You can be in church every week and still be in bondage.
Not bondage to sin in the obvious way, but bondage to performance. To rituals. To the quiet belief that if you do enough religious things, God will leave you alone about the one thing you’re protecting: your heart.
That’s the trap. Religion can become a hiding place. A way to stay “close” to God while keeping control.
Rituals were never meant to replace the heart. At their best, they’re symbols, outward signs of an inward reality. But when the heart is unchanged, ritual turns into a mask. You can sing, serve, tithe, fast, pray, and still be untouched. Still unrepentant. Still unhealed. Still the same person, just better dressed.
That’s why people bargain with God.
“I’ll give you some of my money.”
“I’ll give you my time.”
“I’ll show up.”
“I’ll do the right things.”
But the heart? That feels expensive. Because the heart is where the real idols live. The real wounds. The real pride. The real fear. The secret stories we don’t want exposed.
And God’s response is not complicated: “That’s all I want.”
That’s why David matters so much in Scripture. Not because David was clean, but because he wasn’t. He fell hard: he took Bathsheba and arranged the death of Uriah. If anyone had a reason to hide behind religion, it was him. He could have tried to smooth things over with sacrifices and ceremonies. He could have done what religious people do when they get caught: perform harder.
But David says something that destroys the whole performance game:
“Sacrifice you do not desire… but a broken and contrite heart.”
In other words: God isn’t impressed by what I can offer while my heart stays the same. God isn’t bribed by spiritual activity. God wants truth. He wants surrender. He wants the part of you you keep locking away.
This is also one of the clearest differences between the God of Israel and pagan religion. Pagan systems tend to bring “god” down to a manageable level. If you can manipulate god with the right ritual, you can control outcomes. If you can control outcomes, you can control people. And if you can control people, you can control the world.
But Yahweh is not part of the system. He is holy. You can play with the world all you want and still not change Him. God may respond, God may relent, but His character isn’t negotiable. You can’t trick Him, buy Him, or pressure Him.
That’s why this is bigger than Solomon’s Temple. Solomon’s Temple was glorious, and it still fell. Anything built by human hands can collapse. But Christ’s Temple isn’t a building. It’s not man-made. It has no walls to hide behind. It’s built in the hearts of people, which means the whole point is transformation, not appearance.
Religion cannot save you. It can only manage you.
God didn’t send a checklist for you to climb up to Him. He sent His Word to come down to you. And that Word becomes our ark, like in Noah’s day, not because it looks impressive, but because it holds.
If you’re relying on religion, you might be standing near the ark, touching the wood, admiring the shape, but still outside.
When I got out of the hospital, my doctor told me to walk through the five stages of grief.
I remember thinking, That sounds dramatic. Grief is for death. Grief is for funerals and black clothes and flowers and long hugs you can’t feel. Not for pain. Not for something I was “supposed” to be happy to leave behind.
But then I started to understand something I didn’t know how to name at first: you can grieve pain.
Not because pain is good, but because pain can become familiar. And familiarity has a strange power. It can feel like identity. It can feel like home. It can feel like, at least I know who I am here.
That’s the part people don’t always talk about when they tell you to “heal” or “move on.” When you’ve lived with pain long enough, losing it can feel like losing a piece of yourself. Even if you hated it. Even if you prayed for it to end. Even if it nearly destroyed you.
Pain can become a place you return to, not because you want the suffering, but because you want the certainty. You know the rules there. You know what to expect. You know how to survive in that environment. And when something new opens up, even something better, it can feel like standing in a wide open field with no map.
That’s why people go back.
I started seeing this pattern everywhere once I noticed it in myself.
The Israelites were freed, but the wilderness scared them. It was uncertain. It didn’t have the familiar structure of Egypt. So, even after centuries of oppression, even after miracles, they said they wanted to return. Back to being under a master’s lashes. Back to the “known” pain, because the unknown freedom felt too weighty.
There’s also that haunting way the Assyrians described Egypt: “an old prostitute who does not know she has lost her beauty.” It’s a brutal image, but it captures something real. A person can keep performing a version of themselves that no longer fits, clinging to what used to work, not realizing it’s already gone. Not realizing it’s time to grieve what was and let it die.
History carries the same lesson.
After Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, freedom was real, but so was the question many newly freed people faced: Where do we go now? What do we do with ourselves? How do we live without the system that, as evil as it was, had defined the boundaries of daily life?
And even now, centuries later, the consequences of slavery still echo in families, communities, institutions, and minds. That’s what suffering does when it isn’t properly grieved: it doesn’t just hurt the person who lived it. It affects generations.
Unprocessed pain is never private. It leaks. It teaches. It shapes. It becomes culture. It becomes inheritance.
That’s why grief matters. Not as a formality, but as a doorway.
Because if you don’t grieve what hurt you, you might spend your life returning to it. You might confuse bondage for belonging. You might treat familiar suffering like it’s safer than unfamiliar freedom.
We all have our own Egypts.
A relationship you keep revisiting even though it keeps breaking you. A mindset that feels “realistic” but is actually hopelessness. A habit that numbs you because feeling is too raw. A version of yourself built around survival, even though survival isn’t the same as living.
Freedom is beautiful. But it’s also new. And new can be scary.
So if you find yourself missing what hurt you, don’t shame yourself. Name it. Grieve it. Let it go with honesty.
Sometimes healing isn’t just getting better.
Sometimes healing is learning who you are without the pain.
One thing that I have noticed in my African community is that young women grow up and are taught to desire to be married. The relationship dynamics between boyfriend and girlfriend are not considered to be a relationship. Now, I think that is a wonderful thing, yet the problem is not desiring to be married; the problem comes when marriage becomes a formality. “Oh, I just want to be married for the sake of being married,” or, “I just want to be married to just please people, “I want to have a ring so that I can flash it in front of people without the need of being faithful.” We desire good things, but just as often, for the wrong reason. Due to that, we suffer because we pray for rain, but we forget that rain comes with the mud.
We often assume desire becomes dangerous only when it turns toward evil. Scripture suggests otherwise. Many people in the Bible did not fall because they loved wickedness, but because they tried to seize goodness without trust, patience, or surrender.
The tragedy is not the desire itself. The tragedy is how we handle it.
Abraham and Hagar
Abraham wanted a son. God had promised one. But waiting became unbearable. So Abraham reached for a shortcut. Ishmael was not born out of rebellion, but out of impatience. Wanting God’s promise without God’s timing created lifelong conflict. God promised him to give him children, but Abraham, who is called the “Father of Faith”, grew tired of waiting due to his old age. His wife, Sarah, took her slave and asked him to sleep with her, and he did. He could have said, “NO,” but he also was not trusting God patiently.
Wanting good things the wrong way often comes from fear:
Fear that God will delay too long.
Fear that obedience will cost too much.
Fear that if we do not take control, we will lose everything.
So we reach for the low hanging fruit.
We force relationships that are inappropriate
We rush callings and manipulate the outcomes, and when our plans fail, we become confused, “But I wanted something good.” Here, desire is not the Enemy, but the unsubmitted desire is.
Sometimes what kills us is not sin itself, but that addiction of relief: We want peace, validation, love, rest, meaning, which are all good. But when these needs are unmet, desire stops asking and starts demanding. We become entitled and think that God and people owe us something. The soul starts saying, “I deserve this now!” When we do not get it now, like children, we throw a tantrum.
God is not threatened by our desires. He is concerned with how we carry them. What we seize too early on, we often can sustain. Sometimes, it is easy to get something, but not easy to keep it. Sometimes, God makes us wait so that when we get to his promise, we will be able to keep it.
As James wrote,
You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet, but you cannot get what you want, So you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.1
Social media has taught us how to curate our lives carefully. We adorn the outside, filter the image, adjust the lighting, and present a version of ourselves that looks whole. Everyone wants to be seen, admired, and followed. Everyone wants to look alive, even when something inside is quietly rotting.
Fame has replaced faithfulness. Appearance took the place of honesty. We have learned how to decorate our unhealed wounds instead of healing them. We put lipstick on the pig and call it beautiful but no amount of makeup turns a pig into a lamb-cleaning the outside never heals the inside.
This instinct is not new.
