What is it? What does it mean? What to do about it?
The first mention of shame in the Bible Is in the Garden when Adam and Eve fled from God’s presence because they had disobeyed Him and were well aware that things were very different.
Scripture tells us initially “They were naked and not ashamed.” Then suddenly one act of disobedience and now we read, they were naked and hid themselves because they were ashamed!
I remember reading this as a child, thinking naked meant naked…no clothes on. I am sure that's true since Adam and Eve had no need for clothing in a perfect environment, and I do mean perfect. Perfect harmony first with themselves, second with each other and most of all with God. There was delight in everything, imagine that? This is harmony at its finest. The complementary rolls that God had established to work in perfection no longer worked as God intended. The woman would have a sin tendency to disrespect her man’s role of leadership and the man in his sinfulness would tend to abuse his authority and even crush the woman.
Both have great difficulty stepping into their role as God created. Both can be aggressive demanding and or passive, avoiding. Now emotions are heavy and hard and difficult, and we attempt to avoid them at all costs. We attempt to avoid pain, in any way possible, escaping reality.
In our journey of the life that we are now living we try to escape the bludgeons of assault, betrayal, passion and loss. For most of us the easiest emotion to express is anger…which hides what we are really feeling. This anger covers over and kills any other emotion that we feel, as it is always a secondary emotion. We feel hurt, confusion, sad, then anger. We escape sadness by opting for shame and we bypass loss by giving into jealousy or resentment. We use one emotion on top of the first to hide from one another, and to escape the pain that we feel.
Our emotions reveal how we’re doing with God.
Am I moving toward God with awe and gratitude or am I turning away creating false gods? As we turn away, we turn to anything that will ease the pain, the hurt and remove the burning like fire feeling inside of us. We turn to may offerings, food, alcohol drugs, shopping, exercising, screen time, scrolling, numbing out on the 10th reel we’ve just watched, and now we have new ways to numb our pain… Cutting...Anything we turn to other than God becomes an idol. Before we had screens of all sizes, we had TVs. We could sit and veg out in front of the TV hour after hour, day after day. This is what my husband did when he was in the hospital in Japan after being wounded in Vietnam. There weren’t many options with his arm in traction. His day consisted of meeting with doctors, procedures and more procedures, going through physical therapy, sitting in bed, watching TV, eating, sleeping, day after day…repeat. Of course, I’m not sure what else one does when every movement hurts, even breathing hurts. There wasn’t a lot of other options. God uses all our emotions to reveal us to us, he’s revealing our heart to us if we stop long enough to listen. How can we understand God’s righteous and holy jealousy for us, for his people if we don’t experience our own human envy and jealousy; however, ours is much different from God’s. To comprehend deeply the heart of God, we must seek to understand and feel and experience and deal with these emotions he gave us.
Both jealousy and envy involve a furious demand that our soul not suffer. His jealousy is pure and holy because he loves us and wants us close to him and he knows what’s out there that will destroy. The heart is an idol making machine…much like children’s bubble machine. Running to that “thing” is creating an idol as we attempt to protect self from any possibility of pain. Despair is a refusal to struggle… the fear of hoping lest I be disappointed. First by choice and it just becomes what we do, automatically without thinking. Losing the ability to hope, and continue the struggle, despair sets in.
SHAME - Good, Godly healthy shame vs toxic shame
We hide…just as Adam and Even did, from others and from ourselves.
Consider these 4 emotions.
I'll pick this up here this next time. Stay tuned.
Scripture tells us initially “They were naked and not ashamed.” Then suddenly one act of disobedience and now we read, they were naked and hid themselves because they were ashamed!
I remember reading this as a child, thinking naked meant naked…no clothes on. I am sure that's true since Adam and Eve had no need for clothing in a perfect environment, and I do mean perfect. Perfect harmony first with themselves, second with each other and most of all with God. There was delight in everything, imagine that? This is harmony at its finest. The complementary rolls that God had established to work in perfection no longer worked as God intended. The woman would have a sin tendency to disrespect her man’s role of leadership and the man in his sinfulness would tend to abuse his authority and even crush the woman.
Both have great difficulty stepping into their role as God created. Both can be aggressive demanding and or passive, avoiding. Now emotions are heavy and hard and difficult, and we attempt to avoid them at all costs. We attempt to avoid pain, in any way possible, escaping reality.
In our journey of the life that we are now living we try to escape the bludgeons of assault, betrayal, passion and loss. For most of us the easiest emotion to express is anger…which hides what we are really feeling. This anger covers over and kills any other emotion that we feel, as it is always a secondary emotion. We feel hurt, confusion, sad, then anger. We escape sadness by opting for shame and we bypass loss by giving into jealousy or resentment. We use one emotion on top of the first to hide from one another, and to escape the pain that we feel.
Our emotions reveal how we’re doing with God.
Am I moving toward God with awe and gratitude or am I turning away creating false gods? As we turn away, we turn to anything that will ease the pain, the hurt and remove the burning like fire feeling inside of us. We turn to may offerings, food, alcohol drugs, shopping, exercising, screen time, scrolling, numbing out on the 10th reel we’ve just watched, and now we have new ways to numb our pain… Cutting...Anything we turn to other than God becomes an idol. Before we had screens of all sizes, we had TVs. We could sit and veg out in front of the TV hour after hour, day after day. This is what my husband did when he was in the hospital in Japan after being wounded in Vietnam. There weren’t many options with his arm in traction. His day consisted of meeting with doctors, procedures and more procedures, going through physical therapy, sitting in bed, watching TV, eating, sleeping, day after day…repeat. Of course, I’m not sure what else one does when every movement hurts, even breathing hurts. There wasn’t a lot of other options. God uses all our emotions to reveal us to us, he’s revealing our heart to us if we stop long enough to listen. How can we understand God’s righteous and holy jealousy for us, for his people if we don’t experience our own human envy and jealousy; however, ours is much different from God’s. To comprehend deeply the heart of God, we must seek to understand and feel and experience and deal with these emotions he gave us.
Both jealousy and envy involve a furious demand that our soul not suffer. His jealousy is pure and holy because he loves us and wants us close to him and he knows what’s out there that will destroy. The heart is an idol making machine…much like children’s bubble machine. Running to that “thing” is creating an idol as we attempt to protect self from any possibility of pain. Despair is a refusal to struggle… the fear of hoping lest I be disappointed. First by choice and it just becomes what we do, automatically without thinking. Losing the ability to hope, and continue the struggle, despair sets in.
SHAME - Good, Godly healthy shame vs toxic shame
- Guilt – based on our actions: I did something wrong
- Shame says there is something wrong with me.
- Healthy, Godly, rightful, holy shame is a good thing. It keeps us from stepping of the boundaries But toxic shame keeps us in bondage and the fear of being exposed, making a mistake and being discovered as phony.
- Shame then comes in, exposes my failure and I get stuck in it. I demean myself as it becomes something sinister, and toxic.
- Shame exposes me as ugly beyond words. Nothing cuts to the core so personally as shame. It justifies avoidance and sometimes violence. Our fear of being exposed will cause us to retreat and protect ourselves at any cost. I condemn myself and speak to myself, name calling, with perfected character assassination causing a slow but inevitable death of me – the real me, God created me to be…free.
- Shame is a flight from intimacy. Shame is withdrawal, isolation, drains energy and withers our desire to engage. It’s one of our deepest fears of being caught without defense, without cover and condemned to unrelenting humiliation.
We hide…just as Adam and Even did, from others and from ourselves.
Consider these 4 emotions.
- Anger
- Grief
- Shame
- Sadness
I'll pick this up here this next time. Stay tuned.
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