But then we go and act like it is. Hopefully we're at least not applying that bogus standard to others, but all to often we apply it to ourselves. We live in fear, at times overcome with it, worried that we won't progress quickly enough, walk free enough, deny self and follow Christ enough to be loved and accepted. If we are not careful we can drown in fear and insecurity. We can fall into the trap of living a performance based lie, constantly in fear that we don't love God enough, or that He doesn't really really love and accept us because we keep not measuring up to some standard, or we question if we are secure in our salvation or not, or we live with the fear and pressure of the question if we stumble and fall will we be attacked or rejected by our fellows, our brothers and sisters, or will the love continue? The result is that we can be set free from the bondage of habitual sin and addictions and then live in bondage to the fear of failure rather than living in the joy of the freedom we have been given.
We are told that we have a 24 hour reprieve from the bondage of addiction and habitual sin based upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition. That basically means we can walk free of the obsession to do those things which so easily beset, enslave, waylay us as long as our focus is on our relationship with Christ. When we are seeking God first and saying yes to the Spirit's call to come and follow we don't have to be afraid of falling back into our former chains. And we're told that we are free from the power of sin and death (Romans 8:2), but then we go through our day worried and afraid that the big boogie monster of sin is going to ambush us and drag us out of the will of God.
We become slaves to anxiety and foolish fantasy. Foolish fantasy? Yes. What if this happens? What if that happens? How will I react if they say this or do that or this trigger pops up or? And anxiety becomes our master when our primary concern for the day is staying free or least not being found out. Will this be the day when I screw up again? Will I fail? Will I have to admit my failure to...... Will I ever be able to quit this and not worry about going back to it?
While living in the minute to minute struggle of fighting against addiction or habitual sin may be a necessary part of walking away from the bricks of Egypt, it isn't supposed to stay that way. Those who the Son set free are free indeed. That means free, not on furlough. As we find our freedom in relationship with Jesus, our focus should change. Instead of seeking freedom from sin, we begin seeking Him. When we seek Him, His will and kingdom (which simply means His rule and reign in and over our life) first, then these other things, like our freedom from addictions and sin, come as added bonuses.
But when we continue to focus on the fight and on the foe, our attention is on the problem and not the solution. The cause of this performance based pitfall where we focus so much attention and effort on not relapsing, not backsliding, not falling rather than just seeking more and more closeness and relationship with Jesus and the effect of living under the weight of that pressure, anxiety and fantasizing about what might be, come, etc. is shame.
Shame causes us to hide from God rather than seeking Him and therefore increasing the feeling that we need to feel better by doing something ourselves. We have to solve our own issues, ease our own fears, and numb, distract from or erase our own pain. Shame says you can't go to God for help because you're too _________. You don't deserve His help. Better to try something else than try God and find out it's true that He won't help you. So we try something else, we eat our forbidden fruit.
Anything we do to meet our needs that is outside of and apart from the love of God for us is sin and wrong. It's pretty simple, and deep down we know that. So as soon as we chomp down on that alternative to the provision of God, as soon as we return to the bondage of the past and that old familiar addiction or habitual sin, we know we messed up. And this only feeds that shame monster that chased us from the protected way of God's will, making him even bigger and giving him more control over our life.
We isolate and hide, cutting ourselves off even more from the help that is in God and the support we have from others because we fear being rejected, ridiculed or labeled a failure or hypocrite or...... This leads to torment until we do something to relieve the shame, and since we have cut ourselves off from the grace that takes us into Daddy's arms and provision, we return to the same thing that started the downward spiral of shame. It's a hellish cycle.
Shame makes us hold ourselves to a different standard then that to which we hold others. We say that someone who rejects the lies of shame and seeks the help they need has done the right thing, is brave and good and back on the road to recovery and freedom. But shame makes us believe that while that is the right thing for so and so, we can not be so exposed and vulnerable ourselves. We wrap ourselves in the parasite ridden cloak of feelings of worthlessness, shame, and failure and hide in the isolation, shivering in the cold separation from the warmth of God's love. We hide from the fear of the rejection from God and others by acting as though we have already been rejected. That's how stupid our logic becomes when we are driven by shame.