Adam and Eve lived naked and unashamed. Their outward appearance did not matter because it reflected what was within. Good made them both in purity as they reflected the very Image of God (Imago Dei)1. They were the pinnacle of God’s creation because of the image which they bore. Their hearts were pure, so exposure carried no fear. They had nothing to hide. Together, they had intimacy with each other and also intimate with God, as they were living in the very presence of God.
But when they disobeyed God, tables were flipped; they turned everything upside down.
All of the sudden, their nakedness became unbearable. They covered their bodies because something inside them had fractured; they lost that purity of being seen for who and what they are. The shame was not in the skin; it was in the soul. Their covering was an attempt to manage exposure: that was the birth of the fear of being known.
Ever since, we have been doing the same thing.
We cover the outside to hide the disorder and chaos within. We pretend our lives are better than they are. We smile while breaking. We perform while decaying. We learn how to appear whole while our lives are hanging on the thread. Even people who could help us think that we are doing better than them.
The fear of being known is not the fear of exposure itself, but the fear of judgment that follows exposure.
We are afraid to give our hearts to God because we assume that being seen will lead to condemnation. Not only from God, but from people. Religion has often distorted this fear. While God looks at the heart, religion put a lipstick on a pig and call it beautiful. God seeks truth in the inner being; religion rewards outward performance and ritual.
So like Adam, we cover ourselves.
We hide behind fake humility.
We hide behind fake smiles.
We hide behind fake rituals.
We hide behind fake repentance.
Jeremiah saw this clearly in his generation.
The people crowded the temple, lifted their hands, sang their songs. But outside the walls, they returned to their folly like a dog to its vomit. They acted as if they had peace with God while serving other gods in private and sacrificing their children to Molech. When Jeremiah exposed the condition of their hearts, they hated him for it.
God spoke through him saying,
"And when you are spoiled, what will you do? Even when you dress in red, and wear objects of gold, and enlarge your eyes with makeup, you beautify yourself in vain. Your lovers hate you, and seek your life."2
Here, God was saying, You look well on the outside. You run to your lovers who only desire your appearance. But I know your heart, and those you are trying to please will destroy you.
Exposure felt like betrayal. The people in Jeremiah’s time fled from the God who knew them inwardly, and that fear reduced them to appearance alone. Like a woman desperate to be desired, they invested everything in how they looked while neglecting who they were becoming.
The problem was not that God saw them.
The problem was that they were afraid to be known.
This fear appears again in the life of the Prophet Isaiah.
When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, when he heard the Seraphim cry “Holy, holy, holy,” he did not boast in his prophetic office. If there was a man who knew God in Judah, Isaiah would be the man; after all, he is the Prince of the Prophets. He did not compare himself to others or showed his accolades. He collapsed inwardly. “Woe is me,” he said. “I am undone.”3
Not just guilty. Undone. In the Hebrew word “Cut off” or “Destroyed”-or as an Old Testament Professor, John Oswalt put it, “Dissolved like better in the noon day sun”-exposed.
“I am a man of unclean lips.”
Why did Isaiah say lips and not heart? Because the mouth is the interpreter of the heart. Jesus put it plainly: “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”4 What comes out of a person reveals what has been stored within them. The mouth does not create evil; it exposes it.
A man does not speak recklessly because he has been drinking. Alcohol only removes restraint. What surfaces was already there. The liquor did not put it in him; it simply gave it permission to come out.
Isaiah understood this. The same lips that had pronounced judgment on others now trembled in the presence of God. He had exposed the sins of the people, but now he himself stood uncovered before the One who sees beyond words and into the heart.
Before God, Isaiah was no longer the prophet with authority. He was simply a man, known completely, standing without defense.
The same thing happened to Peter.
After a long night of empty nets, Jesus told him to cast again. When the boats filled with fish, Peter did not celebrate opportunity. He did not negotiate advantage or tell Jesus, “Could please be my friend so that I can use you to further my fishing business?” He fell apart. “Get away from me,” he said. “I am a sinful man.”5
Peter had met teachers, leaders, scholars. But no one had ever known him like this. Jesus did not just perform power; he didn’t even have to utter a word. he exposed the heart by His actions. And exposure terrified him. He felt naked before Him.
This is our fear.
We want to be loved for what we reveal, while hiding the part of us that most needs love. We wear masks so well that even when people care for us, we feel untouched because that’s not the part that needs to be loved. We are praised by outsiders on the media, yet unsatisfied. Affirmed by people who barely know us, yet when we get to people who truly know us, we feel hollow. Loved, yet unknown.
