Anonymous Asks (421)

“Do nominally-Christian family members have a right to privacy when their behavior changes in suspicious ways?”

Here is an interesting and very modern dilemma. Do you remember the days before ubiquitous social media, online histories in our browser caches and the discovery of the occasional unlocked cell phone? Even if we felt we just couldn’t go on together with suspicious minds, there wasn’t a whole lot we could do about our discomfort beyond appealing to the suspect to open up and talk with us about what was really going on.

Today, Big Brother is watching not just you but everybody in your family, and he’s happy to share what he knows any time you’re willing to take a peek. Should you?

An Anecdote that is Not Data

A couple of decades back, an unsaved co-worker struggled with this issue when her daughter’s conduct became extremely questionable. She became convinced this underage child was seeking opportunity to become sexually active, and her suspicions heightened when the daughter abruptly cut off Mom and Dad’s access to her Facebook page. The parental solution, such as it was, was to create a sock puppet, a fake online “friend” who knew enough about the daughter’s school friends and daily routine to be allowed access to the social media inner sanctum. Lo and behold, it worked. Kids are often desperate for attention, and one more person showing interest in this young girl online was too flattering to pass up.

What the concerned parents discovered in their online investigations was a grim business, and very upsetting. The problem they ran into was that if they confronted their child about what they had discovered, the method by which they had done so would become obvious and they would lose access to any further information. Conflicted, they skulked online for months, learning, fretting and doing nothing constructive. I advised “either/or”: confront the problem, or give up staring at the evidence, as it was just stressing my co-worker out and providing no benefit.

So then, knowing the facts with certainty is not always preferable to having a creeping suspicion you can’t or won’t investigate.

Other Considerations

Our question concerns Christians dealing with apparent chicanery from nominally-Christian family members. Yet the same dilemma exists for the concerned authority figure whether the family member in question is a believer or not. The only substantive difference is that a believer has a (hopefully functioning) conscience to which you can appeal and a putative standard of behavior you both agree on … at least theoretically. The dilemma for the authority figure is two-pronged: (1) Will finding out the truth on your own help solve the problem? (2) Does your role in this person’s life give you the authority to violate their perceived right to privacy? If the answer to the first question is a probable no, then we need not ask the second.

When we look to the scripture to ask questions about privacy rights, we will not find much obvious help. The words “private” and “privacy” are absent from almost all translations, and those that use them do so in contexts that are entirely unhelpful. Much depends on whose behavior is in question.

The Suspicious Underage Child

In my view, an underage child potentially putting him- or herself in moral or physical danger has no limitless right to privacy. Surprisingly, at least one Canadian law remains on the books that restricts the privacy rights of children. Until a child turns 16, anyone with legal custody has the right to access a child’s personal information in their interests without their consent.

Still, scripture indicates that not all rights are useful to exercise at all times. There may be situations in which we are wiser to refrain from making use of every option available to us in the interest of preserving our relationship with the person we think is in trouble. Much depends on several considerations: (1) the type of relationship; (2) the perceived seriousness of the problem; (3) the urgency given potential dangers; (4) the age of the person involved; and (5) duty of care. (By that last one, I mean do I have a moral responsibility to investigate, or am I just being nosy?) As to seriousness and urgency, a six-year-old child is a different proposition than a 15-year-old, and a teenage son possibly viewing online pornography is a different level of seriousness and urgency from an underage teenage daughter you suspect is contemplating a sexual relationship with her gym teacher.

In the end, I believe that if parents can agree in good conscience before the Lord to investigate the conduct of a suspiciously behaving child under the age of 16 by any means available to them, they have every right and possibly the obligation to do so. The child may believe he or she has rights that they do not, and may hold your “intrusion” against you for a while, but parents are responsible not just to their children but to the community and, more importantly, to the Lord. If your 15-year-old son gets a 13-year-old neighbor pregnant because you respected his non-existent right to privacy in the interest of getting along better around the dinner table, you will regret not getting involved when you had the chance.

The Suspicious Spouse

The question looks different when the troubled relationship is spousal rather than parental. The apostle Paul wrote that both wives and husbands have God-given rights where the other’s body is concerned. He even uses the word “authority”. If you are a Christian who has taken a vow to remain faithful to another believer, you have no “right” to a private little world in which you flirt with or actively violate those vows, even if it’s “only” online. (For now at least.) You can password-protect your phone, laptop or PC and clear your browser cache at the end of every session, but the day you slip up and get caught (and you will), do not expect to convincingly hold the moral high ground over your suspicious husband or wife. You don’t have it, at least not from scripture.

That said, I don’t believe a suspicious partner is always wise to invoke his or her legitimate God-given rights. You will definitely create bigger trust issues, and you will damage your relationship. Much depends on how much evidence you have to work with and how many other people stand to be injured. A wife who suspects her husband of infidelity may choose to remain silent and pray if the couple is childless. A husband who suspects his wife of infidelity when she is a homemaker and mother of three young children doing her gallivanting during the day has different concerns and obligations.

In the end, as with most difficult questions, it comes down to conscience. If you feel like there is the slightest chance you may wind up in a situation where you have to apologize to your partner and ask for their forgiveness, it is not yet time to hack their password or watch for them to leave their phone unattended.

The Revealer of Mysteries

My own conscience would not allow me to violate a spouse’s perceived right of privacy without hard evidence in hand. In relationship situations where I feel important information is being withheld from me, I have historically resorted to prayer instead of covert action. In every case, within days my suspicions have either been confirmed or satisfactorily defused with multiple pieces of highly improbable — nay, near-miraculous — newly revealed evidence. I never had to lift a finger.

As Nebuchadnezzar put it, our God is a “revealer of mysteries”. I believe we are often wise to let him do so in his own time. At least, that’s my personal experience.