BP60
Have you ever struggled with a habitual sin that you promised God and yourself you would never repeat again but then within hours or days fell back into the same behavior? Have you ever doubted your faith because of a chronic sinful behavior or been angry with God that He has not delivered you from it? Have you spent years of your life hiding shameful practices so that no one else will see how bad you are and change their mind about you?
Today’s blog will attempt to address the power of repetitive sin and the difference between godly guilt and Satanic shame. I will be drawing from a book written by Merle A. Fossum and Marilyn J. Mason entitled Facing Shame: Families in Recovery.
Let’s start at the end of the beginning in Genesis–or said differently, let’s take a closer look at the Terrible Fall that ruined the Beautiful Beginning that prompted God to open His character more deeply and reveal His amazing grace.
The result of the Fall of all men and women in Eden through Adam and Eve is that ever human since then has been born to naturally practice sinful behaviors. But more than that, humans enter this fallen world with a sin nature. Their very identity has changed since the Garden. Initially, they were hard-wired for obedience and purity. Now they have fallen into a state of disobedience and impurity.
In the beginning, humans were created in the image of God. They were perfect in body and heart, in behavior and nature. The first man and the woman desired one another with a pure love. But after the Fall, when Adam and Eve were enticed to disbelieve God and instead trust the lie of the serpent, the image of God in humans was defaced—corrupted–by sin. Sinful behaviors have now become the baseline position for humanity and the identity of men and women has shifted from godliness and holiness to rebellion and selfishness.
You probably see the point I am trying to establish here, namely, that sin is more than behaviors. It is a state of being. It is a sin nature. Some might say that at the Fall, the nature of God in men and women was replaced by the presence of guilt and deadly shame (among other things).
Fossum and Mason (who do not write from a Christian perspective) have the following to say: While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one’s actions [sin], shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person. The possibility for repair seems foreclosed to the shameful person because shame is a matter of identity, not a behavioral infraction [that can be altered for the better]. There is nothing to be learned from it and no growth is opened by the experience because it only confirms one’s negative feelings about oneself ~ pp. 5,6.
As an aside, believers in Jesus can embrace the truth that being good is not about doing good behaviors (at least not as a way to earn salvation) but about having a good identity. Here we encounter the yawning chasm that exists between religion (humans’ attempts to reach God) and faith in Jesus (God’s rescue of the dead human heart). An unbridgeable gap exists between trying to be good in one’s own power and receiving the righteousness of Jesus through a miraculous exchange.
When we attempt to integrate faith and psychology around the topic of guilt and shame, there often is disagreement about how the terms are used or defined. I think the trouble often is one of semantics. Designer Therapy for Life holds that there is true guilt and false guilt as well as true shame and false shame. True guilt is a legitimate awareness of wrongdoing (sin) that occurs when God’s standard is violated and that hopefully will result in godly conviction/sorrow and repentance/confession.
Shame is different than guilt. It might overlap with guilt, but it carries with it a profound sense of hopeless condemnation in the eyes of others and even oneself. As Fossum and Mason point out, shame has to do with an individual’s personhood. Godly guilt (my term, not from Fossum and Mason) informs the person that he has sinned, that he has made a mistake while shame condemns and accuses the human of being a mistake in the presence of others. Shame announces that the person is fundamentally flawed and beyond love and unworthy of existence.
Do not these definitions of guilt and shame sound scriptural? On the one hand, yes. After the Fall, men and women are fundamentally flawed and need to be aware of and embrace their true guilt and sin so that they will cry out to a Savior to redeem them and cleanse them. True guilt prompts a person to move toward relationship.
On the other hand, shame sounds like it drives a person away from God into hiding instead of toward Him for salvation. Depending on semantics again, there is a (false) shame that is not from God. There is a shame whose intent is to steal, kill and destroy. Such shame stands in sharp contrast to God’s convicting guilt and true shame that seeks to call the sinner back to the Presence of God where he/she can be restored instead of driving him or her into relational oblivion.
There is a shame from Satan whose dark purpose is to separate the individual from God forever. Yes, every human already stands separated from the Creator because of sin (Ephesians 2:12ff) but Satan seeks to drive home the accusation that this separation is eternal, that there is no hope for reconciliation (re-establishing friendship with God as it was in the Garden). See John 10:10.
The enemy desires to sledgehammer home the lie that your badness is so profound and unchangeable that you must accept it and settle for a lifetime (or eternity) of guilt and shame or rewrite the script and choose to take pride in your sin as your identity.
Have you ever heard the voice of this accusing, lying shame that convinces you to hide from God, others, and even your own self? Like Adam and Eve, we end up believing the words of Satan instead of our Creator; and, like the serpent, we settle for crawling around on our bellies in the shame of our counterfeit identity instead of believing that we were made to embrace our identity as made in the image of God.
