How quickly would we want to leave the room if every action we had ever done was displayed on a screen, followed by a written list of every thought we had ever entertained? Deep down, we all feel ashamed and embarrassed by our sin. We don’t want people to find us out. – It is said that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the British physician and author (creator of Sherlock Holmes), once played a practical joke on a dozen friends; all of them well-known public figures. He sent each of the men an anonymous telegram that simply said, “Flee at once. All is discovered.” Twenty-four later every one of them had left the country. – Virtually all of us have something in our lives, which we are ashamed of; something we would not want everyone to know about.

Nicky Gumbel, Alpha Questions of Life, 2007 edition, Eastbourne: Kingsway Communications, p.162/3.