My supervisor told me, “a child has a big ego because to a child, everything is ‘Mine Mine Mine’. Children thinks like the world revolve around them, then people are obliged to obey them. But when we grow old, the ego fades.” When I heard that, I agreed to disagree, not to further much psychological debate caricature. ego does not disappear with age; it simply learns how to hide better. We become skilled hypocrites. We manage appearances. We sweep pain under rugs. We develop angles. And slowly, quietly, learn to die on the inside.
Our deep fear of being known makes us depressed and anxious. Is it a suprising that in America, with the number of material and wealth around most people are not happy? Less than half of American are satisfy with their lives.6 Why? Most people live lives of “make believe”. Play the part to look the part while not being the part. We want people to love the part that we wrap around like a Christmas present and give to them, while ignoring the part that should be presented. We fear rejection because most people cannot love the unloveable part of us. Even when we find some people who would, we shun them and keep 10 feet away from them-Just like Peter said, “Get away from me; I am a sinful man.”
You can live with someone under the same roof and still not know them because they are afraid to show you the core of their hearts. Is it surprising that we may do the same to our kindreds? What about God? We cover ourselves despite God telling us that he would love us regardless; Yet we hide ourselves in the darkness because our deeds are evil. Jesus was hated not because he was meaner nor ugly nor judgmental, but He was a man of light and people loved their darkness. Those who knew how unloveable they were, came closer and closer to Him and sought his presence. Yet those who had their red dresses on, those put on gold and jewelry on, those who put on makeup to enlarge their eyes, feared Him because they were exposed to the real light. When can we stop pretending? Even the devil is called angel of light, not because he is, but he is a pig with a lipstick on! Jesus confronted the Pharisees and said, “You are of your father, the devil!” Why? Because they pretended to be light while having the fear of being known.
BEING KNOWN
What happens when we are finally known?
What happens when the masks fall and the coverings are removed?
What if being seen does not lead to destruction, but to healing?
Isaiah was exposed, but he was not destroyed. A coal touched his lips, not to burn him, but to cleanse him. Peter was exposed, but he was not rejected. Jesus called him closer, not farther away. Adam hid, but God still came walking in the garden asking, “Where are you?” Even after then, He killed a lamb and covered up his and his wife shame.
What if the fear was misplaced?
What if the One who sees us fully is the only One who can heal us truly?
We spend our lives covering what God wants to restore. We fear exposure, yet exposure is the doorway to grace. We hide our fractures, yet those fractures are where light enters. David knew this better after he sinned against God,
"Sacrifice you do not desire, but a broken and contrite heart, that you will not despise."7
In Christ is not where we perfect appearances. It is where we stop pretending. Where we stand uncovered before the God who already knows our nakedness. Where we discover that being fully known is not the end of us.
I once wrote a paper about suicide in America, and one thread kept showing up in the research: loneliness. Not just being alone, but the feeling that you don’t belong anywhere, and no one would notice if you disappeared.
I didn’t grow up with that kind of loneliness. Back home, hardship was real, but isolation was rare. Kids from different blocks played together. Men gathered and told stories. Community wasn’t a hobby; it was survival. There were a few cases of suicide because it was even considered taboo: if you died by your own hands, they would take a stick and flog your dead body because it was shameful.
In America, this gloom of loneliness eats people from the inside out; we live car-only, work-only, and home-only kind of lives. And when life breaks us, we often break in private. But loneliness is more than just a lifestyle and causes a lot of trouble then and now:
That’s why some young people join gangs, not only for money or status, but to feel power and a belonging they don’t feel individually. When a person feels invisible, they’ll attach themselves to anything that makes them feel seen.
There is the loneliness of leadership, too, the loneliness of being the one at the top of the totem pole. People come to you for answers. They lean on you for strength. And you get lonely because you can’t lower your standards just to keep people comfortable.
There is the loneliness of marriage: two people under one roof, two rings, one name, but still not on the same page. You can be committed and still feel alone.
