Slaying the Monster Shame

Shame, if we’re human, we have it. It dogs us, discourages us, keeps us in hiding or striving to prove we are worth more than the whispers of our self-condemnation.  

So, where does shame come from?

How does shame affect us?

What’s the antidote to shame?

First, let’s distinguish between guilt and shame.

Guilt is the feeling that we’ve done something wrong.

Shame is the feeling that there’s something wrong with us.

How do these things affect us?

• Confessed guilt leads to repentance. Hidden guilt leads to shame.
• Shame leaves us hiding and masking who really are.

To show you how guilt led to shame in my own life, I include a flash memoir about when the monster shame was born in my life.

Ice Blue Secret

After Christmas vacation, after sleeping with the first boy I ever slept with for all the wrong reasons, I come home from school, turn on the tiny TV in the den, and change the channel to Dark Shadows, the soap opera I used to watch with my best friend, Linda.  Flopped in the chair, my hand deep in a can of Charles chips, an Ice Blue Secret commercial pauses the plot.  I see a young woman seated at a dressing table facing a round mirror.  She wears a satin wedding dress.  Her veil, swept back over a tiara, looks like a crown.  Her mother stands next to her in a sedate mother-of-the bride suit with matching pill box hat, demi-veil and silk pumps. The mother hands the daughter the deodorant, leans in and whispers. The daughter smiles.  The ad’s intent is clear, to link the long-awaited thrill of the wedding night with the need for an anti-perspirant able to withstand the impending steam. The implied bliss of course requires a pristine bride whose snow-white purity has never been melted, a figurine bride waiting atop a wedding cake for her perfect groom.  A princess awaiting her prince, no portcullis lowered by pot or alcohol, no pressure vented, a young woman entering the marriage bed at full throttle.

When the ad is over, I turn off the TV, pull on my coat, grab my mother’s snow shoes, and head towards the bird sanctuary at the far end of the neighborhood.  In the frigid air, I walk through the small clouds of my own breath.  At the edge of the forest, I strap the awkward rawhide netting to my feet and climb into deep powder. Tramping through the trees, I hear the coo of mourning doves, the squawk of blue jays, the chick-a-dee-dee-dee of small black-capped birds. A bright red cardinal slashes my view, and as the winter sun begins to set, I confess to no one, that by abdicating the virgin throne atop the aforementioned-cake, I am secretly damaged.  My ice blue conclusion—I’m no longer worthy of true love.  

So why did I react to my guilt this way? Why did I conclude I was no longer worthy of love? Because I am a descendant of Adam and Eve, we all are. And Adam and Eve were created without the ability to cope with sin because they were created for a world without it. Makes sense, right? Hear that. Humans have no ability to cope with sins we commit, or sins others commit against us. On our own we’re defenseless.

Defenseless because that’s how we’re made, plus we now have a sin nature and are living in a fallen world where everyone else has a sin nature too that doesn’t disappear at the moment of salvation. That means every day, like Paul says, we don’t do things that we want to do, and we do stuff we don’t want to do, stuff that’s destructive to both ourselves and others. In our flesh, we are unable to love our neighbor or even ourselves.

Sounds horrible, but God always had a plan. Jesus paid the price for all our sins on the cross. We know this.

Or, we think we do. When I was a brand-new Christian, my understanding of the cross was a kind of basic arithmetic. All my past sins plus Jesus equaled zero. The cross brought me back to ground zero, with a get-out-of hell-free card, but from then on, I assumed I was on my own to keep clean by obeying God’s commandments.

Thankfully, my early Christian arithmetic was completely wrong. Our salvation doesn’t rest on our behavior before we come to salvation or even after. Jesus plus my entire lifetime of sins past, present and future doesn’t equal zero, it equals the infinity of God’s unchanging, eternal love for me and you, and the supernatural work of his grace. This is why the gospel is good news because as long as we live, we’ll continue to screw up.

But as a believer, when God sees me naked without pretense or mask, He sees me through the lens of Christ as holy, chosen and beloved, the purified bride of Christ. The book The Cure says, “Grace, is the face love wears when it meets imperfection.” This is the face of God.

Then why do I still feel lousy about myself at times? Why won’t shame let go?

