BBC Radio 4 2016-04-12

BBC Radio 4 2016-04-12

A few years ago our eldest took me for a walk in the rain and asked what I thought of her new-ish Norwegian friend. Not knowing she had already accepted his hand in marriage, I made a couple of cautious comments about his being several years her senior and from a different culture.

“Yes,” she said, “but a culture so much more sensible than ours.” Well, he promised not to take her away to Norway, but now I too have become enamoured of such a healthy, outdoor spirit of uncomplicated, straightforward frankness.

With regard to financial transparency, we’ve been hearing much about the difference between Norwegian culture and ours. We may have the first British Prime Minister to publish his tax affairs but in Norway everyone’s are available online. Norwegians certainly seem more egalitarian: perhaps that’s why they find it easier to be open. Oslo professor of anthropology Thomas Erikson explained on Radio 4‘s In Business that some Norwegian Lutherans even forbade curtains because nothing should be concealed from public view.

When we moved into a Vicarage friends talked of the “goldfish bowl”: everything we did would be open to scrutiny. I didn’t mind this in the slightest, having been brought up in a head master’s house within the school, so on at least one occasion I bumped into a complete stranger as I ran to the bathroom in the altogether. Though I confess the thought of publicising my tax return makes my blood run cold, not because I mind at all people knowing what I earn but because I’m always terrified I’ve got it wrong.

I am intrigued by the Judaeo-Christian account of the prototype human beings after they disobeyed God and learnt moral discretion. Adam and Eve’s first instinct was secrecy.

They hid parts of their body from each other and then they hid from God. Far from rebuking their coyness God, in His sorrow at their loss of innocence, made more adequate clothing for them.

We live in an imperfect world, in which privacy is essential. Given that we all do wrong perhaps too much honesty can be as damaging as too little? Discretion in some ways better than brazenness? At least the politician who keeps quiet about his minor failings knows that they are wrong. I know of someone who was arrested (then acquitted) for his involvement in a financial scandal. He and his wife told their young children he was away on business. I wouldn’t have done this myself but I respect their reasons and decision.

And yet surely we all long to be known. Part of the joy of marriage is that there is someone who knows me as well as I know myself. This is what the physical act of love symbolises. There is complete openness and no shame. We know the best and worst about one other and love each other anyway.

And this is what loving intimacy with God is like. Now we see partially, as if reflected in a glass. Then we shall see face to face. Now we only know in part.

Here on earth we can’t ever know everything about anybody.

But – Saint Paul ends his sublime celebration of love in one of the most quoted passages in the Bible – then shall I know, even as also I am known.