about shame

Shame is an unpopular subject.

Obviously, shame is a very negative emotion.  It is like embarrassment, only far worse.  My old Webster's dictionary defines shame as: "A painful feeling of having lost the respect of others because of the improper behavior, incompetence, etc. of oneself or another."  Shame is when you don't want to show your face, or when you shouldn't want to show your face.

Often it seems that those who ought to be the most ashamed of themselves are the least ashamed of themselves, but that is an aside, so back to the point:

Shame is an unpopular subject, an unpopular idea.  I heard a teaching very recently, where the teacher declared that shame is the primary tool of the devil in attacking the sons of men.  His premise was that God does not want us to be shamed, and that shame somehow caused the Fall of Adam and Eve into sin.

This man's explanation of how shame was the primary cause of original sin was so poor that I simply cannot regurgitate it.  No logic carried the thought.  He was wrong, point blank.

Shame did not cause the original sin.  Pride did.  Ambition.  Lack of faith.  The desire to be like God, while mistrusting and disbelieving God.  An aspect of fear--the fear of missing out on something good--might have been at play, and maybe even curiosity.  But shame was not a causal factor in this event.  Shame was the result.  Shame was the result of disbelief in the goodness and faithfulness of God.  Shame was the result of giving the lies of Satan more credence than the truth of God.  Shame was the result of sin.  Shame is always the result of sin.*

Additionally, Satan did not use shame to tempt Eve to sin.  That would be ridiculous.  This was the original Fall, before there had been any sin, so there could not have been any shame yet.  Satan generally draws humankind into sin with some sort of enticement.  Shame is not an enticement.  Satan entices through deception.  Satan uses deception as his primary weapon, not shame.

Shame is the remorseful feeling we experience after we sin.  Guilt and shame are very closely related.  Guilt is the fact that one has done something wrong, a fact that can be established and proven.  A person can also feel guilty, and feeling guilty is almost identical to experiencing shame.

I don't think Satan can actually affect our feelings directly.  I'm not positive that I'm right about that, but I don't think he can.  What Satan can do, what he does all the time, is lie.  Satan is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44).  He is very accomplished and effective at lying, so much so that we often think he can do more things than he really can.  He wants to domineer and intimidate us, accuse and discourage us.  He loves to hold out a shiny trinket to lure us into danger, and then laugh out loud while he watches us fall into the depths of shame.

Guilt and shame are the natural consequences that follow sin.  They are not all bad.  Just as it is healthy to be able to realize that the iron is hot, and you should not keep your finger in contact with it, it is also healthy to feel shame and remorse after you sin, so that you will realize your soul needs repair, and the behavior that led to your shame should be avoided in the future.

God graciously allows us to feel guilt and shame so we will perceive our need to receive forgiveness and enter into a restored relationship with Him (those with seared consciences, who do not feel shame, are much farther from salvation than those who feel the pain of shame and remorse).  I have a friend who shared with me about the day she was saved, and she said with glowing eyes, "All I could think about was the wonder that my sins were forgiven!  My sins were forgiven!"  If we never felt the weight of shame, we could never feel the wonder of having it lifted, washed away by the grace of Christ Jesus who loved us and gave Himself for us.  We could never feel the intense gratitude, or the overwhelming joy.

So yes, the confusion.  You see, there is true shame, which comes from our sins.  And there is false shame, which Satan flings at us to keep us down after we have been forgiven and washed clean through the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

There is also shame that arises from things other people have done, shame that should not be assigned to a victim of someone else's sin, but through the lies and deception of Satan, it is.

Notice, the tactic of Satan is deception, lying, perverting the truth.  The result is shame.  But the tactic is always to deceive, to hide the truth.

This becomes particularly insidious in certain cases.  Take, for example, the story of a little child who is sexually abused.  A little, innocent child, raped in body, mind and soul.  Satan will grab such a  foothold and start whispering lies that very day:  "You aren't worthy.  You are dirty.  You are bad.  You deserved for this thing to happen to you.  You asked for it.  You are not like other people.  You will never be like other people.  You are flawed and marked.  Nobody loves you, and nobody ever will."  These are terrible lies from the pit of hell.  The child will be full of shame because of these lies.

As these lies become ingrained into the child's psyche, the child will act on the identity that grows out of the lies.  This is where the damage is especially insidious: As the lies Satan plants in the innocent child's heart take root, the child might begin to commit sins of her own, her own personal sin.  These sins that she commits will add to her shame, and ostensibly "prove" that the lies Satan fed her were "true."  Now she really is personally guilty.  At one point, she was an innocent victim, but even innocent victims are fallen people in a fallen world, and thus they can find themselves plunging into their own personal swamp of sinfulness.   Satan, the accuser, says, "You're a worthless person.  You're just gross."  The child--who may never have heard of our rescuing Savior--believes the devil and succumbs to the sucking quicksand of miry clay.

Praise Jesus, though, He lives to rescue us from the miry clay.

He drew me up from the pit of destruction

out of the miry bog,

and set my feet upon a rock,

making my steps secure.

He put a new song in my mouth,

a song of praise to our God.

Many will see and fear,

and put their trust in the Lord.

~Psalm 40:2-3

I think we can categorize most shame into four categories.

Category 1 Shame is normal, rightful shame, the shame we feel when we transgress against the perfect, holy, loving God who made us.  It leads us to repentance and confession, whereby we receive forgiveness and freedom from sin through Christ.  2 Corinthians 7:10 says, "For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death."

