What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas

Last night I attended a bachelor party for a friend of mine.  While the group of us were hanging out there was talks of taking embarrassing pictures of the bachelor throughout the night and posting them to Facebook.  To my knowledge this was never done (though I did leave early since I had a 2 hour drive to get home).  Still the thought of sharing what goes on at a bachelor party seems almost antithetical to the event.  Bachelor parties are one of those "sacred" events that seems to have an aura of secrecy around them.  What happens at the party stays at the party.  Just like what happens in Vegas, or on the mission trip, or whatever, stays with that group of people

On the other end of the spectrum is the "over-sharing" that occurs through things like Facebook.  Suddenly the whole world can know what we had for breakfast, how much we drank last night, or that we are off in the Bahamas.  Some of the information is mundane and some can be potentially damaging, giving people a view into a part of your life you might want to keep private (like your drinking habits) or letting people know when you are not around ... which is valuable information for burglars.

All of this raises the question to me ... do we keep too much secret or not enough.  Secrets are great, they give us a feeling of power, control, and of being in the know.  We have something that others do not.  The flip side of that same idea is that it creates separations between in the in group and the out group.  Between the haves and the have-nots.  All of this leads me to wonder what the best course to follow is.  I worry what it says that there are parts of our lives we hide from other parts of our lives. 

As a pastor I am constantly confronted with the merging of the public and the private, those things that I share with my parishioners and those things that I keep separate.  While perhaps harder than other jobs it is not necessarily any different.  An NBA team executive recently came out about his sexuality, something he had kept private from his work life for years.  We all probably have those things we worry about the people who write our paychecks knowing about.  In the end however I worry the secrets are bad.  That we encourage a notion that somethings are just for a select group of people and in doing so we create barriers between ourselves and the world.  The barriers may keep us safe, but they also keep people away.  If I don't share things about my life with my parishioners, is it fair to expect them to do the same?

Maybe the real question to ponder is whether or not we have reasonable expectations for secrets.  Do our expectations meet the categorical imperative ... that we would want others to live by the same things as us.  So do we want to know about others the things we keep secret about ourselves OR are we comfortable with others keeping from us the same information we keep from them?  That might be a question for another day