On Shame

Most people I talk to on a daily basis understand that God loves them. They can quote the Bible verses. But many seem to live with a secret sense of shame that complicates, if not blocks, God’s love because they don’t think they deserve it. In their mind God’s love is for people who have cleaned up their act.

But there’s an inherent problem to this kind of thinking: you can’t clean up your act without God’s love. If you insist on becoming a better person so God can love you, that “carrot” will always be in front of you. You’ll never get there. You’ve consigned yourself to your own personal “hell,” but you don’t even know what you’ve done because you think you know all about God’s love.

Yes, we know about it. Maybe we haven’t received it. As we all affirm regularly, we need to let the knowledge drop from our head to our hearts in order to bring the healing that’s needed.

The issue it seems is that we receive God’s love on our good days, when we are doing well. But we don’t receive God’s love when we need it the most; when we screw up and fail miserably. We resist the invasion of God’s love because we don’t think God wants to/ or is able to come into our unholy place.

I mention this because we all tend to beat ourselves up over failures and then become stuck there. But if we want to find the freedom that God has for us, we have to be open to love and forgiveness. Just think whom you might become if you loved yourself like God does?

You might find this hard to believe, but the Bible tells us and Lent leads us to the recognition that when you and I go astray, God’s first priority isn’t to get our behavior in line. God’s first priority is to reestablish our relationship with Him. God’s love draws us to Him, not our good behavior.

God knows that if He can help restore our relationship that our behavior will eventually follow. But if He/we focus on our behavior, our shame will push us away. It’s counterproductive.

We read the story of the prodigal son a week or so ago; the son that ran away from home to live the party life only to return home when his money ran out.

The shock of that story is the boy didn’t return to an angry dad who punished him for his behavior like you’d expect. The boy returned to a dad that met him at the gate of the city with a hug and a kiss and a ring and a cloak and then threw a party for him.

Jesus used that story to teach us how God thinks about sin and guilt, even shame. Most dads wouldn’t welcome home their runaway son with a party! But God isn’t like that. God is much more interested in our relationship than in exacting perfection of behavior. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t care about rules/commands/covenant.  It appears, however, in watching Jesus in the Gospels, that relationship always comes first.

…come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it. (Hebrews 4:16)

A prayer from Walter Brueggemann:

You are the God from whom no secret can be hid,

and we are a people with many secrets,

that we want to tell for the sake of our lives,

that we dare not tell because they are deep and painful.

But they are our secrets...and they count for much;

they are our truth...rooted deep in our lives.

You are the God of all truth,

and now we bid you heed our truth,

about which we will not bear false witness...

The truth of grief unresolved,

the truth of pain unacknowledged,

the truth of fear too child-like,

the truth of hate, as powerful as it is deep,

the truth of being taken advantage of,

and being used,

and manipulated,

and slandered.

We trust the great truth of your wondrous love,

but we will not sit still for it,

UNTIL you hear us.

Our truth--heard by you--will make us free.

So be the God of all truth, even ours,

we pray in the name of Jesus,

who is your best kept secret of hurt.

Amen.