Those who believe in Jesus must be careful, then, to embrace the guilt and conviction that leads to godly sorrow and inspires them to run to the loving Father for forgiveness. On the other hand, believers must shun the shame that accuses sinners that they have done evil things but also that their subsequent sinful identity is irredeemable.
Satan’s lie is that it is too late for us. We are too evil. We are beyond God’s forgiveness. Oh, yes, our behaviors might be forgiven. Grace might be available for sinful actions. But the shameful identity that feels like it defines us at our darkest moments is so awful that it must be hidden from the face of God and possibly the face of self and other humans.
The only other option available to our imaginations besides living under the crush of this shame or simply denying it or projecting it onto others is to do spiritual gymnastics and alter the Bible to say that our sin is actually acceptable to God or even part of His divine purpose for us.
Sadly, there is a third option some of us totally miss because of the veil Satan places over our eyes, the option of Jesus’ invitation: Come to me and I will forgive your sin and wash away your shame. I will also give you power through prayer, my Word, and the community of believers to stop hiding your shame and instead grow out of your fallen behaviors that seem so binding and defining.
This journey of deliverance is usually a marathon, not a sprint. Be prepared for a lengthy campaign.
Fossum and Mason especially want to understand the dynamic of shame in the framework of a family system. They do not discuss shame in the context of a faith system like Christianity. However, it is interesting that much of what they say stumbles into the territory of God’s truth.
For instance, from a psychological perspective, they state that the purpose of their book is to disrupt the central pillars of a dehumanizing or shaming system.
I propose that whether Fossum and Mason know it or not, their words refer to far more than a family pattern of feeling so ashamed of behaviors that they succumb to the belief of being totally bad as a person. I believe they are describing the universe-altering Fall of humanity.
As a consequence of the Fall, we now practice sinful and rebellious behaviors as the new normal. More than that, our whole identity has been viciously uprooted from the beautiful character of God and we have become tumbleweeds blowing across the universe without aim or purpose. No wonder we sense we are lost and spend our whole lives searching for what we are missing or feel a deep emptiness within us and wonder where to go to be filled.
Once again, after the Fall, we are so profoundly diminished that we are far, far less than who we were created to be. Does not this description of our post-Fall status sound familiar to Fossum and Mason’s understanding of shame?
They state that shame is an inner sense of being completely diminished or insufficient as a person. Is it not humiliation so painful or an indignity so profound that one feels one has been robbed of her or his dignity or exposed as basically inadequate, bad, or worthy of rejection. . . . defective, unworthy, or not fully valid as a human being (p.5).
Are we not reminded of the Fall when Fossum and Mason refer to the dehumanizing or shaming impact of the shame-bound family system? Is that not a description of sin–dehumanizing and shaming? Is not the entire human family enslaved to the accusing voice of the enemy of our souls who is living (dying) to drive you into the utter exile of shame where he can accuse you of being unlovable and a candidate for suicide?
Do you remember the last time you repeated a compulsive behavior yet again after promising yourself and God that you would never do it again? This behavior could be viewing pornography and masturbating yet again or eating a half gallon of ice cream in one sitting to satisfy some insatiable drive or playing video games for six hours straight as a way to numb your shame of still living at home with your parents or in an attempt to self-comfort eating far more than you intended and then purging.
Have you ever experienced that sensation of shame that creeps over you after sinning yet again?
There are those in the world of psychology who insist that parental authoritarianism, guilting religion, and shaming cultural morality (that ship has now sailed) are responsible for the experience of shame. They might not always be incorrect in that assessment. However, they are dead wrong if they fail to see that guilt is actually the predictable human response if we inhabit a universe created by a personal Deity possessing moral standards.
We are hard-wired to experience guilt when we sin against the God who made us just as a smoke alarm is triggered when it detects smoke. We will experience not only guilt but also shame and condemnation when we go our own way. If we sin against our Creator, we will naturally feel healthy guilt but also will make ourselves vulnerable to the accusing voice of shame when we turn our backs on our Beautiful Defender and the Lover of our Souls.
Fossum and Mason go on to introduce the shame-bound cycle and why it is self-sustaining. This cycle is worth discussing if for no other reason than to see if it is something evident in your own life but also if it points to the spiritual truth that underlies the bedrock of the universe. I believe the spiritual truth behind the shame-bound cycle that Fossum and Mason describe is the power of sin.
There are two components to the shame-bound cycle: control and release. I don’t know that it is important here to understand which comes first. Both exist in every woman and man who disobey God and pursue their own desires. Control and release are two phases that induce and intensify each other.
