The Power of Shame

Shame is a corruption in our understanding of personal identity.  This week, as I lean in toward preaching about “throwing off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles,” my mind is consistently drawn back to shame.  Shame is an obstruction in many lives that prevents us from moving forward in a relationship with God, because acceptance of the love of God is nearly impossible when you feel “unloveable.”  Shame is the belief that at the core of our being, we are without value, without worth, an embarrassment, a hindrance to others, and unlovely.  Shame is a chasm that places a person on one side and all other relationships, including a relationship with God, on the other side.  Though people shout loudly their love for that person, it echoes in the gulf that separates them but never seems to pierce the heart of the person entrenched in shame. 

Shame can be the result of abuse.  Often those abused, physically, mentally, spiritually, and especially sexually have internalized that abuse as result of a perceived corruption in their being.  Shame says, “I deserved this.”  “I caused this.”  Shame will lead a person into similar circumstances over and over again, reaping similar consequences, because “I don’t deserve any better than this.”  A healthy identity has a humble confidence and been the regular recipient of positive affirmation and loving discipline.  Shame is a crevice in the soul where those affirmations slip through the crack and pour out on the floor without ever taking up residence.

Shame can also be the result of untended guilt.  Guilt is not a bad thing.  Guilt can be the healthy recognition of a deed done wrong.  Guilt can be God’s way of helping us to come to terms with the nature our sin.  Guilt can be a set up for confession, forgiveness, and growth.  The outcome of guilt can be freedom.  However, if guilt is left to lay in a person’s soul, it compounds, as it compounds it gets mired in a person’s identity.  Early, a person might have said, “I’ve done bad and need to make correction.”  Later becomes, “I am bad and beyond correction.”  Shame is the outgrowth of guilt gone awry.  Guilt can be the gift the Spirit which sets us up for the cleansing of God’s Spirit.  However, the longer it is left to dwell, it becomes the devil’s tool to paralyze us. 

However a person arrives at shame, the consequence is the same, life alone, bitter, and frustrated on one side of a chasm.  Fortunately for us, our story tells of a God that crosses the chasm.  What we discover about Jesus is that on the cross, he travels the gulf.  On the cross, not only is our guilt dealt with in terms of forgiveness, on the cross, Jesus also takes upon himself our shame and bears it to death.  He is crucified, a torturous tool of humiliation and shame, naked and hung by those that despised him.  He was left alone on that cross to breathe his last in shame.  Likewise, he suffered outside the city.  He suffered on a hill away from those he’d come to love.  The power of shame was present on the cross.   

But…the power of God’s love triumphed in that moment.  It is always the power of love that conquers the power of shame.  In love, Jesus took upon himself the shame of humanity, the rejection, the sense of forsakenness, the isolation, the corruption of hope.  In taking that shame, Jesus carried it to death, so that it might never exercise its power again.  In love he embraced our shame so that we would not have to live bound by that shame any longer.  On the cross, Jesus says, “My love for you refuses a chasm, refuses shame, rejects a corrupted identity, and sees in you the worth of God’s child.”  My love refuses to echo in a gulf.  My love leaps the gulf and pierces the soul.  When the love of God comes…it pushes out the perversion and replaces it with a humble awe.  It cries out, “Who am I that God would love me?”  “I am His child, that’s who.”  A faithful confident walk in Christ happens as we cast off the shame that taints our identity and embrace the love of God in Christ Jesus, who leaped the chasm that we’d be set free.  #bwccpressingon

Tomorrow, we will deal the vital role that the community of Jesus followers plays in dealing with shame in a person’s life.