Category 2 Shame is when Satan tries to tempt us to despair and remind us of our former guilt, even though Ephesians 1:7 tells us, "In [Jesus] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace."  When we feel this type of shame, the proper response is to immerse ourselves in the truth of scripture and remind ourselves that our salvation is secure through the finished work of Christ, and worship Him for His victory!  Category 2 Shame is a type of false shame, based on the devil's lies, specifically that Christ's victory was not complete and does not apply to us.  That is a lie.  Christ triumphed over sin at the cross, and when we put our faith in Him, we stand victoriously freed, redeemed by the blood Jesus shed for our forgiveness.

Category 3 Shame is shame people feel because of some shameful act that was perpetrated against them or in some way touches and shadows them.  (Ezekiel 18 speaks to our culpability for our own sin, but not others' sin.) Category 3 Shame is a type of false shame, based on the devil's lies about where a person's responsibility lies.

Category 4 Shame results from acts of personal sin that follow as a result of lies believed after suffering Category 3 Shame.  In tragic situations, such as cases of childhood sexual abuse, we feel extreme pity for the person suffering this type of shame, and our pity is appropriate.  However, at its core, this type of shame is not completely different from Category 1 Shame.  It is the result of a person's personal transgression against God.  Furthermore, probably all Category 1 Shame is in some way Category 4 Shame, because we are all sinners, and we all hurt each other, continually.  Sometimes it is purposeful and sometimes quite by accident, but our lives intertwine in a constant series of missteps, people sinning against each other and causing more ripples of sin, except where grace intervenes.

A young mother has a disagreement with her husband before he leaves for work.  This puts her into a bad mood, and she speaks harshly to her little boy before she drops him off at kindergarten.  The little boy goes into his classroom feeling bad about himself, and tells the little girl who sits next to him that she is ugly.  Meanwhile, the husband goes off to work and flirts with his secretary because he is dissatisfied with his home life.  On and on goes sin, begetting more sin, until somewhere a miracle of grace breaks the chain and begins a new direction.

It really doesn't matter where the sin originated.  Abusers were usually abused themselves.  Even indulgence is abuse, for that matter, and when you figure that in, you have nearly all the sin in the world covered.  It all goes back to the garden, where Eve and Adam reached beyond the words of God for something they suspected He was keeping from them.  Eve and Adam swallowed the devil's lie.

Sin is the problem, and it's the thing God hates most.  God hates sin because He loves us, and sin hurts us.  Sin always leads to shame and more sin, and it always creates distance between us and our wondrous Lord whose purpose is to restore us to dwell with Him in paradise.  There will be no sin in paradise.  That's why paradise is paradise.

We get so caught up in blaming.  It doesn't matter whose fault it is.  It doesn't matter.  The world is rough, but we can be released from the cycle, because Jesus paid the price for our forgiveness with His precious life.  No matter whom we might try to blame, the One Person who was totally, utterly, perfectly blameless is the Person who died to set us free.  Because of Jesus, we can be free.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
~Romans 8:1-2

And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
~John 8:32

Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me."
~John 14:6

Shame is the result of sin, and Jesus died to free us from sin.  Ultimately, being free from sin means being free from shame, too.  However, in order to lay hold of freedom from shame, we need to humbly repent.  We must admit that we have fallen short, and that even if something was somebody else's fault, the overarching sin problem is continued personally in each one of us.  If a particular person had not sinned against us, we still would have sinned: "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Romans 3:23).

The glorious thing is that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  I don't think I'm ever going to get over Romans 5:8.  God loves us, even though every one of us arrives in this world broken and stained with the mark of sin.  He loves us and He is constantly at work with His mighty power and His righteous right hand, reaching out to pull us up out of the morass of sin and into His Kingdom.  The truth is, we are born sinners in need of a Savior.  The truth is, there is a Savior who is greater than anything we could ever ask for or imagine.  The truth is, we can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God and nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord

Shame is not the thing we need to escape.  Sin is the thing we need to escape.  True shame helps us escape from sin as we seek relief through the grace of forgiveness.  We must not fear the truth.  It may be painful.  It may cut like a double-edged sword, but the truth performs good surgery that leads to life and health.  Truth cuts away the cancer of sin.  Yes, there is such a thing as false shame, but when shame is false, it isn't the shame we need to escape.  It's the falsehood, the lie.

The truth is that we need forgiveness from sin, and forgiveness is grace, and that is where we find the end of shame.  In fact, this is the essence of the gospel.

Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,

of whom I am the foremost.

But I received mercy for this reason:

that in me, as the foremost,

Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience

as an example to those

who were to believe in Him for eternal life.

To the King of the ages,

immortal, invisible, the only God,

be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen

~1 Timothy 1:15-17

Flee sin and run to the Lord, to the truth, the beauty, the light and the life.  To Jesus.








*Shame is always the result of sin, but the person who feels the shame is not always the person who committed the sin.  If you read the entire post, you know that we dealt with this phenomenon.  Shame is not always the result of a sin committed by the person who feels the shame.  It is sometimes the result of someone else's sin, as the dictionary definition pointed out at the beginning: A painful feeling of having lost the respect of others because of the improper behavior, incompetence, etc. of oneself or another."  But I maintain that shame is always the result of someone's sin.