There is the loneliness of knowing God, as Elijah did. Jezebel threatened his life, and he ran into the wilderness and hid in a cave. It is a wonder to see strong men running away because some woman is on the rampage. You are no longer living in the valley; you live in a cave; your comfort is gone. When you have been strong for everyone else, but you have nothing left for yourself, even faith can feel like a lonely road.
And there is the loneliness of being favored, like Joseph. His father loved him openly, and that favor stirred hatred in his brothers’ hearts. They threw him into a pit: Jealousy of someone’s position, someone’s praise, and someone’s profession. They sold him for twenty pieces of silver. He ended up in Egypt, and even there, his faithfulness continued to get him into trouble because his master’s wife lusted after him: he was betrayed, wrongly accused, and imprisoned. Sometimes you can do the right thing and still end up isolated.
What is the cause of this mass loneliness?
Well, with this system of individualism, people tend to focus more on themselves than others. Due to living with this idea of “Lifting myself out of my own bootstraps“, people lose that little part of themselves when they do not get the accolade that they thought they merited. This shatters many people’s spirits because everyone wants to be applauded, everyone wants to be in the limelight, and when we do not get what we mostly desire, it angers us.
So much disappointment runs rampant in us because we want to be loved so much; we seek attention feverishly, and when we do not get loved as we ought to, we retaliate. Even people in marriage do not get the love they think they ought to get. One reason relationships fracture is that many of us were taught to chase events (the wedding, the title, the upgrade) more than the daily practice (patience, repair, humility). The number of divorces peaks because people want the wedding but not the marriage.
People want to get something, but they do not care how to keep it. We look at life from a one-sided angle. We think marriage says, “Sunshine and rainbows, here we go!” So, does everything else!
Some of the loneliness comes as a consequence of so many expectations. We rely on things we can get instead of the job we can do. We love the money, without worrying about becoming better at our jobs. And when that promotion we once expected does not hit, we retaliate. We think that we deserve better (Sometimes, we do). But most of the time, we set the bar too high!
Some of the loneliness comes from comparison. We like to put our image next to others and see if they match. Kids who were raised by poor parents tend to compare themselves to other kids. When they feel like their parents are failures, they feel worthless, like their own parents are shameful and spiteful. We hide our own values by comparing ourselves to others. This makes us feel like we are not worth living. That’s why people, in their 30s, are still blaming their parents for their own failures. “Why are you not successful?” If you ask someone, the response will likely be, “Because of my parents!” Yes, we see other parents plan a better future for their offspring, and we think that our parents are not worthy to have us. Hence, we hide our faces because we are ashamed of our family. Every parent’s cry is to raise their children better and provide for their needs. Sometimes, life just happens, where parents are not in a position to fill our demands. Yes, sometimes parents are irresponsible. I know some boys who go state to state, sleeping with women and leaving trails of babies behind whom they cannot take care of. If those babies blamed their parents in the future, well, they’d be right!
Some of the loneliness stems from being a Parent. Having children whom you are obliged to care for and tend to for the rest of their lives. Sometimes, children have this entitlement that no matter what happens, parents are supposed to support them. Despite their worst behavior, they feel entitled. Sometimes, we are embarrassed by our own children whom we bore. Others may be proud of their kids if they turned out well, successful, and parents feel proud to have such a family. But some parents feel like failures to see how their kids turned out. If the kids turned out as failures, we play this blame game. A father might blame his wife for failed kids; so does the mother, vice versa. We play this blame game because we cannot take responsibility for our own failures. We tend to feel lonely because of this feeling of being a failure.
How to cure this Loneliness?
There is this metaphysical notion. Humans are not simply bodies, but we have bodies and spirits. The body wants to go left while the Spirit wants us to go right. There is this tension inside of us. We all have this gap, this void that cannot be filled. I have something in my heart that nothing on this Earth can satisfy. If I drowned myself in women, just out to satisfy the desires of my own flesh, I would not be satisfied. If I drowned myself in the expectation of being rich, I would not enjoy my work. If I drowned my desires, in my family, people in whom I am proud to have, and they can turn on me and do something stupid that would throw me off board.
