In chapter 38 of Pride & Prejudice, Elizabeth muses to herself after an exciting but rather personal trip, “And how much I shall have to conceal.” Readers of this blog will know that I am not the sort of person who conceals information by nature, and that I tend to be open (even uncomfortably so). Nonetheless, over the past couple of months I have felt the need to simply not talk about some aspects of my life here because other people have asked me to conceal them. Therefore, in lieu of writing about matters that would bother other people, I would like to talk about the circumstances in which concealment is a good thing, since many readers of my blog know that as far as my own personal life is concerned, so long as the matter only deals with me and not with others, I am not inclined to conceal very much.

In at least two verses, love is stated as covering over sins (similar to the way, it should be noted, that the blood of Christ covers our sins as our Passover lamb). Proverbs 10:12 reads: “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sin.” 1 Peter 4:8 quotes this verse and adds a little bit of commentary, saying, “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.” Proverbs 25:2 also deals with the subject of concealment, saying, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter.” So, we might ask, what are the grounds which we might have to conceal matters without being dishonest?

One of the motives of concealment we must grant to God. That motive appears to be the enjoyment God has of making us dig and work for understanding. Like any good teacher, God knows that the harder we have to work to gain something, the more we will appreciate it. That which is given freely without responsibility is not treated with concern and care, but is taken for granted. Those things that we work for, we understand the value of. Human beings, by and large, place value in items and relationships based on our own labor for those items and into those relationships, and not on the actual “objective” value of those items. So, the work that a king (or a leader in general) has to take to uncover knowledge will be lead to that knowledge being particularly treasured.

For mankind, concealment generally is appropriate to the extent that it is done out of love. There are times when we know things about other people that we are honor bound not to tell the whole world for a variety of motives, including our love and respect for those people (and our desire to save them unnecessary discomfort or embarrassment), as well as confidentiality concerns. All of this I have intellectual knowledge of, but to be honest it is not something I was in the habit of practicing, although the practice has been forced upon me recently for a variety of reasons. Love feels a lot different than one thinks it should, a lot more painful and a lot less pleasant, and a lot more ambivalent. Such is the life, though.

Without wishing to go into specific details, I do think that my lessons in tact and discretion, as incomplete and as uncomfortable and as imperfect as they have been, are for ultimately a good cause. It is not my intention to humiliate or embarrass other people (or even myself!) and that requires some hard lessons in boundaries that I must admit I have not learned before and that do not come naturally given my own personal background. Nonetheless, if a lesson has to be learned it has to be learned, and far better to learn it even late than never to learn it at all. I just hope it feels better soon.