On being watched and known
From John 4:27-42Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!
One aspect of traditional theology is that God sees everything. He is omniscient.
How does it feel to know you are being watched – or that people know what you are doing? It might feel a bit odd, unless it is someone you love or is already continually present. We watch children; children watch us. We watch our partners, lovers and colleagues. By watching us, we are known.
Many years ago, people probably had more private spaces; but public spaces were circumscribed by the necessity of getting work done. There is still some sense that there is a boundary, but that boundary is shifting. In this day and age, some teenagers are simply making themselves completely public. They have no shame.
I’m not saying this pejoratively. I find shame a fairly destructive emotion. It is the sort of emotion that, when festering, leads normally empathetic people to act out, to commit acts of violence against themselves or others.
In our culture, we are building more sophisticated surveillance machines that watch people. The government, for our own safety, it claims, watches over us. It pretends disinterest, but for individualists its role is sinister. The government (or the corporations who own the machines) is constantly judging by simply watching, preparing for a time when it can weed out the bad and separate it from the good. Even the private space where we are free to daydream, to work through our darker side, to prepare for the job of being in culture, becomes a place where we are watched.
It is one emotion to feel known by a God who loves us – that what we do in our private spaces, in secret, are not truly hidden to another. Then there is that sense of loneliness and alienation that no one cares, and that no one will care. John implies that the difference is that God’s omniscience is benevolent.
The woman at the well says this man, Jesus, knows me. It is much like the divine affection, the internal mother that praises the son. It motivates us to be a bit more free, a bit more trusting, a bit more open, a bit more brave because we know we are protected, and known.
The current instruments of government voyeurism are pale comparisons to the sense of being known by love. We may learn to fear these instruments. We may retreat into those private places where we think nobody – not even God – can see. But these pale to the feeling of being treasured – if not by the public, then in private.