We cannot satisfy the desires of our hearts, and that makes us lonely. We compare ourselves to others to feel good about ourselves. We bring others down to feel lifted and motivated. Sometimes, this comparison makes us feel miserable all the more. The desires of our hearts can be the enemy. Even when we do the right things, we do it for our own sake. There is this loud-speaking voice at the core of our hearts, “Me Me Me.” Even when we claim love, we claim it to be in control. Even people who live together feel like they have to have their partners under their thumbs; that is why there is much manipulation in the battle of marriage. If you ask a Divorce Attorney, “What is the leading cause of divorce?” They would tell you, “lack of communication!” People talk, talk, talk because they love their desires to be heard, but are not ready to listen to the other party. Even when we go to Church to worship, we are not concerned about listening; we are concerned about being heard instead. Imagine going to a doctor and pour down your symptoms and not willing to sit and listen to the causes of your malady. How can a doctor find you a probable cure? Yet, if we do it to God, there is nothing that can stop us from doing it to each other.
We care much for ourselves, instead of the other people. Due to that, we suffer much. We pour out our desires that cannot be satisfied to others. We fill their cups to the brim without worrying about taking out some for ourselves. When people to whom we pour out our sorrow are not responsive, we feel miserable and blame them. We want to fulfill the desires of the self. Potiphar’s wife wanted to fill the lust of her flesh by pouring it out to Joseph, but Joseph was not responsive. Potiphar’s wife, due to the expectation, was utterly disappointed and threw Joseph into jail.
There is something I tend to agree with in Christianity and Buddhism. Both religions agree that there is something wrong with humanity: unbridled desires to be satisfied without the need to give back in return. That’s where Pride and Greed stem from. Greed says, “I want to have everything!” Proud, “I want to be everything; if I get everything, then I will be happy!” The human heart is never satisfied. Now, Christianity says, “Desires can be controlled!” but Buddhism says, “Let’s get rid of desire altogether!” We need desire. If I desire to have beautiful children, I am not wrong, but that desire needs to be controlled. Yes, I want to have children, but not outside of marriage. I want to have children, but I need to know how to raise my own babies. But this tension, between desire and control is what makes us normal and satisfy. For instance, having a sexual desire is normal, but too much of it, where you only want to satisfy yourself, you will do it at the expense of others! (Potiphar’s wife example still applies here).
We love for the sake of ourselves instead of loving for the sake of others. We all want the same love that we give, but when we do not get it back, we feel burned and discouraged. But serving others, for the sake of serving, without having an angle, is the right thing to do. That is the cure for loneliness. There is a Chinese quote saying, “If you do not have shoes, find the man who does not have legs!” Caring for those who cannot care for themselves can be a huge duty for human’ loneliness. Some Psychiatrist suggests that people, especially those who have suffered a heartbreak or divorce, buy a pet. Now, that pet alone cannot be the cure for someone’s loneliness (well, after all, it does not speak nor do anything), but the care that you pour into it, is what makes you feel less and less lonely because you have something to aspire to, something you can pour all your love into without worrying about getting something in return.
We can love, whether our children or partner, or neighbors, without a conditional love (with agape love). Love without worrying about getting something back in return. Love for the sake of loving. And this, even God understands, is the meaning of love and cure for loneliness. Now, you can ask, “What does God know about our loneliness if He is only relaxing in heaven? Does he understand the struggle and pain which we suffer when we try to love the unlovable?”
Does He understand the pain of a child born in Palestine without a room in the inn?
Does He understand the loneliness of a man who is socially isolated because his hands are calloused with common labor and has been denied decent society?
Does God know about the loneliness, for example, of a man being expelled from a city, disowned and deserted by his own people?
Does He know the Loneliness of feeling, say, doubts; doubts even about religion, even the doubts of crying out, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?
Does he know about these things? These are good questions.
Now, suppose there was a figure that came to swallow this loneliness and so immersed himself in it that he would not immunize himself from it? Would not cut himself off from it? Would you be the only one who was whole on a battlefield and not help any of the wounded?
Suppose someone came into this loneliness and took it all and was not overcome by it, but conquered it all! Then what?
Then even when I am lonely now and then but I would not be overcome by it! Because I have a captain who will not cease to press a celestial command. A Captain who stumbled upon a throne! 1
Loneliness shrinks when love becomes a habit, not a transaction.
Sheen Fulton, Life is Worth Living. Episode 7, Loneliness. ↩︎