Fossum and Mason have this to say about the release phase: One person develops a reliable relationship with a chemical for the release while another person has a ritualized sexual behavior and another an eating behavior or a spending behavior (p. 15). The result is that the individual (addict) loses herself in the rush of the release phase.
Whenever the individual breaks out of the control phase and is released to practice her behavior of choice (e.g., overeating), she will experience guilt and shame after this episode of sin. Subsequently, she must seek to undo the guilt and shame or find a way to disagree with the shame message that she is a mistake.
At this point, the individual is driven to return to the control phase. She undoes the guilt and shame of the release phase (overeating) by starving herself or being highly restrictive about what she eats until she feels a sense of mastery or goodness.
This whole cycle certainly sounds like it has the components of OCD—obsessions and compulsions.
Fossum and Mason make the point that this control phase often will be so intense and rigid (to undo the badness of the release phase and to prevent a relapse) that the individual will eventually seek to rebel against the limitations imposed on her by this suffocating straitjacket. Sooner or later, another release phase occurs that will then lead to another corrective control phase. Here we witness the ongoing dynamic of the shame-bound cycle.
What is the believer in Jesus to do with this endless shame cycle? Here are a few thoughts:
+ Remember that guilt is a natural consequence of sin while shame (as defined above) is not from God. While it is true that God’s righteousness and holiness cannot allow us to approach Him, He did send His son so we might be granted access to His Presence. Once we run to Jesus for the removal of our sin and receive His righteousness, there is no condemnation for us—ever.
+ Never forget that Satan twists the dagger of shame in your mind and soul to convince you that you should exile yourself from God, others, and your own self because of your appalling badness. Satan’s primary goal is to separate you from God in this world if you are a believer and in the next world as well if you are not a believer in Jesus.
+ God’s word cries out to us with a clarion voice that when we sin (the release phase), we should not seek to control our behaviors but come to Him with our guilt and shame. Come, not control (trying to be good) is Jesus’ message to us. Seek help instead of hiding. Don’t try to make yourself acceptable with good karma but trust me. Hebrews 4:15,16 says it well: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
+ Hiding, self-imposed exile, keeping sins locked away in your private dungeon will leave you vulnerable to shame. It will eventually be the only voice you hear, and it will kill you. Why do you think God’s word so often mentions the phrase, one another? God knows that the control phase of sin and shame is synonymous with self-sufficiency and that the release phase wields the power to own you if you are walking alone. You have been created for community. God calls you into a family where brothers and sisters love one another, confess their sins to one another, bear one another’s burdens, forgive one another, encourage one another, show hospitality to one another. Don’t move away from others but toward them with your brokenness. A single log in the fireplace never burns well.
+ God tells you, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. In other words, don’t try to keep God’s commandments and expect that then you will love Him or that then He will love you for being so good. He already loves you right where you’re at and knows that once you surrender to His love you will desire to obey Him. Your obedience won’t create or somehow earn the relationship with God; rather, your obedience will flow naturally as you grow deeper in a relationship of love with Jesus. We tend to please those we love.
+ Lastly, there is no Christian version of control and release. There is no shame-bound cycle if you know Jesus. There is only an invitation to approach Him so He can give you a new heart that will desire to obey Him. The biggest hurdle for Christians is that their old nature that is vulnerable to Satan’s shame will continue to insist that they must pay for their sin and so make themselves good again. This karma payment plan is not about coming to Jesus but about turning to oneself to atone for sin. When a believer in Jesus does sin, he can immediately seek forgiveness from His Savior instead of returning to a control phase where he tries desperately in his own strength to stop sinning.
In this blog post, we can see why religious fundamentalism does not work. In its extreme form, it is based on the belief that proper behaviors will earn the love of God. It is about my efforts to control my actions and thoughts in order to be good enough for God.
Faith in Jesus, on the other hand, is all about the relationship. He says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Practice my Presence. Let your obedience flow from love and intimacy for me not from a smothering legalism that seeks to make you good enough in my eyes but only drives you back toward the release phase of sin.
When you are motivated by a love for a Beautiful Savior, you will still sin, but the desire to sin will not be driven as much by a desire to rebel against the control phase. Yes, the old fallen nature in us will always rebel against any real or perceived law or limit. But as we grow closer to Jesus (especially as part of a body), we will desire to obey Him more than we will desire our sin.
So, Jesus wants you to come, not control. He desires you to seek Him not seek to make yourself good enough. He asks you to practice His Presence instead of practicing sin. The release phase of sin will steadily diminish as you are increasingly motivated not to obey God out of a strict, choking moralism but because you want to please the One you love with all your heart.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments ~ I John 5:1-3