Shame on You!

I’ll never forget the assignment my professor gave us in graduate school. “Take out a piece of paper and without putting your name on it, write down the thing you fear the most.” My first inclination was to blow off the paper and write something like spiders, snakes or a bad hangnail. But something inside of me stirred and I decided to get real and when that happened, boy did I get real… real scared!

I was convinced that when I recorded my greatest fear, and the professor read it aloud, everyone in the class would turn, point at me and say, “We knew it! Simpson is a poser.” What did I write? I’ll never forget it, “I’m afraid of being transparent; like a glass of clear water through which people can see.”

I folded my paper, took a deep breath and passed it to the end of the row. As the professor began to read the fears and phobias, wouldn’t you know it, the first one he read was mine… except, I hadn’t written it. It sounded like mine, the gist was the same, but the words were different. And then he read another and another and before I knew it, I realized that eighty-percent of the class had the same fear. By the time my paper was read aloud, I was raising my hand and owning my fear, no longer hiding, actually being transparent.

What that lesson taught me is that there is a powerful germ at work in all people. It is called shame. Shame in itself is not bad. It is harmful when it becomes toxic. Healthy shame keeps our clothes on in public. It reminds us we have limits and tells us we are not God. Toxic shame, however, condemns us for our limitations and tells us we are disgusting, unacceptable and unlovable in our present state. This kind of shame demands perfection and superior performance in order to be acceptable.

Shame is not something newly introduced by psychobabblers of the last half century. Shame is as old as human history. Think back to the Garden of Eden when the serpent slithered into Adam and Eve’s life. “Look at you, you’re disgusting!” it said. “You have limitations and everyone knows that you should not. You should be like God.” Swallowing shame’s lie, Adam and Eve bit off more than they could chew and took matters into their own hands trying to fix their perceived “shameful” condition. It did not work! Instead of experiencing relief, they experienced anxiety which sent them running, hiding and creating temporary coverings made of fig leaves.

Ever since that day, we have all struggled with the effects of shame, and like Adam and Eve, we have all hidden and created elaborate fig leaf designs to hide our shame.

One hides behind their work performance. Someone else attempts to “become” by getting into a smaller size of clothing. A teen gives up their reputation in order to fit in with their peers. A pastor applies pressure to his parishioners to do more “work for the Kingdom” so he won’t feel inadequate.

Missing the point as to where our wholeness comes from is what, in biblical terms, is called sin. Drawing from broken wells, worshiping false idols and building towers of Babel are still daily occurrences in this modern world.

What is the solution? It is the same as six thousand years ago. Standing before God with our ridiculous self coverings and asking simply for Him to dress us. God, in His graciousness, does just that and as we experience His clothing of righteousness, which is Christ, we are free to come out of the bushes and stand there, with mouths open wide and hands empty, celebrating true wholeness.

When we face our shame and embrace Christ’s covering, we can stand and exclaim like C.S. Lewis’ heavenly characters in The Great Divorce, “That’s what we all find when we reach this country. We’ve all been wrong! That’s the great joke. There’s no need to go on pretending one was right! After that we begin living.”