10/21/2019 0 Comments The mortifying ordeal of being knownOkay, so this is maybe (probably) a weird place to start a blog about the retreat we just had on Wednesday, but stick with me because I think it will make sense in the end. I'm not sure how familiar most of you are with the concept of memes let alone whether or not you are familiar with memes that are popular at the moment, but to summarize memes very briefly, they are pictures, videos, gifs, etc. that people take and change the context of slightly by changing the words or image so it comes to mean something else. (As a side note, interestingly the word "meme" is derived from the greek word mimeme meaning to imitate, which is very appropriate.) Over the summer, there was one meme that became very popular that took a quote from a New York Times Article about anxiety, the words were: "To experience the rewards of being loved, we must submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known." (don't ask me how they found this article written in 2013 to quote, but there it is) and people inserted these words on all sorts of images. (There are many that I have found hilarious, but the one I've included here for reference doesn't require an understanding of meme culture to grasp.) This particular quote was made into literally dozens of memes that spanned across different fandoms, different social media outlets, and different cultural references; it became one of the most universally accepted quotes on a meme no matter where it was being posted or who it was referencing. I couldn't help but start to think this reflects something deeper in teen/young adult culture; that there must be a deeper, spiritual truth as that's the only way it could possibly be so universally accepted. My thoughts, simply put, are that these particular words are true and speak to each person's deep desire to be loved. I've written a couple of blogs before about the innate desire to be loved, but this meme summarizes exactly why this desire is so hard; in order to be loved, we must allow ourselves to be known. And not only known as we like to be (i.e. the many facades we wear, the way we market ourselves, the careful way we speak and represent ourselves) but in the many ways we do not like to be known (i.e. in our exhaustion, or our frustration, our despair, or even in the things we are total nerds about). We want people to see us in the ways that we have carefully curated our personality to be seen. This idea is so true that it's one of the most popular tropes in literature and in movies; how often do we learn that a character has a dark secret hidden in their past, a secret that causes a great deal of tension in the story, and they are certain that because of that secret they can't be truly loved? Inevitably the conclusion is that they just have to tell the secret (let the other person really know them) and then they are, in fact, loved. But, if we know this is true (if we see it in literature, in real life, and even in memes on the internet) why is it so hard to just be honest with each other? Why do we feel the need to hide? Believe it or not, this intrinsic shame and desire to hide ourselves stems all the way back to the beginning of time. Literally! Way back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and decided they should cover themselves in fig leaves and hide themselves from God. In the moment they ate the fruit our concept of time began (as suddenly humans had an expiration date) and so did our concept of shame. Logically, the shame made no sense; God literally knew everything about Adam and Eve, he knew they'd eaten the fruit, he knew the worst things about them but they still tried to hide those things. And we have been doing the same with God and with one another ever since. So perhaps a better question is, if our inclination since the dawn of time has been to hide, why do we still so desperately seek love? In the end, this answer is simple, too, God created us by love, for love. He created Adam and Eve in the beginning, he created them out of love for them, so that He could love them, and they could love Him (and one another) in return. We were created the same way, it's written this way in the book of Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." God knew us and loved us before we were put in our mother's wombs, He created us because He loved us so that we could love Him in return; it's why Moses gives the commandment in Deuteronomy that Jesus repeats in the New Testament "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself." This mission isn't accomplishable in the hearts of humankind, it's not possible for us to resist temptation on our own, not possible for us to love God and each other freely in the way we were created to do. The Old Testament (and our own lives) have showed us time after time that we were unable to keep our covenants with God. In short, on our own, there was no hope of reaching our hearts desire to be loved, but Jesus came and made it possible. Through Jesus sacrifice, through His great love for us, we are able to love and be loved in return. Long story short, we are able to submit to the humiliating ordeal of being known because, through Jesus, we know that we will experience the eternal rewards of being loved.
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