Shame is not a
foreign concept
to our generation.

we have been born
and raised with an
awareness of this
powerful emotion.

Brené Brown calls Shame
a “master emotion”.

a master emotion is a
dominant one, one that
has the power to override
other emotions by it’s
mere presence within us.

if we’re not careful and curious
about Shame, it will try to override
our sense of worth and identity.

…

Tyler Station says in one of
his recent sermons that
Shame is a very good storyteller.

and Shame has a sneaky way
of entering into our stories.

Shame tries to re-write some of our memories,
turning them into something the Enemy can use
to deceive us, to distort our thinking and beliefs,
and ultimately, to deter us from holding on to the
promises, truth and hope of our gracious God.

Shame wants to silence our stories, because in doing so,
we are more vulnerable to believing lies about our identity.

…

today’s post is an exposition on Shame, in the
hope that you may be encouraged to be curious
about the places of Shame in your own story.

Curt Thompson tells us that we are storytelling creatures,
and that to know our story is to know Shame’s place in it.

Brené also invites us to be
curious when we find
ourselves experiencing Shame.

we see this invitation also from Jesus,
who over and over again, asks and
invites us to take a deep look within.

….

to find the answer to many
of our obstacles in life, our
hearts are often the culprit.

…

we find ourselves in the
dark embrace of Shame
when we fail to allow Light
to expose and reveal those
deep fears and desires within.

Shame creates an urge to hide, bury,
disguise, lie, and avoid the parts of
ourselves that we haven’t been
able to accept or allow to truly heal.

Shame makes us feel exposed in places
we are often not ready to be exposed.

when we listen to Shame,
we give power to fear.

fear wants us to stay afraid, to
stay in the shadows, to stay silent.

fear leads us to a desperation
to escape from ourselves,
to cover over our insecurities.

deep down, we all want to live
free and unashamed, but there
are parts of ourselves that
struggle to experience freedom.

why?

because of Shame.

we really don’t want
to give Shame so
much power…. do we?

when Brené Brown speaks of Shame,
she calls out the most common
“shame triggers” for men and women.

arguably both shame triggers stem from Eden:

appearance and body-image have an
incredible stronghold over women.

perceived weakness also has an
incredible stronghold on men.

…

shame triggers are really just another
term for the root cause, the
catalyst of Shame entering our stories.

Shame loves to be invited into our
insecurities, and to breed further fear.

…

it is no mistake that both of these shame triggers
have the potential to prevent men and women
from living in the light and gifting of God on their life.

obsession with the exterior distracts women
from our role in stewarding internal qualities,
and leads us to superficiality over depth.

the threat of being perceived as weak drives
men to withhold themselves emotionally, socially
and spiritually from others, preventing them
from true masculinity and their role as leaders.

…

Thompson in his book on ‘The Soul of Shame’
makes us question whether Shame, because it is
so embedded in our stories, has a purpose.

he even goes so far as to wonder whether
Shame is being actively leveraged by the
personality of evil to bend us towards sin.

a scary thought…

but when you think of it, a very real prospect.

Shame is used, with intention,
by the Enemy, to dismantle us
as individuals and communities.

“evil has wielded Shame as a primary weapon”,
to see that God’s purpose for this world to be
one of goodness, beauty and joy is not realised.

…

Shame is the very first symptom of the Fall.

as soon as the serpent tempted Eve,
asked her the simple…. leading…. question,
as to whether God was really a provider,
really trustworthy, really meant what He said…

the result was: Shame.

Eve bought into the lie,
the seed of temptation,
the claw of deception.

and that led to her and Adam being aware,
for the very first time, of their nakedness.

this awareness, was Shame.

there is no reason for us to think this was
a twenty-first century body-positive awareness,
because we are told the first reaction to this
awareness of their nakedness was to hide.

Shame writes our stories into shadows,
calling us into the darkness, calling us to hide.

and if we remain there, in the shadows,
in the darkness, then we remain outside
of the light, and the truth, of God’s glory.

God’s glory is blinding light,
incomprehensible.

of course the Enemy wants us far away
from the weight and worth, the Glory,
of our Redeemer and true Master.

…

as a result of the Fall,
a lot of us suffer with
the presence of dysfunction
and distortion in our lives.

emotional distortions
may present as anxiety,
Shame, low self-esteem,
and the list goes on …

what this tells us is
that not only is Shame
a master emotion, it is
also a distorted emotion.