Perhaps because the past seems like more concrete evidence of our shame than the word of God.

But this is the same twisted lie straight out of the garden that asks us to trust what Satan says about us instead of what God has already done on our behalf. There is nothing wrong with me that isn’t wrong with every human on the planet. All of us are stuck with the same sin nature this side of paradise. No temptation has seized us except that which is common to man. And the sins against me may be horrific, but Jesus carried them too once and for all.

Just today, I found a letter my daughter wrote me after her divorce which said, “There is only today. God grants us freedom from worry of tomorrow, and the past is an immovable object that cannot be acted on, changed, fixed, or erased.” But God’s love is molten able to transform our past into compassion, mercy, and wisdom.

God prophesized through Isaiah 43:18-19 to, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; don’t you perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

What is that new thing? 

2Corinthians:17-20, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors as though God were making his appeal through us.”

This is why I write memoir, as a testimony of the reconciliation of God in my own life.

My point is God hears, God sees, God knows, think, Hagar, the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery. Whether it’s sins we’ve committed, or sins committed against us, he never condemns. We blame shift, resent, and condemn ourselves. But Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set you free from the law of sin and death.”

 Psalm 18:16-19 says, “He reached down from on high and took hold of me, he drew me out of deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful enemy, from foes who were too strong for me. They confronted me in the day of my disaster, but the Lord was my support. He brought me into a spacious place; he rescued me because he delighted in me.”

So, why do we still feel bad about ourselves at times?

For me, the solution lies in focusing on who God is and how much he loves me instead of focusing on all my dirt and flubs. When shame enters my mind, I recall God’s truth. As a believer I am now a child of God, the high king of heaven. I have infinite worth. No sin can be counted against me. I am not what I do or what anyone else has done to me. When God looks at me, he sees the perfection of Christ on my behalf. I am pure, loved, and in the ongoing process of redemption.

And redemption is not a re-do. It’s a re-am. God is the great I Am, and I am made in his image. God recreates me, reclaims me, re-news me, rejoices over me, and reconciles with me. Reconcile sounds like domicile, meaning he wants to live with us again like back in Eden’s garden.  Everything that’s happened that Satan meant for evil, God transforms for my good and the good of everyone I have the privilege of influencing. If I am not the product of my achievements, neither am I the product of my sins or those done against me.

It’s also important to note, God, my heavenly father, is nothing like crummy earthly fathers, absent fathers, or abusive fathers. Norm Wakefield, in Living in the Presence of God, says, “He is a joyous happy person who delights to have us near. Always immediately available and attuned to our every cry. He is a dad who cares deeply about our well-being and who wants to guide us in decision making that will be wise and fruitful. He is a father who provides security and safety in the midst of life’s storms. He is slow to anger, and rich in love. He is always seeking us. He is patient with our failure and sin, and quick to forgive.”

So, sisters, cling to these truths. Recognize toxic people and influences in your life that treat you as if you are worth less than God says you are and set boundaries. Surround yourself with a community of trustworthy friends willing to unmask and be real and remind each other of all we mean to our daddy, God.

So, this is my prayer, from Psalm 34 “May our souls boast in the Lord; let the afflicted (those still bruised and healing) hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me, let us exalt his name together. I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears (that I’m not enough, worthless, bad, unusable, polluted, unlovable). Those who look to him are radiant their faces are never covered with shame. “Be radiant in the confidence of God’s over-the-moon love for you.

If you remember nothing else from what I shared today, remember this:

We are not what we do or what has been done to us. We are who we are as a result of our relationship with a God who is our savior, our redeemer, our friend, a mighty counselor, the prince of peace, the door, the way to a fresh, clean, lovable identity forever and ever AMEN! This is the antidote to shame. This is how we slay the monster.

I will leave you with these books that may help you understanding how much God loves you:

The Cure— about trusting rather than performing for God

Lay it Down— about not striving but resting in our identity in God

Who Gives a Rip About Sin— about how to overcome the power of sin by the grace of God

Living in the Presence of God—about how God is the perfect Daddy many of us never had.

Teacher Dropout, Finding Grace in an Unjust School—about how God revealed my core identity in Christ while I was striving to prove myself at an under-performing school and felt like a failure.