Removing Shame

For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.

Lamentations 3:31–32

In our emotions we may feel distant from God. Our feelings may make us feel too far from Him, perhaps too sinful, too small, or too insignificant. Or, perhaps the opposite, too big and strong, independent and smart to be weighed down from our pursuit of success by superstitions about an all-knowing and loving God. Neither extreme is accurate. But neither is the middle ground safe, that everything is fine because we feel okay about life. The believer’s reality is centered in Christ and in God. Regardless of how we feel about life God, and not our emotions, is the focus of our mind. Do I doubt that I am not cast off forever? Do I feel forgotten? Those doubts are of the flesh, not of the Word or the Spirit, for clearly they say the opposite. In faith, run to Him and to His promise of love and compassion! He forgives our sins, heals our souls, and restores us to life and hope.

One of our challenges is to deal with the shame that has been put on us from our past. Shame differs from guilt in that it makes us feel rejected and stigmatized by our failures — real failures or only supposed failures. Real guilt can be resolved. We may confess our sin and ask the forgiveness of God and of those we have wronged. Shame seems to hang in the air longer than guilt, suspended by nothing but our sense of inferiority. When Christ forgave sinners He also took steps to remove their shame and bring them back into the community of the faithful. Of the boy with a demon we read, Christ “healed the boy and gave him back to his father” (Luke 9:42), and this was typical of Christ. The prodigal comes home to forgiveness and the removal of the stain of his sin.

This is why receiving forgiveness we must also share this forgiveness with others. Our forgiving those who have offended us, who have accused and shamed us, is a significant step toward being healed of our own shame. Lewis Smedes wrote:

How do we heal our resentment? One thing is absolute: the fact that somebody shamed us is sculpted into our reality, and nobody can chisel it out. We cannot undo what was done to us. We have been wounded, and we carry our woundedness as part of our unchangeable reality. The only reality we can alter is the reality of our feelings. The question is: how can we change our feelings?

The way I recommend is the hard remedy of forgiving. It is, in the end, the only remedy we have. None of the options to forgiving does us any good. Revenge does not heal; it only makes things worse. Forgetting does not help. If we think we have forgotten, we have probably only stuffed the memory beneath our consciousness to fester there as the poisonous source of assorted other pains. Besides, something should never be forgotten. The only option we have left is the creative act of forgiving our shamers with the same grace that enables us to forgive ourselves.[1]

Smedes goes on to lead us through a step by step procedure to forgive others, and this is exactly the kind of practical help that most of us need. We pastors, I am afraid, linger too long in theology and do not come down often enough to practical application of biblical truth, to the real life on this earth.

Here are simple steps to forgive ourselves and others:

1. Confession: Identify the sin and claim your responsibility for it. Let the Spirit of God convict you of exactly what you did wrong and do not seek to avoid your responsibility. Confess all of it, not part of it. Avoid shifting the blame off of yourself and on to others. Ask God to help you see your part in the sin.
2. Acceptance: Accept by faith that God has forgiven you fully and completely through Jesus Christ. Accept that the righteousness of Christ now covers you. Your shame is also removed in Christ (Romans 3:21–26; 8:1–4; 1 John 1:9–10).
3. Recognize the sins others have committed against you. We cannot forgive others until we have recognized that there is something we have to forgive them for. Identify it clearly in your mind. Ask God to guide you to see and understand.
4. Surrender your right to get even. Give God every thought of revenge or even vindication. Instead let God fight your battles for you. Give it all to him, along with the person.
5. Embrace grace: Let God remold in your mind the image of the one who hurt you. Seek to see them as God sees them. Rather than letting your mind become dominated by resentment and desires for vindication, let your imagination be inspired by grace. Let the grace of God have its full rein, let it pull your imagination and your thoughts into areas that you would not otherwise go. Pray for that person and seek to do something kind for them. Let God release you from the grip of resentment.

Simple prayer, embracing God’s forgiveness and the removal of our shame, will result in our forgiving others, of sharing with them His limitless grace. This is the only way we can truly live free.

Oswald Chambers wrote: “God never gives us discernment in order that we may criticize, but that we may intercede.”

[1] Lewis Smedes, Shame and Grace (New York: Harper Collins, 1993) pp 135–136.