(aka: not to be trusted)

Thompson wants us to consider Shame as
an emotional weapon, not just a consequence
of the Garden of Eden, because Shame is a weapon
that evil uses to corrupt our relationships with God
and each other, and disintegrate any and all gifts.

he very passionately writes about how Shame wants
to prevent us from using the gifts we have been given.

if we are living afraid, scared, hidden,
of course this also suggests we would be hiding
our gifting, our talent, from the Light.

to one degree or another, we all
allow Shame to enter our stories.

we all experience the failures and faults
of character that come from a broken world. 

for a lot of us, we need
permission to be our
flawed and broken selves.

we need permission to
invite Grace into all of the
places of inadequacy,
weakness and insecurity
found in our stories.

when we give God permission
to our hearts and lives,
we invite Grace into our stories.

…

if i look at my story
with honesty,
i know that Shame
has prevented me
from relationship.

Shame led to me, for a couple of years,
not being able to be raw or speak openly
to a dear friend, because i feared their response
would be one of judgement to my struggle.

of course this is how
the Enemy, the author of Shame,
wants us to respond.

he wants to isolate us,
to lead us inwards not outwards,
to distance us from others,
from community, and from
the true antidote to Shame:

G R A C E

now, my gut instinct to not show up fully in this
friendship was a result of my fear of being
seen and known, but not loved or understood.

there is an innate fear of condemnation and
abandonment that Shame uses to keep us silent.

but, the subtle lie at play here is that while
Shame may “promise” to protect us from rejection,
it actually only serves to distance us from Grace.

…

Grace is the key to
wholeheartedness.

b u t.

we cannot experience
the fullness of Grace
without being fully
known, loved and seen.

…

Shame leads us to behave
in ways that mean we are
not known, loved or seen
for who we truly are,
because we hide away
and cover parts of ourselves.

of course, you may be thinking,
well, doesn’t God already know
everything anyway? doesn’t he
love us and see us fully, truly?

of course, the answer is yes.

the only “but” here, is that
if we are listening to Shame,
then we are believing the lie
that Grace is not enough.

…

being fully known, loved and seen
by a perfect God is a privilege.

being fully known, loved and seen
by a broken world is a purpose.

…

we are called, as Christians,
to be storytellers of Grace, not Shame.

we are called to be a Light,
to expose, to reveal, to speak
life and truth and hope to darkness.

we are called
to let Grace
define our story.

we are called to be
broken vessels,
channels of mercy.

this means we are
to be poured out,
not to be contained.

Shame begs us to
cover up the cracks
in our vessels, our lives,
that we may hold inside
that which will destroy us.

but brokenness is a part of all of our stories
that is not meant to be hidden or covered.

a vessel that is not broken
cannot be poured out.

but of course Shame wants us to aim for perfection.
to pretend. to cover over the reality of our brokenness.

why?

because when we share and invite others into our brokenness,
that is when we find ourselves less alone in our struggles.

the Enemy is on a vendetta for darkness
to rule in our hearts and lives, so he will
do whatever he can to stop us from
living free, redeemed and on purpose.

it makes sense why Shame
leads us to internalise,
to shrink, to hide, doesn’t it?

Shame is rooted in isolation,
and the Enemy wants us to remain
in places of secrecy and silence.

…

Jennie Allen in ‘Get out of Your Head’ says that
our spiralling thoughts of isolation threaten to keep us
trapped in a place of self-sufficiency and Shame.

Bob Goff in ‘Everybody Always’ says that
Shame makes us silent. Shame makes us
leave safe places. and. it breaks the rhythms
that we’ve established with each other.

…

Shame loves us to be detached, to be detached from
connection to our people, our bodies, our souls, our Maker.

what saves and heals us is attachment;
attachment to our people, our bodies, our souls, our God.

…

Curt Thompson says that Shame is deeply committed
to exploiting the “machinery of attachment”
in creating stories of aloneness within us and between us
and most substantially between us and God.

…

Shame wants us alone, but
Grace wants us accepted.
…

the risk is, we don’t just
hide from others,
we hide from God.

we distance ourselves
from Him and others.
(alone)

afraid to be truly
known, loved and seen.
(accepted)

…

i have fallen culprit to this trap, so afraid of what may be
deep inside of me, that i buried a lot of things
– from God, from myself, and consequentially, from others.

the process of awakening our hearts requires us to start to
be honest with God, and in the process, be more honest
with ourselves, in communion with God, where we learn we
are not alone when we try to navigate the tumultuous terrains
of our own hearts and the desires and wrestlings that we face.

…

our hearts are safe
to bring to Him.

but.

once we have that
safe place in Him.

the safety and trust
that He who is in us,
is greater than he
that is in the world.

that frees us to share
our hearts with others.

…

we learn to take small, bold, and wise steps
towards seeking our community, seeking
those who we can entrust our hearts to,
slowly revealing parts of ourselves to others,
to find the healing that can come from community
and having our deepest selves brought into the Light.

of course, when we entrust parts of our hearts to others,
they may fail us, because they too are broken, with hearts
yearning, failing and falling towards God in surrender (or …
they may be resisting God and submitting to their own desires).

