The Healing of Shame
Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion;
instead of dishonor they shall rejoice in their lot;
therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion;
they shall have everlasting joy. – Isaiah 61:7
This Saturday I have the amazing privilege of assisting our Bishop of the Anglican Diocese in New England, Andrew Williams, at the day of healing prayer at St. Michael’s Church in Charleston. Not only am I excited to see old friends and loved ones in the Charleston area, I am thrilled at the subject matter. We will be focused on how God heals shame.
As Curt Thompson says in his excellent book, The Soul of Shame, “It only requires that you have a pulse. To be human is to be infected with this phenomenon we call shame” (21). It is something we all deal with and will deal with consistently this side of heaven. It is that voice inside your heart and your mind that tells you to hide. Don’t share your full self because it will be rejected. In other words, if you boil shame’s message down it says in some way shape or form: you are not enough. Shame attacks our value. As a primary tool of the enemy it’s end game is for us to feel completely worthless and alone. Isolation.
But Scripture is overflowing with promises from the Lord that he has come to deal with and heal our shame. Still, as my friend and counselor, Rodney Wright, says, “Healing the shame is different from forgiving the sin (guilt).”
We hear the great news that our sins our forgiven in Christ, which is not only the doorway to healing, but also the enabling word that sustains you and gives you the grace to keep facing your shame. Shame is almost the PTSD of our sin. It is Satan’s sermon to you, and yes Satan does preach and he is darn good at it too – his sermon is always one of accusation and condemnation. He keeps coming at you saying, “What do you mean your sins are forgiven and dealt with, nailed to the cross? I still see them right there, and you still feel them. You might as well give up. You’re worthless and hopeless.” Satan always wants you to doubt God’s Word as true reality. God’s Word defines all things and brings everything into existence, but Satan’s old trick (and our sin’s old trick too, for they are partners along with death…enemies arrayed against us) is to make us doubt God’s promise to us. . .doubt his care and love for you…make you question what God thinks of you. The only thing that is stronger than this is God’s Word itself…hearing his promises again and right in that place of secrecy and pain. God says to you, “You are my beloved! You are worth everything. . .my very life. I love you. I forgive you and nothing can change that.” We need to hear God’s love and grace for us again and again and again to drown out Satan’s lying sermons and fill our ears with the truth.
AND we need to hear it from other people. It is one of the main principles of recovery in the 12 Steps: we need people. We experience most of our sin, if not all, in the context of relationship…our broken love. And so we must experience grace in relationship too if we want to truly heal. God, in his wisdom, embodied himself in Jesus Christ to come and touch sinners…to minister to us physically in real time. And he continues to do that through his Church. He tells us we are his body and gives us to each other to know his love and grace in real time right now (1 Cor. 12).
Practically speaking, healing shame looks like confessional communities. Basically what church is supposed to be by design, though it has often become the opposite because of our obsession with covering up and hiding anything that might otherwise cause us to be rejected. Too often church is the place where we feel we must present our “best selves”. . .the polished, well-groomed, well-behaved facades. But that is not what we need. We need a place for true vulnerability. True confessional communities are people getting together with others and admitting their areas of shame, trauma, and brokenness and no one running out of the room. It’s what people have called the U2 moments. The U2 moment is not referring to the band, though they are great. . .the U2 moment is when you take the risk and share where you REALLY are, usually because God has stripped away everything else and someone says, “Oh man, you too? I have the same struggle.” It’s finding a group of people that either are where you are or have been where you are and they don’t bat an eye at what you’re sharing. They stay right there with you in the pain. They see you and they love you. Men’s groups, women’s groups, couple’s groups…a context where it is safe to share the real thing…the thing that shame tells you to keep quiet or you’ll be rejected. The antidote to shame is to share it and see that you are not alone. There’s always someone else who knows exactly what you’re dealing with.
This is the truth that millions have found in 12 Step groups…it’s the same fundamental principle…when sick and hurting people get together with other sick and hurting people and admit that they’re sick, they get better. Healing begins because the secrecy and isolation that shame and sin feed off of ends. The key is finding the safe place. The safe person. Obviously, clergy are trained to be this and can be amazing advocates in our journey of healing, but I have found that it makes the most impact when you find peers that can go there with you. It can take time to build up the trust to go there, but it is so worth it. All it really takes is one person in the group taking the risk to be vulnerable, and it will open others up too. Sometimes you need to go to where you know there are people dealing with the same issue. . .you may not know anyone there, like at a 12 Step group or through a ministry like Pure Desire that has groups for people dealing with unwanted sexual behavior or the Genesis Process or a grief group or trauma group, but as you listen to others share you will realize they are telling your story. And by God’s grace the courage will grow in you to want to share as well. Before you know it, you have a new family.
As I said, the church is the most natural, or I should say supernatural, place for this to happen because we know from Scripture that none of us has it together. Every single one of us is a desperate sinner that is terrified of being rejected by God. All of us have pain and trauma that we carry, and all of us have the same hope that God has forgiven us our sin in Jesus Christ. This is the place where our facades can come down. This is the place where we are among sisters and brothers in Christ coming to receive that word of grace, coming to feel that cool water wash over our bodies as we plunge into death and then rising up to new life, cleansing us from sin. This is where we come to feast at his table, eating his body and drinking his blood, taking his forgiveness deep inside our very bodies. His gospel word to you that you are completely known, completely forgiven, and will never be cast out by him creates the safest space for all of us to finally get honest, to risk that vulnerability and to experience maybe for the first time that true intimacy that you’ve longed for ever since before you could remember. Shame cannot survive in that place. As his word promises: “There is no condemnation, no shame, for those in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1). Shame gets drowned out in his song of love over you.
As I hinted above, this is not a one and done thing. It’s important to know is that this will not be your last experience of shame. As long as you are on this side of heaven and still a sinner in need of grace, shame will be a reality in your life. But you may experience real freedom in an area of shame that has plagued you for a long time. What I am commending to you today is the life of grace that walks through shame. Whenever it rears its ugly head as it is certain to do you will have a different story…a new language to combat it with. The compulsive pattern of isolating and numbing will begin to fade. You will know where to go with your shame. Grace is a way of life…walking in vulnerability with others, sharing yourself with a group of people that you trust that can see you and love in your area of shame.
While your forgiveness is a one and done thing. . .Christ has accomplished it once and for all on the cross. . .it is something that you need to hear over and over again for the first time. God, in his mercy, continues to bring up new areas of our lives where we need to hear that forgiving word, where we need to experience the love of others, where we need his always new story of grace instead of shame. It’s returning to his cross again and again in new areas of our lives together. When the Lord leads us this way Satan loses all his power over us. His attempts at shaming us diminish in potency. He’ll still try, but his accusation and fear will be drowned out by the cloud of witnesses around us who say, “You too? Let’s go to the cross together with that. Let’s come to his table together and enjoy his forgiveness again.” Before you know it you will be sharing that place of shame with others like the woman at the well (John 4). It will become your testimony, and you will be the one creating space for others to come and share their secrets, and you’ll get to watch the Lord set them free too. Welcome to church everyone. Amen.
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