Hebrews 12:2 ESV
looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Through my experience of sitting with incredibly brave people I have come to despise shame. I’ve witnessed in others, and in my own life, how shames dark gravity drags it’s next victim into deep and thick waters of despair. Viewing shame through a Christian lens, I’d like to expose shame for what it is and declare that for those trapped in shame today, it cannot stand when we allow ourselves to be held in the saviours arms and as we allow his gentle voice of truth to wash over us and soothe our hearts. You see, Jesus despises the shame, not us. That’s so important to remember and repeat – ‘Jesus despises any shame I might carry, but He loves me completely’. He despises shame as it’s wounding His heart and the hearts of the ones He loves - us.
Three Reflections on Shame:
Firstly, Shame is a Primary Weapon
It’s helpful to clarity the difference between shame and guilt. We sometimes use these interchangeably, but they are very different.
Guilt is ‘I’ve done something wrong’. I exercised my free will when I made the choices I did and the fact I now feel guilty and regret them, causes me to repent and change direction. Guilt is something that I have a high degree of autonomy and power over and it’s largely cognitive. Neurobiologically, it doesn’t run much deeper than the front of our brains, the pre-frontal cortex, the part we think with.
Shame however cuts much deeper into us than guilt. ‘Shame envelops us like a snake until the snakes words become my words’. Words like I am worthless, I am bad, I am flawed, I am dirty, I am unacceptable, I am unwanted, I am different, I am unclean, I am alone and deserve to be, I am exposed, I am vulnerable, I am nothing. Our hearts don’t normally arrive at this place unless we’ve experienced deception and abuse at the hands of others. I hear phrases like ‘I am worthless’ all the time when working with beautiful, amazing people who have become overrun by shame. Unlike guilt, shame disintegrates our whole brain. We become hyper-vigilant (anxious) in our nervous system - the back of our brain, and hypo-emotional (low-mood) in our limbic system - the emotional and attachment centre located in the middle of our brains. People who live in a state of shame live primarily out of two thirds of their brain as the front, ‘thinking part of the brain’, is much less available. This is why young kids with a trauma story find it difficult to learn as their thinking brain is less available and the tragedy is they are deemed of low intelligence when actually it’s unresolved trauma – they are not of low intelligence at all. Also, if you know someone who talks of ‘their anxiety’ and ‘their depression’ then it is also very likely that shame sits beneath it all. You see, Anxiety and Depression are neurophysiological states, they are caused by something – likely a trauma story including shame or fear or both. Shame is also a hard task master. It’s behind all kinds of ‘self-protectionism’ like people pleasing, perfectionism or over-control and it hurts so much we binge eat, or don’t eat at all, we drink excessively, self-harm or experiment with drugs, porn or promiscuous sex. Shame is sore and we learn to soothe – yet such soothing just drives the shame deeper.
You see, shame is the most ancient of weapons. First seen in the Garden of Eden. If you know the story, there’s a snake, a deception, then there’s shame and finally isolation. This is a tactic, I think a primary tactic of our enemy, and we need to become aware of his sneaky ways of working. In C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, we hear of apprentice demons being schooled in warfare to help them better destroy their enemies i.e. us. When it comes to shame you can image a master demon saying to his apprentice demon:
'If you can deceive them, through all kinds of negative experiences, into thinking less of themselves than God does, then you’ll have successfully twisted the truth about their self-worth and implanted such wonderful, powerful shame. Oh, now you are close to victory my apprentice, as that seed, that cancerous seed, will do the rest of your destructive work for you. As it germinates in the dark, it will eat all of their hope and all of their joy and all of their life purpose. They’ll then destroy any sense of self-worth they had and come to a place where they can’t even look at themselves in a mirror or into the eyes of others. They’ll remove themselves from gathering with those they think ‘have it all together and even start to resent such people’. They’ll deem themselves unacceptable to their God and they’ll run to other god’s instead and to other comforts to soothe their hidden pain – wonderfully seductive comforts that we have full dominion over. Oh, even better still young apprentice, the one that carries shame believes that they are at fault, they are so blinded and don’t spot our manipulation at all, and they go to great lengths to keep their shame hidden and do our work for us. And oh, how we love hiddenness, it’s exactly where we like to operate and where we want them to stay. Hiding, broken and lost'.
