Nowhere to Hide

In many countries around the world there is a growing outcry against the increasing surveillance of citizens. This technology has been widely used to monitor and detain citizens in ways that raise serious constitutional concerns, leading to a number of false arrests. In some areas, drones with speeds up to 60 mph (96 kph) are being used by law enforcement to track individuals more intensively, checking vehicle speeds and following suspects.

Some will say, “If you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be worried.” Others express concerns with the slow erosion of the right to privacy, which feels like something we’ve been conditioned to accept. Most of us have grown accustomed to tapping “Agree” on computer or phone applications’ terms of service without reading them, giving consent to something we assume isn’t too bad. Our personal data is becoming increasingly valuable, especially as AI is able to sift through it more thoroughly and in ways that are increasingly suspect.

Considering these quickly changing realities, here is a simple question: What does it feel like to be under the watchful eye of someone who may not have your best interest at heart? Someone who is gathering multiple points of information from both your public and personal life to construct a narrative and intends to use that information against you?

Do you notice something in your body when you consider that idea? Perhaps tightness in your chest, a pit in your stomach, or a quickening of your pulse?

Now consider a similar question: How do you feel living under the watchful eye of an all-knowing, all-powerful God?

Do you experience the same sensation? If so, you likely share something with our first parents.

Face-to-face

Adam and Eve were created to reflect God’s image as relational beings. It was the Creator Himself who first stated that it is “not good that man should be alone.” This relational need is not merely to be fulfilled by interaction with one another but also to be expressed in communion with God Himself. The Bible describes how God, seeking connection with Adam and Eve, comes to the garden. One scholar notes that “the anthropomorphic description of God’s walking in the garden suggests the enjoyment of fellowship between Him and our first parents.”[1]

God moves through the garden in the cool of the day (Gen. 3:8), sometimes translated as “at the time of the evening breeze.”[2] The recesses of my memory contain vague recollections of a long-ago time during which, after supper, people would go out and sit in the porch swing and enjoy time with their spouse or kids. Maybe an evening paper would be flung up on the porch, and children would be riding their bikes in the street. The sun was setting, the weather was fair, and people enjoyed these hours in the evening breeze. Those days are long gone.

The experience we were created to enjoy, because of sin, has become one of the greatest perceived human vulnerabilities.

Adam and Eve’s face-to-face engagement with their Creator degrades into frantic, shame-induced running and hiding from His presence. Sensing their newly discovered vulnerability, they flee from the very One they were made to meet. But of course, it is impossible to hide from God. The Bible states that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth” and that “no creature [is] hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account” (2 Chron. 16:9; Heb. 4:13).

God still sees. God still casts His loving, concerned gaze upon His creation, and the extent to which we welcome or shun it is determined largely by our perspective of who God is and, by extension, who we are.

Christian therapist Curt Thompson observes, “We all are born into the world looking for someone looking for us, and . . . we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives.”[3] When we come into this world, it is not enough simply to have our diaper changed and to have a bottle placed in our mouths. We must be seen by someone who seeks to know and engage with us. This engagement includes having our internal emotional states acknowledged by someone else—someone who can step in and serve as an external regulator of infant and early childhood emotion. This experience is critical to human development, as being seen and regulated is the foundation for understanding and controlling our own emotions as adults. From our earliest days, being seen is necessary for our growth and survival.

Disconnected

One of the primary tragedies of sin is described by the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, nor His ear heavy, that it cannot hear, but your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He does not hear” (Isa. 59:1, 2).

The experience we were created to enjoy has become, because of sin, one of the greatest perceived human vulnerabilities and is now often experienced as painful. And the disconnection is not just with God. Many drive home from work directly into their garage and enter their homes without interacting with their neighbors. We also have the newfound ability to order food and have it dropped on our porch without interacting with another human soul. That means I don’t have to look at the person I’ve refused to tip. We stare at our devices, observing carefully curated lives such as our own, so that people do not see the bits that reveal our common humanity.

Much of our communication is also deprived of the richness that comes by engaging with each other face-to-face. A recent study describes these interactions as “blind communication” because they lack crucial metadata—the nonverbal aspects of communication such as tone, voice, facial expression, and bodily posture. Because approximately 90 percent of in-person communication is nonverbal, these blind interactions are easily misinterpreted and misconstrued.[4] And if we are not careful, we will likewise misinterpret the character and nature of God, just as our first parents did.

When the human relationship with God was ruptured, God was not willing simply to let us be destroyed by our selfishness. Instead, God pursued Adam and Eve by asking questions, not to satisfy His own curiosity but to engage them in acknowledging their internal and external states of distance from Him. He also explained the consequences of sin and offered a sacrifice in Eden to clothe their nakedness and serve as a type of the Savior to come. Still, the separation resulting from humankind’s rebellion against God remained. It is this critical story that serves as a backdrop of God’s relentless pursuit of the hearts of men and women that will eventually culminate at the second coming of Jesus.

God still casts His loving, concerned gaze upon His creation, and the extent to which we welcome or shun it is determined largely by our perspective of who God is.

Until that great culmination, God seeks to restore the broken relationship. He speaks to us through the natural world that He created (Rom. 1:19, 20); the Holy Spirit, who strives with human hearts (John 16:13); and prophets who were sent both to speak on His behalf and to record their messages that we still possess today in the form of Holy Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16, 17). We are invited into the personal presence of God as we engage with His living Word through the intellect and imagination.

A Living Connection

The richest, fullest expression of God’s character, however, is found in the personhood of Jesus. The author of Hebrews tells us that “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son” (Heb. 1:1, 2). Jesus plainly pointed to Himself as the clearest expression of the Father’s unseen nature (John 14:7-9) and described His mission as glorifying God by declaring His Father’s name to His disciples (John 17:4, 6).

It was during these few years on earth and through the legacy of the Gospel writers’ experience that the human family gained a glimpse of the Edenic relationship being restored. The Incarnation provides the opportunity to live in God’s healing gaze, to enter into His transforming love, and to experience what Adam and Eve lost—a deeply intimate and vulnerable connection that offers healing and freedom from the shame that drives us to run from His presence. This living connection with Jesus also empowers us to be fully present with others—the fellowship of His church—and to complete the circuit of joyful connection with the triune Godhead and with each other.

Sadly, at the return of Jesus, those who have not entered into this experience are still pictured as running from the Lamb (Rev. 6:15-17), while those who have preemptively experienced living in God’s sight declare, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us” (Isa. 25:9).

What would it feel like for you to stop running? Many reluctant disciples have found themselves falling headlong into a grace they thought they were moving decisively away from. There is no escaping God’s watchful eye. But instead of shuddering from the idea of being unjustly surveilled, I invite you to consider His gaze as that of a watchful, caring father, eager to see His children safely home.

[1]E. Ray Clendenen and Kenneth A. Mathews, eds., “Genesis 1:1–11:26” The New American Commentary, vol. A, Accordance electronic ed. (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), 239.

[2]See the New Revised Standard Version.

[3]Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2015), p. 138.

[4]Retrieved from https://online.utpb.edu/about-us/articles/communication/how-much-of-communication-is-nonverbal/.