Shame

Do you remember what it was like to come home from school when you’d just been beaten up on the playground? Or, maybe, when you got a little older, the first girl you had a crush on broke up with you and made fun of you to her friends in order to make it stick? Do you remember when they were picking teams and you were the one no one wanted on theirs? You may not remember the names of the people who shamed you but you never forget the feeling. (Anyone who can’t answer “yes” to at least one of these questions need not read further).

Do you remember what your parents said to comfort you? Things like, “Just because people say or do mean things to you doesn’t mean you deserve it.” Or, “When people treat you badly it says more about them than it does about you.” Or, and here’s the best one, “Jesus taught us to forgive those who hurt us.” Maybe so, but that was little comfort when I was still licking my wounds. I never could seem to find Jesus on the playground. My inability to immediately do what Jesus would do only added to my sense of shame. There is no deeper wound than the one shame inflicts. I’ve found that hasn’t changed with age.

It still hurts to lose. The playground has changed and the game counts for more but it still hurts to lose, to be rejected or to have someone say untrue things about you to others. Never more so than at church. Especially at church. The one place where everyone is supposed to play by the Jesus rules. Whatever nerve endings convey that kind of pain to our brains doesn’t dull like the nerves in other parts of our body just because we grow older. Shame, like most pain, is an equal opportunity provider of misery. Shame hurts spiritually, emotionally and even physically. I was still very young when I first felt the ends of my fingers aching like they were frostbitten, shooting electric bolts up my arms to the shame center of my brain anytime “I got my feelings hurt.”

There are remedies for shame, one in particular. I’ll get to that tomorrow. Today, I just wanted to ask if you remembered.