No wonder we read initially that Jesus despises the shame so much. I’m eternally glad that we can read in the Bible that Jesus has already snapped the head of the snake and that He is the beacon of light over all of these deceptions, wounds and prisons.
Secondly, Isolation is the Primary Goal of Shame
Quite simply, the goal of the dark power behind shame is to fracture our self-image and lead us into increasing isolation. When we are isolated, we are easy pickings for more self-destruction. We are advised in Genesis 2:18 that ‘It is not good for man to be alone’ and it definitely isn’t. United we stand, isolated we fall.
Isolation deepens the shame, embeds more deeply our negative self-image and leaves us more vulnerable to those who would seek to exploit our vulnerability. The cry of every human heart is ‘perfect love’, yet when our hearts are broken and we feel worthless, we’ll settle for corrupted love. For example:
The young woman fatherless growing up so desperate for fatherly love and yet feels so unlovable that she becomes easy pickings for any man. A man that spots the deep and unmet needs of her heart, a heart that dreams of a Man coming back and rescuing her, telling her that she is so precious and the very reason he lives. Any silver-tongued man so easily reels her in and plunders her land. Isolated and broken hearts are so vulnerable.
A young teen in the care system. Life has never been safe, and everyone always treats her just like she feels about herself – worthless and too difficult to manage. Along comes a young man, fast car and great clothes. He offers kindness and gifts and a route to escape. She gives him her heart as he gives her drugs. She clings to his side, and he offers her to his friends – for money. Reports tell us that some of those most susceptible to grooming are those young people in, or coming out of, the care system. Shattered self-image and isolation is just the right soil for predators to go harvesting.
These are thankfully the extremes of human experience, but they are also very common stories today. And they are common in our town and your town, let’s not think that this doesn’t happen in our little towns! There is great darkness outside our door and to men reading this, what will we do? How will we communicate to the Eve’s all around us that they are cherished and precious in the eyes of God. Rise up men, lay down any lingering obsession of your eyes and your hungry flesh and look upon all Eve’s with the eyes of a loving father. If you are an Eve today with a story of destruction and shame at the hands of others. Know this, your Father in Heaven is broken hearted over what happened to you, and He will restore everything stolen as you fall into His safe and loving arms. It’s important to say that these are ‘female examples’ but there are equally many Adams who are isolated, shamed and vulnerable to being used in this way.
Yes, these examples are the ‘Dark Edges’ of shame and isolation but our enemy try’s to work this shame into all of us at some point and in some way. For example:
The child who doesn’t pass their transfer test or is labelled as ‘useless’ and ‘you’ll never make it’ by a teacher or a parent. Shame attacks their self-image, and they limit what they believe they are capable of. They believe they are less than others, that they are incapable and second rate. That’s similar to my early story (Ric). I left school with one GCSE, a grade C in geography, and thought that was about all I was capable of – in fact I was pretty surprised that I even got one grade C! Yet I graduated at 24 with a 1st Class Honours Degree and, then later on in life, also received a Masters degree - with distinction. I really don’t say that for self-promotion. I say that to encourage anyone reading this who has believed the shameful lie that they are stupid, or flawed or even that have messed up their whole life as they didn’t get straight A*’s. I do actually hear this in therapy out of the mouths of the most amazing young people who have been shamed into feeling that they are not enough without straight A’s. Without the best grades they will be kicked out of the ‘tribe of acceptability’. Leaving them alone and isolated. What made the difference for me? People gathering around me who wanted to call out and encourage the potential in me, rather than being polluted by those who didn’t care and didn’t take the time to look.
Or what about the teen that doesn’t make the clique, forgive me girls but teenage girls in particular can be so brutal to each other. There is often a trail of destruction from the early years of secondary school that can last a lifetime for some. ‘You’re ugly, ‘you’re stupid, ‘you’re weird’. All lies from other young hearts that are themselves fighting their own insecurities and seeking to feel better about themselves by rejecting others. But it has the desired devilish impact – isolation. It’s here that body-image hatred starts, porn usage starts, drinking starts, eating disorders start and self-harm, or even worse, takes place. No, not for everyone but it’s far too common. For many who come out less wounded, they survive teen life but with a subconscious nagging feeling that they are not good enough – and this can last a lifetime.
