Fully Known and Fully Loved

You are fully known and fully loved.

That sentence contains both my greatest fear and my greatest desire.  I don’t think I’m alone in that.  The idea of being fully known is terrifying because it makes me utterly vulnerable.  Being fully loved is the deepest desire of my soul.  But you cannot be fully loved without being fully known.  Being completely loved is only possible if the lover is privy to the entirety of the object of their love.  It’s like when someone is being sworn in at court and promises to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”  Without those conditions, the truth can be manipulated and it’s not the perfect truth anymore.  The same is true of love.  If I am not wholly known I cannot be perfectly loved.

But being wholly known is so frightening that it is almost paralyzing.  Have you ever heard of Imposter Syndrome?  Imposter Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon where a person is constantly in fear of being exposed as a fraud, typically with regard to their personal or professional achievements, despite objective evidence of success.  Research by Jarawan Sakulku and James Alexander in the International Journal of Behavioral Science indicates that up to 70% of people will experience this phenomenon at least once in their lives.

I think that Imposter Syndrome applies in this situation.  The phrase, “if they really knew me…” comes to mind.  It’s this idea that if I don’t even like all of me, how can I expect someone else to? That I am unlovable because of my sin, or that others have a higher opinion of me than they would if they could see my darkness.  And so I hide my flaws from others because I don’t want them to think less of me.  I modulate my words and actions to appear more “acceptable.”  I become less than what I am in pursuit of being liked more.

There are a couple issues here, a few lies that I accepted as truth somewhere along the way.  This first is the idea that I have to be perfect to be loved, or that to be loved someone must like all of me.  Now I know this is a lie, because despite their being imperfect people (as we all are), I love my family dearly and I would do just about anything for them.  Nothing could ever get me to stop loving them.  And I may not know the depths of their hearts, but I have seen enough to dispel any illusion of perfection!  I also know that they love me, despite many years’ worth of evidence of my own imperfections.

So that is one lie that I can refute.  But there is an even more important truth to acknowledge.  Because although I do not doubt my parents’ love for me, they are imperfect people and they love me imperfectly, just as I am imperfect and love them imperfectly.  Yet there is One who loves me completely, fully, and perfectly, and that is God.  God does not just love us, He is love (1 John 4:8).  He is perfect and so is His love.  And we never have question, “if He really knew me…” because He does know us completely.  Psalm 139:13 says, “For your created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”  Since before we were ever born, God knew the trajectory of our lives, our hopes and desires, our secrets and our sins.  God is never surprised by what we think or feel or do.  And He chose to die for us regardless.  He chose to love us regardless.

And just a quick note here, when I was young, I used to think that God died for humanity as a collective, meaning that it might not have been worth it for him to die for me, individually, but it was worth it for him to die for humanity as a group.  But this just isn’t true.  The truth is that God loves us individually as well as collectively.  St. Augustine, a 4^th century Christian theologian and philosopher, is attributed with saying, “If you were the only person on earth, Christ would have still suffered and died for you.”

God is omniscient.  He knows all of us, even the deepest, darkest parts of our souls.  And he perfectly loves us anyway.  It’s such a wonderful thought that it’s almost beyond comprehension, but the greater joy is that it is true.

You are fully known.  But fear not, for you are also fully loved.

Sakulku, Jaruwan, and James Alexander. “The Imposter Phenomenon.” International Journal of Behavioral Science, www.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/IJBS/article/view/521/pdf.