Shame

Thinking about shame lately...

We all can think of times when we have felt, for lack of a better word, shame. Perhaps a story where we felt shamed by someone. I can think of one when a significant person in my life, someone I looked up to, said something that made me feel terribly small and insignificant. It was a moment of shame.

What do we do with these moments? Some of us relive them and seemed to be trapped by them. Others seek to avoid them in order to keep away from ever experiencing the feeling again. Still others get ambushed by a moment of shame, like a sudden wave crashing down, sending them into a downward spiral. 

The conventional way of dealing with shame is to confront shame in order to somehow get rid of it and thus become free of it. Yet, I wonder if God has another purpose for shame.

My mind goes back to the Garden of Eden. What we see there in Genesis chapter three is a picture of shame directly entering the picture after Eve, and then Adam, ate the forbidden fruit. If we rewind a couple of verses to the end of chapter two, before sin entered them, we hear that "the man and the woman were naked and were not ashamed." Can you imagine that? Never being aware of even a hint of shame? That’s what it was like before the fall of mankind.

Then sin entered the world. Both were immediately aware of their nakedness, were very much ashamed and self-conscious, something they never experienced before. They then proceeded to sew fig leaves together in order to cover their shame. This was their superficial attempt to escape, or get free from, the deep sense of exposure they felt which was now imbedded in them.

It seems to me that the modern, conventional way of dealing with shame follows this same direction. The idea is that we can somehow deal with our shame without thinking about our sin. Yet, since shame is a direct result of sin, we would do better to seek to connect the two, to understand the connection between shame and sin before we attempt to do anything.

First, we need to understand, from a relationally biblical perspective, that the experience of shame, while difficult to deal with internally, has a greater purpose in our lives. Not that shame itself is good (in heaven it will be done away with). It is good in the sense that, for now, it can be profitable/helpful to us.

I want to be careful here. I don’t mean that shaming people is a good thing. It’s a terrible thing! Nor is it good to be shamed by someone else. That’s awful!

Yet, there is something else God wants us to see. Gently and persistently he calls to us not to run from our shame. In Genesis chapter three, God calls Adam and Eve out into the open and connects their shame with something else. He wants them to see that something has gone terribly wrong. Shame is an indication of what has gone wrong within us. It is like the engine light going on in your car. We need to look under the hood so to speak to see what has gone wrong.

Adam and Eve, and every person who has existed after them (expect Jesus) have tried to make life work apart from God. Any experience of shame, not matter how awful, can be an indication of this foolish decision. It’s foolish because we will not find the rest we are looking for without God. And yet, because of sin, we try to do that very thing. We try to get on in our lives without him. Shame stops us in our tracks, or at least it can, and then gets us to think “What’s wrong in this relationship? What’s wrong in others? What’s wrong in me?”

The Bible provides some examples of how the experience of shame can be good/profitable/helpful. My mind goes to Jeremiah 6, where God is talking to Jeremiah about how his people have tried to make life work without Him. They are stubbornly trying to find rest, find Shalom, without God. Not possible! So God calls them out. He says this (I’m paraphrasing a bit) "They have no shame. They do not even know how to blush. Show them the ancient paths!" The clear implication is that God wants them to feel shame so that they can be reminded of what has gone wrong and find their way back to Him. God speaks angrily but it is an anger that is for their good. Just like parents who get angry at their children when they are stubbornly doing something that will hurt them or others in the end.

C.S. Lewis says something very important about shame. It is counter-intuitive but also life-giving. He says shame is a lot like a piping hot cup of hot chocolate. Try to do anything with it other than drink it, then is scalds. However, if we drink it to the bottom, then it will nourish us. The clear implication is that we should not only feel our shame but we should follow it all the way down to its deepest source…and then something good can happen.

It is not a good idea to try to get rid of our shame or to help someone else get rid of their shame. It is far better to think about how God is bringing it out into the open for a deeper purpose…to help us see how we continue to try to rid ourselves of shame without first coming to Him and hearing from Him. Seeing the deeper purpose is the only way to be truly free of shame.

I’m recalling that time when I felt terribly shamed by someone. How small I felt! How belittled! For years I tried to get rid of that feeling. It never worked. Then it dawned on me one day, “Maybe I should think more deeply about this? Maybe God is doing a deeper work?" I came to the conclusion “Something’s wrong in this person. Very wrong. Something’s wrong all over the world. Something is also wrong within me.”

Jesus was exposed to open shame, in part, to remind us of our shame, the shame due to sin, so that we could come to him, find forgiveness, discover the power of the Holy Spirit, and thus find true freedom. In Hebrews 12 it says that Jesus “despised the shame”. He was the only one who did not have to drink it to the bottom. Because he never sinned, and therefore never felt the shame of sin. But then again, he did feel shame for our sake on the cross…the shame of our sin. He despised it, I think in part meaning, “The shame of sin is not the end of the story. Forgiveness through me is the end of the story.” So hopeful.

This is meaty stuff. I don’t claim to understand it perfectly for myself. But there is something freeing here. It is revolutionary thinking. That's because Jesus Christ is the greatest revolutionary who ever lived. I encourage you to ponder these thoughts and wrestle with them with the hope that you will find more of the freedom that only God can provide.

The best it yet to come dear friends.