Or what about the Christian parent, despite their best efforts their young one seems to have been lost to the wolves. They’ve served God and loved him, but the prowling lion has stolen and has destroyed. For a while they hold up their head in Christian circles but feel such a failure inside. Saved but walking with shame. Seeing other families all together, worshipping together, breaks their heart afresh every time and they accuse themselves with whispers of ‘it’s my fault’ ‘I failed them’, ‘I shouldn’t be here’, ‘I don’t fit in here’. Shame at its best and over time they too, drift away into isolation.
There are so many more examples of ‘shame at work’ that we could give, and you may not feel that any of the examples shared apply to you. But many of us will resonate with these stories, and if shame and isolation are the primary weapon of our enemy then no doubt there will be attempts to entrap us all at some point. Actually, I really doubt that anyone reading this today hasn’t in some way had their self-image eroded by shame. Surely, Jesus is the only person ever to have walked shame free. That is, up until He bore all of our shame, felt the weight of our shame, and dealt once and for all with our shame, on the cross.
And Finally, Praise God That Shame and Isolation are Defeated by a Kiss.
Luke 15:20 ESV And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him.
The Father ran and embraced him and kissed him. It’s beautiful.
Imagine what is happening inside the son. He expected judgment and a lesser position, a lesser value, in his father’s house. But instead, he was surprised by a father who did perhaps the most intimate and loving thing possible. He planted His lips on His sons neck. Total acceptance, the kind that heals hearts in an instant. I haven’t time to take you through the neurobiological changes that happen inside a person when they are embraced and kissed but it’s staggeringly beautiful. You see, there is only one north star when it comes to defeating shame. It’s the reverse of isolation, it’s called unconditional acceptance – it’s what our father does and what he calls us to do. It’s the cry of every wounded heart, to be wanted, accepted and loved. To receive unconditional acceptance and safe, consistent love. We are to see people through the eyes of Jesus and keep loving them, holding them until they feel deeply safe and until they feel deeply valued. We need to become followers of our perfects Fathers model of the embrace and the kiss. Felt, embodied, safety and acceptance is so important as it leads to the restoration of worth and the restoration of worth leads to a full and purposeful life.
The challenge to us as individuals is that we have to go to the edges, sometimes the dark edges, to find those who have been most shamed and most isolated. To follow the example of Jesus in his famous parable and to leave the 99 sheep and go after the 1 sheep that is lost and isolated.
Imagine a church, or any tribe, that had a list of missing family members, missing young people and past members who have disappeared from sight? A church that prays and fasts over those lists of names and takes action to rescue their missing ones as if it was life or death. Why doesn’t that happen? After all, no tribe would survive if they simply allowed tribe members to ‘fall out of sight’ and be destroyed, yet this happens all the time in the world and is all too common in our fellowships. We perhaps put it down to sins and disinterest, that ‘the lost have chosen to fall away’, but I’d like to challenge that and say that they are very likely ‘casualties of shame’, and we often just sit back and let it happen – we let them disappear from the tribe. Why is that?
Also, imagine if that same Church or tribe felt committed to unseating shame throughout the whole tribe. A family where every person felt safe enough to talk of their shame, how it had impacted their lives and where hidden things, unwanted things, could be safely brought into the light and healed. It might feel impossible or perhaps naïve, but without us trying, we just let shame, and isolation and ultimately devastation of lives, ride unrestrained throughout our families and our fellowships.
My heart is to make myself known at the unseen and sometimes ‘dark edges’, to see the 1, connect with the 1, pray for the 1 and offer safety and love to the 1 until they are reunited into a loving tribe. And when reunited, to help them ‘shed shame’ and grow in worth. To do my best to love others the way my perfect Father loves me.
My hope is that if you are reading this and have been overtaken, overwhelmed and overrun by shame for months, or maybe even years, that you ‘take courage’ and reach out. Reach out to someone who is compassionate, someone who sees the true image of God within you and someone who fights for you. Such people do exist.
Much Love, Ric.