SHAME

Gershon Kaufman in Shame: The Power of Caring writes,

“To feel shame is to feel seen in a painfully diminished sense. The self feels exposed both to itself and to anyone else present. Contained in the experience of shame is the piercing awareness of ourselves as fundamentally deficient in some vital way as a human being. To live with shame is to experience the very essence or heart of the self as wanting. Shame is an impotence-making experience because it feels as though there is no way to relieve the matter, no way to restore the balance of things. One has simply failed as a human being. No single action is seen as wrong, and, hence reparable. So, ‘there is nothing I can do to make up for it.’ This is impotence. Such loss of face is inherent in shame. To live with shame is to feel alienated and defeated, never quite good enough to belong. And secretly we feel to blame. The deficiency lies within ourselves alone. Shame is without parallel a sickness of the soul.” (pp.8,11)

I have found that my perfectionism, my desire to be perfect, was a defense against feeling shame. If I could be perfect, and never make a mistake, or never admit making a mistake, I could avoid criticism, and therefore, shame. I found that when I allowed myself to be defined by others, and what they thought of me, I was vulnerable to criticism and shame. I did not want to be thought defective, or inadequate, so I had to defend my perfection. I did not want to feel bad about myself so I had to protect myself against failure. I made an idol of my self-image, and my reputation.

All too often a tragic response to shame is rage at oneself for one’s failure, rage which can turn into depression. We feel weak if we own the shame, so we deflect how bad we feel about our self-image by rage against others or ourselves. We have to take it out on someone. Young men who are dropped by their girlfriends sometimes cannot bear the shame and attempt suicide.

Dan Allender and Tremper Longman (The Cry of the Soul: How Our Emotions Reveal Our Deepest Questions about God, Navpress 1994), believe that shame is rooted in our inherent preference to trust false gods rather than to depend on God for each and every moment of our existence.

“Shame arises when we feel deficient, yes. But far more, we feel deficient and ugly when the god we (covertly and unconsciously) worship lets us down and reveals the foolishness of our idolatrous trust. Shame is not primarily an experience of feeling bad or deficient as it is the exposure of foolish trust in a god who is not God. Shame exposes what we worship. Our culture declares, ‘Shame arises because I am a victim and I feel bad about myself.’ The Bible declares, ‘Shame arises because I am an idolater and I feel foolish when my idol topples.’” (pp.197,199)

The prophet Isaiah classically describes the foolishness of putting our trust in idols of our own making.

“All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless.

Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame.

Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit him nothing?

He and his kind will be put to shame.” (44:9-11)

The idol is the product of one’s own hands, or that of the craftsman who made it. It is our own creation, a mere extension of ourselves. It is worship of self-sufficiency, a way to worship oneself, one’s own work.

“The great delusion of idolatry is that we can find rapture in ourselves – and therefore gain both exhilaration in and control over our god. The object of his desire is little more than a symbol of his own grandiose self. How often do we trust our finances, health, reputation, children, and physical appearance to satisfy our souls more than God? Shame is an internal wake-up call – we are worshipping a god who is not God.” (op.cit. p.200f.)

What does the Gospel do to help us heal our shame? We must first of all expose our idols for what they are. Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to those who “were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else.” The Pharisee prayed about himself, and boasted of his perfectionism. He told God how good he was. He is like us when we think we can impress God with our goodness: “I have never knowingly hurt anybody!!!!!”  In contrast the tax collector would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Jesus commended this man rather than the Pharisee.

The tax collector did not worship himself. He knew that he was a sinner. He knew that he was in need of a Savior. He was sorry for his failures. His sorrow and brokenness opened him up to receive healing through forgiveness and acceptance by God. He was like the psalmist who cried,

“To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in you I trust, O my God.

Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.

No one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame.

Remember, O Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.

Remember not the sins of my youth and my rebellious ways;

According to your love remember me, for you are good, O Lord.” (25:1,2,6,7)

The good news is that “no one whose hope is in you will ever be put to shame.” Why? Because God’s great mercy and love towards us are from the beginning. At the basis of our existence is God’s love for us. No matter what man can do to us, we can be assured that God, who brought us into this world, values us highly and wants us to receive his love.

When we seek the Lord for healing of our shame, we displace our idols with the living and true God. Unlike the idol, God has the power to change our orientation. Instead of being self-absorbed and self-justifying, we become aware that our failure, our shame, has been taken from us. It has been nailed to the Cross.

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)

As a result of his bearing our shame, we can be grateful that we no longer have to bear that burden – the Savior has taken that from us. We can be thankful – God has been merciful to us out of his goodness. “Shame has no power in a heart full of thanksgiving.” When we put our trust in Christ crucified for us, we no longer need to trust in the idol of our self-image.

This does not mean that from henceforth we no longer feel shame. Old habits die hard. The devil tempts us to return to the idols we have erected for ourselves over the years. Healing from shame means continually realizing God’s great mercy and love toward us, our need for forgiveness, and the provision of the cross to meet that need.

My problem was that I hated to admit failure. I wanted to be successful in all that I did. Who doesn’t? Nobody wants to bake a bad cake or slice a drive from the tee in front of everybody! But if we are not prepared to admit that we can fail, we will never attempt to bake cakes or play golf. We must make room for failure in our lives. We fear failure more than we care to admit. But if we are realistic about our lives, we know that we are going to fail from time to time. We must give ourselves permission to be human, so that when we fail, we will not be devastated by it, feel so bad about ourselves, or shamed.

It is unrealistic to expect that we are going to succeed at all times and in everything. But most of us behave as though we must. How much allowance do you make for failing? Although we have many successes in life, we often only remember the failures. The failures cancel out the successes. Somehow we think that no one notices our successes and everyone sees our failures. It is as though they are published in the news. We are so bound up by what others think of us, that we cringe when we think they know about our failures.

We have heard that “failure is not final.” We know that we learn from our failures. God does not demand that we succeed at everything we do – we place this demand on ourselves. Most of our failures are of our own creation. We prepare ourselves for failure by setting unrealistic goals, and then expecting that we must meet them. Or we blame other people for our failures.

God accepts us for what we are in Christ. He offers us loving forgiveness and acceptance. Paul urges us: “Do not think of yourselves more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” (Romans 12:3) In other words, be realistic, be human, accept your limitations, and don’t expect more of yourself than God.

J.B.Phillips translated Paul this way, “Don’t cherish exaggerated ideas of yourself or your importance, but try to have a sane estimate of your capabilities by the light of the faith that God has given to you all.”

Perfectionism is a form of idolatry. It is worshiping an exaggerated idea of oneself and one’s own importance. Failure and the shame that results from it, humbles us and brings us to the foot of the cross. It is there that we find true acceptance and forgiveness.

God undermines our idol of self-confidence. He came in Jesus and was born in shame, lived a human life in shame, and then died in the most shameful manner. Shame is evil’s greatest weapon against God. But God took the weapon of evil and used it to mock and then to destroy evil. He uses shame to expose our idolatry, draw us to the Cross, and keep us humble. Our hearts are filled with gratitude. We can become willing to accept suffering for the sake of being free from comparison-making to serve the true God.

“Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.” (Hebrews 13:12,13)