Conversations that Christians Must Have–#MeToo and #BLM

So, last week I posted an article on social media with a video about Stewart-Allen Clark who (being quite plump himself) was going on and on about how married women let themselves go (and he is married) and he was talking about the male “need” for a beautiful wife and the importance of her being at least a “participation trophy” wife and all that (warning, it is quite upsetting that such a thing would be preached and laughed at and “amened” at from the pulpit). Of course, it was horrifying and I did something I never do. I allowed people to take the gloves off and express themselves, even though I dislike insults. I did it for a reason and God taught me a lot of things that were important through allowing that expression.

When people are subjected to unjust treatment, in whatever way, and it has gone on systematically all their lives (and by “systematic” I mean that there is a culture, i.e. governmental, social, socio-economic, and/or religious structures backing it up so that it is hard to escape from) and they are finally given a chance to vent, it can be ugly. And yet, that ugliness is there because of frustration and anger and heartache and a feeling of hopelessness and wanting things to be different (read Psalm 137!)—but when a future difference is contingent upon the actions of another person and how they feel about you and how their beliefs dictate that they treat you and even how God wants you to be seen and treated, all those things can turn easily to rage. Rage is a response to institutional injustice—a form of injustice where we just accept the illogical as logical and even internalize it because it is all we have ever known.

When the #metoo movement began, a lot of women started coming forward who never would have before. Because we couldn’t. I know all too well what happens when an 80’s-era high school teacher gets reported for repeatedly molesting a student. Unless someone saw it or it met certain standards, the accusations were swept under the rug and the accuser subjected to ostracism. But pedophiles aren’t generally sloppy enough to allow that to happen and they are generally such charming people that the non-victims rally around them protectively. Within the Churches, even Ravi Zacharias has his rabid supporters, as does Andrew Savage, who are still victim-blaming–despite independent investigations confirming assault and wrongdoing on behalf of the ministry staff.

Closer attention is now finally being paid, within Christian communities, to certain books aimed at men and their “needs”—books that subjugate their wives’ humanity in order to fashion them into becoming the focus of their husbands’ sins. It’s “okay” for them to lust, they “can’t help it”—just look better than everyone else so they will lust after you. It’s “okay” for them to be covetous of having a trophy wife, just make sure you meet the criteria. It’s “okay” for them to be shallow and want to show off a beautiful wife, it’s your job to be beautiful no matter how hard you work and no matter how many children you’ve had and menopause be damned, just spent another hour a day on the treadmill and eat next to nothing as your hormones betray you. Be willing to do whatever it is he saw when he was looking at porn, no matter how depraved and demeaning, no matter how violated you feel while doing it, and he will stop if you are submissive enough. It’s the way to keep him from divorcing you, they say, the way to keep him from cheating on you. It’s an unjust burden that no woman was ever meant to carry—being held responsible for the church-sanctioned sins of her man. But it’s an institutional problem within society. That preacher didn’t make up this attitude, He was just dumb enough to express it and post it on YouTube.

So much for “no male and female” in Christ—they can lust and covet and be prideful and let themselves go but we are required, in some “Christian” thought, to be the focus of their character flaws—and even encourage and feed said flaws. We are expected to enable sin while dealing with and eliminating our own. Imagine a husband being told to get a second and third job to satisfy our “need” to shop and wear expensive clothes! It’s no different in terms of being ludicrous and ridiculous.

These are good things to finally be able to discuss but not all I want to talk about.

I want to talk about racism. I want to talk about the kind of anger that all those women (and quite a few men) were venting on that post, howling in their frustration over the trap that man had his wife in, and the trap so many of us have been in over the years in one way or another—physically, psychologically and sexually. There were two people who came on playing the shame game and trying to passive-aggressively shut down the conversation. A lot of people don’t want to hear the anger. And I see the same thing in conversations about racial injustice. Although we whites would prefer to talk about how much better things are now than they were, as Christians we can never be satisfied until they are good. Women have it better now too, but things aren’t good as long as these sorts of mindsets exist (ones we can be divorced over and must live in fear because of).

