There’s a scene near the end of Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan in which Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) finally locates the long-lost James Francis Ryan (played by a young Matt Damon). Damon’s character is in shock, after learning that his three brothers have been killed in action.
After years apart, he struggles to visualize their faces. So Hanks’ character suggests a trick he uses to recall his old life before the war:
Well, when I think of home, I… I think of something specific. I think of my, my hammock in the backyard or my wife pruning the rosebushes in a pair of my old work gloves.
Ryan tries it, and a risqué story follows about the brothers before they left for war. When the men stop laughing, he asks Captain Miller, “Tell me about your wife and those rose bushes.”
“No. No,” Hanks’ character replies, “that one I save just for me.”
THE SECRET PLACE OF THUNDER
I thought about that scene as I read John Starke’s book, The Secret Place of Thunder: Trading our Need to Be Noticed for a Hidden Life with Christ.
Starke’s claim is that we have entered an age of “performative individualism.” In this context, every moment of our lives—traumatic events, acts of service, sitting down to read a book—is curated for the gaze of others, usually online. (And as I type that, “curated” feels like one of the sadder words in our cultural lexicon.)
The vehicle is social media, but the driver is an age-old longing to be noticed, affirmed, and validated. Cue Ron Burgundy: “Hey everyone! Come see how good I look!”
“We have internalized the idea,” writes Starke, “that the markers of ‘being okay,’ of having an admirable life and enviable success, are primarily visible.”
Pics or it didn’t happen.
Ironically,
A deep loneliness comes for those who live off a curated image. … We can have many followers but few friends, lots of comments but no communion.
YOU HAVE RECEIVED YOUR REWARD
Into the performative rat race, Jesus offers a word of warning: “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). To do so is to have received your reward. God is interested in virtues done in secret—not because the homeless get less if I vlog my service at the local soup kitchen (though they might, if I’m preoccupied with my smartphone), but because I do.
Starke notes that in this passage Jesus doesn’t warn against flaunting our wealth, our power, or our giftedness; he warns against trumpeting our virtues: praying, fasting, giving to the poor.
And in our day, the “virtues” includes a kind of performative vulnerability: “I cried for hours… and then I wrote this.” (Use code #vulnerable for 10% off.)
I’ve thought a lot about what this means for ministries and Christian non-profits that manage online spaces, especially since sometimes what seems required for “marketing” often sounds like what Jesus told us not to do. I don’t have easy answers there, but it deserves some thought.
THE RIGHT KIND OF SECRETS
In the end, let me be clear about what I’m not saying: It is obviously beautiful and good to share our lives with one another, including certain deeply personal moments. It is also wrong to label every act of online sharing as “performative.”
My point is more limited and unique to your own life and personality.
It comes down to this: We need the right kind of secrets. Not the kind that fester and metastasize because we refuse to share them with the right person in the right place: the addiction, the struggle that needs community to heal. Rather, we need the kind of secrets that retain their beauty and formative power precisely because they are known only to God, us, and perhaps those closest to us.
To share those things (whatever they are) may be to cheapen and commodify both us and them. As in the famous double slit experiment from quantum physics, the act of (constant) observation changes us, and not always for the better. In that way, the old indigenous taboo is right: the camera has the power to steal part of your soul.
I’m not sure what that looks like for you; and I don’t pretend that it looks the same for all of us.
Still, the longer I live in a performative age, the more I side with Jesus and John Miller: “No. No… That one I save just for me.”
Hello friends. Please subscribe on the homepage to receive these posts by email. This is especially helpful since I’ve decided (mostly) to uncouple the blog from social media. Thanks for reading. ~JM
joshuamcnall.com 