Monday, August 17, 2020
718 - Shame is No Remedy
Spirituality Column #718
August 18, 2020
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Shame is No Remedy
By Bob Walters
“For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot
carry it out.” – Paul, Romans 7:18
This isn’t because misery loves company, but I can’t be the
only Christian who’s ever sat in church after a long week and thought, “Hoo
boy, I can’t believe I did that.”
Fill in your own specifics if you feel so led, but don’t
dwell on them. Paul’s introspective on
sin in Romans 7, especially verses 14-20, teaches us to shake it off – whatever
it is – and to trust more in God’s grace in Jesus than to despair of our
own onboard evil and the deadly power of sin.
We have a savior; and we know it.
That’s the truth to govern our lives. Shame is no remedy for a hurting heart.
The first time I hacked my way through the theological
thicket that is Paul’s letter to the Romans, this passage about our human
weakness against sin stood out as a clearing with cool water in a seemingly
endless, hot forest. I understood
this. For all my good baptismal intentions
I knew down deep in my sinner’s soul I was guilty as charged. I could relate exactly to the contrapuntal
harmony of Paul’s desire to do good against his powerlessness against the sin
that was in him. In his life he had done
great right for the law of God, great wrong against the Son of God, and finally
was among the greatest witnesses helping the world to understand the grace of
God.
In my journey, it was a few years and much, much study later
that I caught on to the depth of divine grace and the joy of forgiveness. It overtook my earlier kneejerk inclination
toward assuming a personal posture of shame and guilt. The power of Paul’s witness teaches us to be
bold in Christ, not weak in our fallenness; to be strong in faith and active in
love, not stymied by sins and immersed in self-involved shame.
When they looked only at God, “Adam and Eve were naked
and felt no shame” (Genesis 2:25). It was when Satan interrupted their view
of God that they realized they were naked (Genesis 3:7-13). It was then that they sewed fig leaves, hid
from God, and before God blamed the other for their sin. Never since has shame helped anyone see or
deal with God clearly. Satan’s design, which
includes us bowing to our shame, puts our focus unrelentingly on ourselves
obscuring not only our comforting, worshipful view of a holy and loving God but
complicating our charitable view of our fellow humans.
It is a Godly, cosmic, true-in-every-situation fact whether involving
dicey church doctrine, scripture misinterpreted, Jesus misapplied, or
the lowly, fragile inspiration of worldly wants, lusts, fears, and pride: looking
away from God creates disharmony and endangers joy. It is looking at God through Jesus with the
Holy Spirit that properly orders life’s authority, priorities, and justice. Joy is close at hand; the Bible really
helps.
Be careful with shame.
Learn to identify it. Be a humbly
repentant Christian with unwavering confidence in Jesus, yes. But … don’t be a sucker for the worldly wiles
of those who seek to hang shame of their own definition around your neck to
pull your eyes off God, diminish your relationship with Jesus, and spuriously usurp
divine power.
Control is their game, and there is a lot of that going
around these days.
Shame has spiritual power, and it is not the power of God. Ask Adam and Eve.
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