We have this cruel thing we do, and I see it on social media. They (our black brothers and sisters) talk about the pain and shame of slavery. Some white person reminds them that slavery is over and that my ancestors, the Irish (grandma was full-blooded and dad is 75% Irish and we’ve been in this country since well before the Revolutionary War), were slaves too and brutalized. But if they escaped, could you look at their face and tell? Would you look at me right now and do you wonder if I am the descendant of slaves? Have my ancestors been denied the vote or judged to be 3/5 of a human being? Were we ever barred from living in whatever neighborhood we could afford over the last century? Have any of us been lynched lately? No, of course not—there are even parades where people can pretend to be “one of us.” So, please stop using my ancestors to shut down the conversation. I mean, that was hundreds of years ago and the consequences erased long ago. We look like y’all so you couldn’t do anything to us anyway.

Black Americans will say, “Black Lives Matter” and whites will counter with “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” or, my personal favorite, “Unborn Lives Matter” as an intentional slap on the face of the entire black community about the high rate of abortion, as though all black Americans support abortion and do not mourn deeply over it. Hey, police lives are important to me—my kid is going to be a cop; it’s been all he has wanted since he was two and in 18 months, he is headed for the Academy. But it’s just an attempt to, again, shut down the conversation that things are wrong—something my future cop son and I discuss a lot. Black Lives Matter, Black Pride, Black is Beautiful—unlike the corresponding White Pride and White is Beautiful, they have never meant “only black lives matter” or legally enforced racial purity or supremacism. Instead, they mean, “Why is this still happening in a nation that claims to be Christian?” How about, “Why don’t you love and respect me?” These mantras mean, “I am tired of being ashamed and treated differently because of my skin color.” They warn, “I am not going to apologize because I am fearfully and wonderfully made and God Himself is going to ask you what your problem was with that!!” They inform us of the truth, “We are tired of our sons being pulled over and detained for things that no white person would be pulled over for, much less detained unless he was a known criminal.” But we want to tell them that things are better than they used to be and we are scared to death of how uncomfortable and unprofitable it might be for us to fix this. The truth is, that the price of not fixing it is even more expensive and just as devastating to our collective souls as allowing slavery to historically continue so long in the first place.

We do other things too. We make excuses for whites using the n-word by pointing out that blacks use it too—even though we all know full well it doesn’t mean the same thing when we say it. But we don’t want to talk about how horrifying it is that black children still hear those kinds of words from white adults, that they have to deal with the sort of fear that must induce, so we deflect and side-step. But those of us who were brutally bullied and rejected as children—we can manage a glimpse. Can we stand by and allow it? Can we say, “I survived it and so will they?” Is mere survival what we actually want for black children? Or black adults–are they expected to just have thicker skins than whites need? And, if we believe that, are we any different than the overt racists? Is shrugging any different than personally speaking those words? I tell you the truth, that racism is a heart issue that runs deeper than we know. That we can find it on both sides is irrelevant to our need to fix it within ourselves. There is no place for such lukewarmness toward suffering in the life of any believer–when someone made in the image of God is made to suffer, He suffers.

One of the most horrible things we do is point out that the slums and the ghettos aren’t so bad because “the best and the brightest escape all the time—therefore, it’s all about hard work.” I am not okay with a system that only the “best and the brightest” can escape. And what does that even mean? Does it mean we hold to a hierarchy of worth based on intellectual aptitude? “Smart people can escape, so it’s okay. They don’t deserve to be there”—that’s the unspoken truth of that attitude, as though some people do deserve it. Anything that the least of these cannot escape from is not okay, and as believers how on earth can we even promote this sort of thinking? Are we really going to be counted among the sheep or will we be found among the goats?