….

at the end of the day:

God is the only one
we can truly
entrust our hearts to.

no other heart
can meet our hearts where they are at.

no other heart
will be able to discern our desires
before we can speak their name.

no other heart
can rewrite the story of Shame
into a story of Grace.

…

only God’s heart for us, God’s love for us,
can release our hearts from bondage.

if we bind our hearts to Shame or to our own desires,
we will wrestle with emotions, relationships and freedom.

but if we bind our hearts to God’s love,
we find ourselves wrapped up in the story
of a great rescue mission for our hearts.

we find that our hearts are pursued by the Maker of the universe,
that He is romancing and serenading us daily with His Grace,
inviting us to taste and see the goodness He has for our hearts
and lives, if we were to trust Him, and surrender our stories to Him.

…

acceptance is the
antithesis
to being alone.

intimacy is the
antithesis
of isolation.

…

of course:

Shame wants us divided:
isolated from community,
disconnected from Love,
divorced from the Light.

Shame and darkness are friends.

b u t.

when we are followers of Jesus,
we are called to the Light.

we are called towards relationship,
to lean into the challenges and tensions.

we are called to radical acceptance,
love, and companionship. not isolation.

…

stories of aloneness are
the language of Shame.

stories of isolation
are the language of Shame.

b u t.

stories of acceptance
are the language of Grace.

stories of intimacy
are the language of Grace.

…

the story of true acceptance and intimacy
is found in Jesus, who invites us into His
story, to partake in His ultimate suffering.

instead of experiencing rejection and abandonment,
disconnection from our Maker because of Shame,
we are invited to share in the body and blood of Jesus.

by His wounds, we are extended Grace,
an invitation to experience true healing.

…

the choice is ours. we either live holding inside our
Shame, and allowing lies into our identity and story.

or.

we live open, exposed, and redeemed, saved by Grace,
alive in Christ, free to be a broken vessel, a messenger
of the atoning work that God can do in the lives of those
who surrender and let him remove Shame from our stories.

now… i’ve read a lot of non-fiction books,
particularly, it would seem, in a quest to
discover the secret of wholeheartedness,
which is why you will see so many unique
voices quoted in this blog post alone.

this post has truly been a long time coming, as a
synthesis of past research and current thoughts.

an interesting pattern that i have only noticed
in retrospect is that every single book that
speaks to wholeheartedness and healing
also speaks to this pertinent topic of Shame.

…

in summary:

we cannot speak to healing
and wholeheartedness
without speaking to Shame.

…

Chuck DeGroat speaks to this
in his novel on wholeheartedness:

“we all know the inner stranger,
this seemingly incurable virus:

called Shame.

in Shame, we live divided lives that
rob us of wholeness and peace.”

…

Shame will always threaten to steal our joy,
to whisper shadows and darkness into our Light.

but God’s glory is not an intangible truth, His glory
is His weight and worth, and these are tangible.

when we dwell on His worth and weight,
the magnitude of His works, His power,
the majesty of His name, the cost of His blood,
we are reminded who truly has authority here.

Shame has no power over us.

the Author of our lives
is the Author of creation.

He is sovereign over all,
and that includes our
hearts, desires, and stories.
…

we are reminded that Shame is a
thief, liar, and destroyer of identity.

our true identity is secure and not
tied to our worth but to His worth.

…

Shame therefore,
cannot change
our worth or story.

…

if you are walking with someone else
who is struggling to be free of Shame,
then the advice in ‘Reclaiming Love’ is:

if the person is ashamed of their weakness (insecurity, fear)
then this is not something that should be addressed directly.
do not give the weakness (insecurity, fear) any power. instead,
speak to truth and strengths, that which outweighs Shame.

there are so many of us who are
walking with stories of Shame,
that could be stories of redemption.

we have an important role, as children of the Light, to help
point others to the redemption and truth that has freed us.

…

so let’s turn to the Scriptures to finish,
to see what truth speaks to Shame:

“so if the Son sets you free,
you will be free indeed”
– John 8:36

Shame cannot rewrite
your freedom in Christ.

…

“but if we walk in the light,
as he is in the light, we have
fellowship with one another,
and the blood of Jesus,
his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
– 1 John 1:7

we can walk in the Light,
and in fellowship with others,
because of the blood of Jesus.

…

to close, i hope that this post blesses you
and reminds you to speak truth to Shame.

be curious about where Shame
has entered your story.

…

don’t let Shame
be a storyteller.

remember who truly
authors your story, and:

be a storyteller of Grace.

xx