The danger of hiding from our mistakes

Avoiding wasting time in denial

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” (Genesis 3:8–10, NIV)

Even those of us who aren’t very familiar with the Bible often know the story of Adam and Eve.

In short: God tells Adam and Eve what they can and can’t do; they then do the very thing God said they mustn’t do; God comes looking for them; they try and hide.

Though I’m using this story from Genesis, this isn’t a religious post. Instead I want to write about this human tendency to hide when we make a mistake.

It is perfectly natural to try and hide when things go wrong. Our instinct moves us towards denial.

None of us like admitting we messed up. So we try and pretend it didn’t happen. We try and avoid having to face up to the reality.

This can work for a while sometimes.

But just as Adam and Eve couldn’t hide from God forever, neither can we hide from the truth about our mistakes for very long.

And the danger is that the longer we try and hide from our mistakes, the bigger the hole we end up digging.

The truth is that the sooner we face up to reality, the sooner we can learn, and grow, and move on.

Photo: Abigail Keenan