The Virtues of a Hidden Life
With apologies to social media influencers and celebrity preachers (two groups more alike than we want to admit), our best life isn’t a public one. It's hidden.
I don’t mean hidden in a bad way. Like when we conceal a sin that needs to be confessed, as Adam did with God in the Garden of Eden. Or when we keep an act or decision from a spouse, a close friend or a trusted colleague. That kind of hiddenness creates an unhealthy distance from those who love us most.
I mean “hidden” in the way that the Bible means it—that space in our soul reserved only for God. Hiddenness in this spiritual sense isn’t so much concealing ourselves from others as gazing steadily at God. It provides opportunity for hearing from God over and above the chatter of other people—even those closest to us. It’s not self-serving but self-abandoning. It’s protective of our faith and life-giving to our soul. Hiddenness explains Jesus’ invitation in John 7:38, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
I’m convinced that in the modern world of cultural noise, consumer-based religion and relentless self-promotion, the pursuit of a hidden life is vital for keeping our sanity and building a strong faith.
The Bible makes that principle clear. For example, the book of Psalms in the Old Testament speaks often of “the secret place.” The word in the Hebrew language is seter, a hiding place, a secret, a shelter or a covering—all with a sense of protection. Different Bible translations render the Hebrew word differently, but here are three examples from the ten times the word is used though the book of Psalms:
For in the day of trouble He will conceal me in His tabernacle; In the secret place of His tent He will hide me. (Psalm 27:5 NASB)
Thou dost hide them in the secret place of Thy presence, from the conspiracies of man (Psalm 31:20 NASB)
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. (Psalm 91:1 NKJV)
The New Testament goes even further as it links a hiddenness of spirit with the intimacy we all long for with God:
When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:6)
“For your life is hidden in Christ with God” (Colossians 3:1)
To the church in Pergamum, “To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.” (Revelation 2:17)
But hiddenness isn’t just a biblical teaching—although that’s its beginning point—two recent examples of the virtue give a clearer sense of its place in the modern world. Both took place during World War II.
The first example is Corrie ten Boom. A Dutch Christian who along with her family protected Jews—especially those with disabilities—from the Germans who had invaded her country. Corrie’s father built a secret room in their house where Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazi police could be hidden. The room was located in Corrie’s bedroom behind a false wall and held up to six people at a time. The family managed to save over 100 people during the war.
But in 1944 Corrie’s family’s rescue operation was discovered and she, her sister and her father were arrested and sent to different concentration camps. Losing both her father and her sister during their internment, Corrie kept her life and her faith intact and emerged from the experience with a vital Christian testimony and a worldwide ministry until she died in 1983 at 91. She titled her best-selling book of her experience, “The Hiding Place,” reflecting both the literal hidden room in her home that preserved the life of the refugees as well as her personal experience with the God who protected her through it all.
The second example is Terrance Malik’s recent film (2019), “A Hidden Life,” the true story of Franz Iagerstatter, an Austrian farmer and devout Catholic who during World War II refused to fight for Germany.
Iagerstatter, his wife and their three daughters lived a quiet life in the mountains until the war finally caught up with them. The Germans needed more men as fighting progressed and required the men of Iagerstatter’s region to join the Army. While his family, neighbors, mayor and even bishop insisted he fight with the Germans as all the other men in the region were doing, he refused. His faith wouldn’t allow him to swear allegiance to Hitler. He was brought to court, convicted of treason and executed in 1943.
The film shows why he choose to die. He had that hidden quality of faith that moved beyond mere religion into the deep places of the heart. It’s what kept him from selling his soul to the Nazis and gave him a place in the communion of saints before the throne of God.
The title Malik choose for the film was taken from English novelist George Eliot’s novel, Middlemarch:
... for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
What does all this mean? How do we grasp something so out of touch with modern church life? In the list of spiritual practices that we’re more familiar with—faith, prayer, confession, witnessing, love and humility are a few examples—hiddenness isn’t normally included. It’s too odd, too counter-cultural, to hard to get at. Hiddenness doesn’t lend itself to programs, it can’t be quantified on evaluation forms. There are no workbooks to show you how to gain it, no well defined pathway to lead you to it.
But for those who recognize its central place in the life of faith and long for the intimacy with the Father that it promises, I can point to what happens in those who pursue it. So here are the seven virtues that I believe hiddenness leads to:
A hidden life keeps us from self-delusion.
A hidden life connects us with the source of our true life.
A hidden life is the secret to prayer.
A hidden life preserves us from the consumerist world we live in.
A hidden life insulates us from anxiety.
A hidden life keeps us focused on the things that matter most.
A hidden life creates space for the Holy Spirit to make us more like Jesus.