by Mitch Bernstrom
NOTE: The following content was taught in Sunday school during the Family Discipleship Sunday school class in Fall 2022. Many found Mitch’s words on shame helpful so we adapted it into an article for Cedar Heights Kids Online.
During an early lesson of the Family Discipleship Sunday school class we spent some time talking about shame, specifically as it pertains to failures we have – or believe we may have – in our parenting. Shame can be difficult to define, but we all know it and have felt it.
In the book Cry of the Soul the authors say this about shame:
“A lingering threat in our everyday encounters and experiences, shame is an acid that strips us of our dignity and dissolves hope. No other emotion better portrays hell – the utter loss of intimacy, wonder, and joy. Its corrosive effect is so strong that it can mold our souls and shape the direction of our lives. Shame is so painful that we react against it perhaps more than any other difficult emotion….”
The thing we need to remember is that much of our shame is false shame. This tends to take at least 2 forms. The first is guilt over things of which we are not truly responsible. During one class, a man shared some of his struggle with fighting guilt with regard to some of the choices made by a couple of his sons. He spoke up, but I’m sure all parents here, especially those of us with adult children, can share our own battle with shame over some of our children’s choices.
The second is embarrassment over amoral mistakes which, though manifestations of a fallen and imperfect world, are not themselves sins and do not incur or warrant guilt. Satan and his principalities and powers are masters of the false shame and would have us be enslaved to it and our lives defined by it. Avery Johnson pointed out, appropriately I believe, that we as Christ-ones have had this issue addressed and resolved by God and we need to resist the temptation to live in shame and reject its efforts to define who we are. YHWH has given us an identity in Jesus that does not now include shame.
However, I believe it is helpful for us to not “throw the baby out with the bath water” (how’s that for using a family-based idiom?). Although our faith contains several current realities that have replaced past ones, it is helpful to remember and acknowledge those past realities from which we have been delivered. There is a true shame. Whereas shame is not to be our current reality, it was a past one. Sin is shameful, and anyone not under the forgiveness of the cross by definition lives with and in shame.
According to Rev 12:10, every day before God, the “accuser of the brethren” speaks against me. And guess what? The “father of lies” does not need to lie. He is not going to make accusations toward me of things I have not actually thought, said, or done which could easily be refuted. It is one of the times when he speaks the truth. And have I not Jesus by my side as my Advocate, the shame would stick and I would be lost. So, we can and MUST use the history of our shame not as a reason for defeat, but as a reason to worship.