Birthday-Forgetting Sinners: An Essay Response to Knowing & Being Known

We hosted a writing contest for the Launch Team of "Knowing & Being Known: Hope for All Our Intimate Relationships." Submission had to be original but were required to quote/reference the book in their essay. Below is the winning submission written by Blake Trenary Henriques!

It would be a strange thing to respond to the idea that vulnerability is the currency of intimacy (p. 111) while simultaneously refraining from being vulnerable.

There is a reason why I see myself lying behind so many lines of Erin’s book. It requires

vulnerability to admit that we—that I—feel chronically and radically misunderstood by those

who should theoretically know me best. It deeply wounds my pride to peer inside my own spirit and identify just how lonely I can feel in a sea of people who pray for me, who check in on me, and for whom I pray and on whom I check in (cf. p. 144). It hurts my pride even more to admit this to another person.

There is a certain pride to loneliness. Or, at least there is for me. Leaning in to loneliness allows me, frankly, to justify practically any sin. Today is my birthday. I know for a fact that some of my closest friends will forget my birthday. I remember their birthday every. Single. Year. I send them texts and often cards. I offer to take them out for coffee or ice cream. And year after year, they fail to reciprocate.

No doubt you can already feel my cynicism. No doubt, if you are reading this and know me

personally, you may feel a little called out. “Blake, are you sure you’ve remembered my birthday (or my anniversary, or my dog’s birthday) every. Single. Year?”

Well, now that you mention it, even I—the birthday aficionado and the single most thoughtful (and perfect, and funny, and pretty) person in the universe—probably can’t claim to bat 1,000 in this area. In fact, this morning I just realized that I myself failed to reciprocate a friend’s well-wishes for my wedding anniversary; hers came and went a couple weeks ago with zero recognition from moi. Perhaps she walked through that special day glibly wondering whether I cared.

“I do! I love you so much! I just forgot!”

Isn’t that so like loneliness—and like the sin and shame that lie behind it—to tell us that we are different? That we deserve special recognition? That we are fundamentally good but others are fundamentally, disappointingly flawed? That we are uniquely targeted by others’ mistakes?

This is not to discount or downplay loneliness and shame that arise from circumstances of real abuse or neglect. Erin rightly points out that our cycles of shame and loneliness can result just as much from others’ sins against us as from our sins against others (p. 110). Rather, my point is that when loneliness and shame do result from an anemic response to our own, personal, individual condition of sin, we tend toward self-defense. We are hurt by others, and our hurt is justified. However, instead of pursuing genuine, healthy conflict resolution so that we can put the issue at hand to bed (cf. Matt. 18:15-20), we tell ourselves that we now know better than to put our trust in other people and that we can only really rely on ourselves. If we fail to recognize this tendency in ourselves and allow it to remain unchecked, over time we begin to turn inward. We make a habit of closing ourselves off to our relationships because we have told ourselves that that is where the hurt comes from. Stop the relationships, stop the hurt. All better.

In so doing, we fall for the devil’s original lie: don’t trust promises. Certainly don’t trust God

who made them. Did God really say that the Church is the family of God and that, whether I like it or not, I’m stuck with these birthday-forgetting sinners (Rom 12:1-8; 1 Cor. 3:16-17,

12:12-31)? Did God really say that true reconciliation was available through faith in his Son and by his Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 5:11-21)? Did God really say that, even when I am hurt by others, I am to forgive and play an active role in restoring my relationships (Matt. 18:15-20; Mark 11:25; cf. Matt. 5:21-26)?

Maybe not.

As Erin says, “Intimate relationships expose my quiet, functional atheism” (138). When others

sin against me and I respond by embracing loneliness and isolation, I am effectively denying the real power of God’s gospel to resurrect dead people and empower them to move, together, toward the glory he has promised. But if this is true, then so is its inverse: if rejecting intimacy with God and Church is effectively a rejection of the gospel, then embracing intimacy with God and Church is effectively embracing the gospel. “My intimate relationships are the living, ecological lab where I experience sanctification through the gospel. My spiritual formation is not the result of diminishing my relationships in order to elevate a solo hike with Jesus. My relationships are where I experience Jesus” (p. 139).

The gospel is the great equalizer. It tells us that none of us are deserving of God’s forgiveness. We all deserve for him to turn his face away from us because we perpetrated the first rejection, not him. The gospel tells us that we are the one who forgot our friend’s birthday. And it reminds us that even when we forget over and over again, there is a pathway back into restored relationship. The gospel is God’s good news in which he says, “Yes, you can still come to my party! I’ve saved a seat for you!”

What Erin terms “the Gospel Community of Remembrance” (Chap. 9) is a coalition of

delinquent friends who have backstabbed their benevolent, loving God, have been truly sorry, have asked for His forgiveness, and have received it. And, because our tendency toward backstabbing (or throwing up high, thick walls when we are stabbed in the back by others) remains, the only way we can live together with any semblance of intimate harmony is by the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

However, if we stop here, we will likely fall under the unbiblical and unhelpful impression that

conflict resolution within the Body of Christ simply equates to self-forgetfulness, and that

Christian humility requires letting ourselves be continuously stepped on and never speaking up or addressing the hurt. As Erin so helpfully articulates, the secret ingredient to genuine conflict resolution—one that will empower us to put interpersonal issues and hurts to bed and allow us to rejoice and serve each other and the world, uninhibited by toxic bitterness (cf. Heb. 12:15)—is not self-forgetfulness, but self-remembrance. Remembrance of what? Of the gospel story into which we have been inducted through faith in Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit. “Because Christ is the friend whose blood covers us and allows us entrance, we get to have and be the friends who stand in the gap of truth and lies and remind each other who we are” (p. 161).

If my friend forgets my birthday and I am hurt, I have the ability, agency, and dignity in Christ to speak up and say, “Hey. It really hurts that you forgot my birthday. I don’t want to make the assumption that you simply don’t care about me just because you forgot, but it still hurts. Can we talk through how each of us feels about birthdays so that I hear where you’re coming from? Perhaps you genuinely don’t care if people remember your birthday as much as I do. Perhaps I’ve forgotten your birthday and you’re upset and I need to apologize. I don’t know. Can we just talk?”

You get the idea. When we have embraced the Father’s love, extended through Jesus and given to us by his Holy Spirit, the security of intimacy with God’s Church is an integral part of the package deal. Our renewed relationship with God is the catalyst that allows us to use these hard, awkward moments as springboards into further—dare I say vulnerable, intimate—conversation. To push these conversations away is to deny the presence of God’s indwelling, sanctifying Holy Spirit among us—in all of us.

If we have placed our faith in Jesus, we can’t get away from his Spirit, even if we try. And if we can’t get away from God, we can’t get away from healing, from resurrection life, or from glory. But, most importantly, if we can’t get away from God at work through the gospel, we can’t get away from “we.”

—Blake Trenary Henriques