a fig leaf to cover their private parts, but I've noticed we are so lousy at intimacy because we take that fig leaf and hide our minds, our faces, our souls, our hearts. You will never break away from loneliness and find intimacy until you're ready to take that fig leaf off of the real part of you."

Wow. This struck a chord. It is hard for me to make myself vulnerable, to share my thoughts, fears, dreams, hopes-- to share my real self-- with the people I know. And while I do not engage in physical intimacy with people I don't know, I can see how very easy it would be to choose superficial intimacy over real intimacy. I can choose to be superficially intimate with the people around me, letting them in just to the point where it is safe and comfortable for me and keeping the real parts of me closed off tightly. Or I can let people in, let them see who I really am, let them know my dreams and fears-- but that involves a risk, the risk of not being accepted, the risk of being rejected, the risk of being disliked. It's not safe, and it's not comfortable.

And this, I think, is the heart of why I struggle sometimes socially. I want to get to know people, and I want them to get to know me, but then I get scared. What if I take off the fig leaf and find that what's under it isn't good enough? If I am superficially intimate and am rejected, then at least I know that the rejected parts were shallow; but if I am naked, vulnerable, and raw, then the core of who I am is up for rejection.

Of course it can be turned around the other way. The essential elements of who I am could be loved and accepted, leading to true intimacy and relationship. And that possibility makes it worth the risk of rejection. As terrifying as it can be to remove that fig leaf, it is the only way to possibly obtain true intimacy with others. If I don't ever take the risk, I will never give my true self the opportunity to be known and loved.

If you're interested in checking out the message that inspired this post, it can be found at http://www.gccwired.com/ on the bottom right of the page; there is a link to a video that says "Watch last week's service: All the Lonely People."