Shame On You!

One of the burdens we were not designed to bear.

The last verse of Genesis 2, just before the Fall, tells us of the state of the first man and first woman having been brought together and set loose in God's garden to create and shape and play and love and fill it. It says "the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed (Genesis 2:25)."

As a kid, I remember when that would be read and thinking how silly that was, walking around without clothes outside! And then as a bit older kid thinking that they may not have been ashamed but what about embarrassed. My juvenile self felt that reading this story made us witnesses and somehow that was embarrassing to them. And besides, all the angels were looking!
I now understand so much more about that statement, and the profound truth it holds. Adam and Eve were naked and that speaks of having absolutely nothing to hide from God or each other. Total exposure that was totally safe.  Most significantly, it says they were "not ashamed." I don't think this means they had a good body image of themselves, although they did since there was nothing to lead to anything else.  I think it lets us know that there was nothing in their lives that would generate shame. That was as it was meant to be. But that would change.

After the Fall, Adam and Eve know evil--eating the forbidden fruit gave them that experience. Knowing evil in this way led to a state and an emotion that came with it. The state was "guilt." They were now guilty of violating God's command to them. They had transgressed their one law. But this led to an accompanying experience no one had ever felt before. They were ashamed. Now, they didn't identify the shame with the guilt, but with their nakedness.

The connection of material and immaterial in our creation is so strong that the apprehension of guilt led to identifying shame with nakedness--they no longer sensed the freedom to be seen by God as they were, because they were no longer what they had been. This is seen when asked by God where they were (and the accompanying appearance they make trying to cover themselves with leaves). When Adam answers, he says they hid because they were naked--something that had previously shown their lack of shame. Now, nakedness could not be endured before God. They were now doers of evil, and their created state carried the awareness that this meant something stood between them and God. They knew they were guilty, and they felt shame.

Much more could and should be said about all this entails, and the relationship between guilt and shame, the existence of false guilt, the fact that in our broken world we can feel shame about things where we are not guilty of wrong, and so on. But what got me thinking about this was listening to a couple different podcasts talking about guilt and shame, and the power that shame continues to have over us.

One particular woman I was listening to talked about having survived years of sexual abuse, but in her survival feeling great shame over what happened to her. That shame led to years of destructive behaviors which were often guilt-inducing because they were evil, which would then add more shame to the mix. She talked about confessing her own sins, finding forgiveness, but still struggling with shame over abuse, not realizing that this was Satan's tool to keep her in bondage. She didn't understand that such sins committed against her were not hers to confess, and that the shame was something she could bring to God and seek freedom from. She posed a very interesting question. Pointing to Genesis 2 and the lack of shame in our creation, she said we were never meant to experience shame, and yet it dominates so much of our lives. We are ashamed of the people we have been, but also of the things that mark us over which we have had no control. She wondered at the negative power of shame to continue to plague us, even when any guilt for sin has been atoned for by the sacrifice of Christ. How many of us still feel the shame of sins forgiven and forsaken? We believe we are forgiven, but we know the pain we've caused others.

And how many of us still feel shame at things done to us or that were a part of our lives, not by choice--the young man ashamed that he still can't read, the girl who feels broken and unworthy because of unspeakable evil done to her and being told she deserved it, the men and women who hate the lusts that continue to plague their minds even as they beg God for deliverance, the parent who has confessed to God their failures in child-raising but continues to feel the shame of their wayward one as a personal diminishment of worth to God and the church?

Shame is a good thing when it leads to our seeing where guilt abides brings us to confession. But it can be a barrier to our growth in Christ and our relationships with others--we cannot be relationally "naked" with anyone, even our loving Father, because there is still too much shame over our failures. In part, this is exacerbated by our pretending things are good, and our assumptions that what others present as a healthy and whole façade is real.

Is shame still at work in you? Is there still that memory of a past failure that haunts you too frequently, or a battle you fight that you fear would make you "less" in the eyes of others you love? Do you live in fear that your shame will be exposed?

Let me encourage you to remember that your Savior has taken your guilt. By grace, you are declared not guilty, and the righteousness of Christ is yours by gift. The Father who sees you "naked" also sees you as righteous. This happened because your redeemer Jesus hung naked on a cross for you--"despising the shame" as the writer of Hebrews puts it. He felt about that shame what you feel about yours. And he endured it to set you free from it.

My prayer is that we will become a people who, having been freed from the guilt of our sin, would walk in holiness that keeps us from experiencing guilt and shame, but also that we would lay the shame of already confessed sin at the cross. And we would recognize the places where Satan is seeking to control us with a sense of shame over things that we did not do, that are not our moral responsibility, rejecting Satan's lies and taking hold of the truth that brokenness is not always our fault, that shame is not always the right response to it, and that we can see ourselves as God sees us.

To get there, we may need the help of the Body. If this is where you are, begin to pray that God gives you someone you can trust that can bear this burden with you. That's what we are meant to do, and often it is hearing someone else speak words of grace and truth to us that help us hear what we cannot seem to hear from ourselves.