I am a preacher's kid, which put me in a different category from the other kids in my eyes and many others. While my parents stressed that they understood I was not and could not be perfect, that they would not hold me to such a standard and neither did God, and that God's grace was as available for me as for everyone else, I still felt the pressure to live up to some mythical standard of setting a good example, of being a little Jesus at the church and being as much a leader and shepherd of the other kids as my father was a leader and shepherd to the church. I was told that we have all sinned and fallen short, and yet, when I misbehaved with one of my friends, my part always was made to seem more wrong, more sinful, more of a failure with the people in the pews than my partner in crime's part, regardless of who came up with the idea and who followed. So while we all sin and can be forgiven, I learned not to believe that truth and learned instead to hide the real me and prevent others from knowing I was just as bad as every other kid my age.
I was told nothing could separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, that there was nothing that I could do that would make God stop loving me or love me less, but I lived the opposite, as though every time I sinned in thought or deed that God was about done with me. Before long, because shame ties your shortcomings to your identity, I believed that I was myself the mess that God could not abide to be with. It's shame that can convince us that God so loved all the world that He sent His only Son...except me, God doesn't and can't love me that much because I'm worthless and a failure.
The natural impulse is to try to escape shame, to ease the emotions and symptoms that are attached to it as fast and as painless as possible. Shame tells us that we are hopelessly worthless and unlovable. But that is a lie. And therein lies the answer; the weapon that slays the shame monster is the Sword of Truth. The response to shame that leads to freedom from it is not in hiding from what it says about us, or wearing a better mask of perfection and rightness, but in reminding ourselves as often as we need to that we are significant to Daddy, valued above even the life of His Son, and loved with an everlasting love by the God of all creation. Everlasting means just what it sounds like, lasting forever. And forever is a mighty long time that can't be shortened because of anything we do or fail to do. Nothing shame accuses us of or says about us is greater than God's love for us or costs more than the blood of Jesus can cover. Nothing we have done nor will do is so bad that God will ever write us off and say I have no desire that any should perish, except that dude - he/she needs to go, but that everyone else should have everlasting life.
Since we have all fallen short, each and every one of us, and since we have not yet been made perfect and are works in progress that He has promised to complete, we desperately need to remember that failure and sin doesn't mean that we are worthless or beyond the love of God. It means we're still alive and on this side of eternity, which means there is still time to turn to Jesus and say yes to His loving call to come and enter into the rest of relationship with Him.
If the shame monster is not faced and slain with the sword of truth, then it's only a matter of time till it beats us into submission and sin once again. The cycle of shame to sin to greater shame to more sin is never ending while shame is allowed to feed on us. Seriously, how well has shame worked for you so far? Has it really kept you living love and doing the next right thing and kept you free of the sins of the past? Or has it made you miserable and feeling unloved and unlovable and on the verge of permanent rejection at any moment or mistake and therefore feeling like you might as well fail and get it over with? Shame makes us hide and cut ourselves off, which means we live in hell, because we were created for relationship.
Imagine finishing this day and waking in the morning free from the fear of failure. What if you didn't once worry about relapse of falling back into habitual sin? What if that freedom didn't come because of some acceptance of the inevitability of failure but because you are looking instead at the great love of God for you and basking in it? What if you finally went through your day like you believed in that love and its power to keep you free from sin, and at the same time felt secure enough to realize that if you do mess up you will not be written off, that you won't make Him love you one little bit less, that Daddy will still love you, accept you, value you and cherish you?
Your value and identity doesn't change based on performance or failure. Your value is based on God's love for you, which is so great that He'd pay everything it cost to save you from your slavery and debt. Your identity is based solely on your relationship with Him, and that is something that shame can not affect because His mercies are new every morning and He is quick and faithful to forgive, old things have passed away and He has made all things, you, new.
When you are no longer ashamed of who you are, those secrets aren't so scary. Your past can become a weapon, another sword, the word of our testimony, with which we can walk into the dark dungeons of despair and lead the captives to the freedom we have found. We no longer have to hide part of our life, pretending we don't sin and haven't been despicable and disgusting compared to the standard of God's holy and perfect love and presenting only an illusion of being right, good and loving to the world. We can allow ourselves to be seen, completely seen, shortcomings, sins and failures included, because we will also be displaying the power or the love of God to overcome all of it. Instead of feeding shame, our mistakes and recovery from them while remaining confident in His love for us can set afire a blaze of hope in the hearts of the hurting.
Today, let us not hide from nor try to appease the shame monster, but let's kick its butt out of our life with the sword of the truth. The truth is that nothing you've done is more evil than God is loving and good. Your self-hatred is not how God sees you. God loves you and cherishes you and longs for relationship with you, right now, as you are and not as you should be, but He loves you enough to transform you from who you are to who you were always meant to be and what deep down you wish you were. Joy in the face of shame can be yours, and that joy in His love will have shame turning tail and running...well, in shame.
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