And people of color have to just bite on their tongues and take it because when they bring it up, we bring them right back down. But this is a conversation that needs to happen. There are changes that we need to make—and I have no idea how to do it. But if we don’t try then we might just find ourselves on the left with the goats, chewing on cans. The Gospel isn’t the Gospel at all if the only lives it changes are our own. Christianity isn’t a white European religion. The first three major centers (besides Jerusalem) were Syria, Rome and Alexandria, in Egypt. Christianity was thriving all over North Africa and it produced brilliant minds like Tertullian and Athanasius but it isn’t an African religion either. It belongs to the world. Every color. Every language. Every culture and cultural expression. And we have to mourn over injustice and hunger and thirst for change that will bring justice every bit as much as we mourn over sin and hunger and thirst for holy behavior in general. One without the other is a false picture of the Gospel of the Kingdom. And in “Christian nations” we can’t turn a blind eye or shut down uncomfortable conversations. We have to talk about what is wrong. Cancel culture wouldn’t exist if we were all willing to talk about it and move toward resolution together, as a team and not as adversaries. Cancel culture is our own fault for being unwilling to listen without being dismissive. People do what they feel they can when all avenues for reasonable action are shut down. I am not saying it is right, but I am saying that maybe that’s the only option we’ve allowed. You can’t blame the balloon for succumbing to the eleventh slow leak when you’ve plugged the other ten with your available fingers. The yearning for dignity and justice and relief will find an outlet.

I started out with the incident from back in February, and how outraged and humiliated we all were as women. Ladies, remember how you felt. And when our black brothers and sisters cry out in that same frustrated, angry and outraged voice over the things in their lives that we don’t allow them to talk about—we have to suppress that instinct to sweep it all under the carpet. Everyone knows the problems go deep and they are not going away until we begin to come together as believers, as members of the same family, and deal with it. Remember how much you want people to listen when it is you. As human beings, they want and feel the exact same things and they deserve acknowledgment and redress of wrongs just as much as we do.

Things aren’t right for women until they are right for black women too, and for their sons and husbands, brothers and fathers. And if we as Christians aren’t leading those conversations and striving toward reconciliation of all people, male and female, and all colors and creeds—well, we will find ourselves at odds with the very Kingdom we claim to serve. We’re all going to be equal and equal in dignity in the world to come, so what are we waiting for? The time has come for equality now—not as a future hope but a recognition of the spiritual reality that we already are all equal to God.

Book recommendations:

McCaulley, Esau Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope

Bantu, Vince L A Multitude of All Peoples: Engaging Ancient Christianity’s Global Identity

Tisby, Jemar The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

 



Pornography, Sex Trafficking, and My Complicity

This is a short piece I wrote on social media the other day but the response was so positive that I wanted to save it here.

When I was a porn user and then a porn addict for those twenty-one years, beginning at the age of eight and continuing until the day in 1999 when I got saved at the age of twenty-nine, I stupidly and naively assumed that these women and men were involved because they enjoyed it. That they wanted to be there. That they were pursuing happiness in their own way. Very convenient beliefs. Little did I know that I was personally complicit in the trafficking, exploitation, torture, and misery of human beings that had very likely been abused as children, and probably by family members. Little did I know that their entry into my perverse and selfish form of enjoyment and fulfillment was probably incest and child rape. All I could think about was my next high and they were nothing to me except tools to be used toward that end. Honestly, the videotapes and magazines were far more real to me than the people in them ever were. The day I got saved was the day it ended and I thank God for that. And it wasn’t because they became real to me. No, that would take many more years of growth and getting over my self-centered world view. I just all of a sudden knew that it was horrifying.

I didn’t know that God was removing me from the sex-trafficking business, of which I was an eager, paying customer. If you would have told me I was personally hurting anyone in those days, I would have rolled my eyes and shrugged and maybe even laughed a little bit. All that mattered was the high I got from the experience. Absolutely nothing else mattered.

And it took many years to emerge from that mindset and realize that these people in the magazines and videos are human beings–just like the boys and girls, men and women on the streets; human beings who are slaves not only to pimps but also to the demands of people who aren’t just satisfied to be watching videos and looking at the magazines anymore. Or maybe they were ushered into this life by a male family member as a birthday present when they turned eighteen. That happens more than we would like to believe. But it is all part of not seeing people as human beings with real lives and souls–people whom Yeshua/Jesus came to save. People we are destroying and allowing to be destroyed.

Our Savior commanded us to live above and beyond the commandments and to live sacrificially on behalf of the vulnerable–the poor, abused, oppressed, widowed, orphaned, foreigner, etc…and those are the people who are usually involved in the sex-for-hire business, whether it be first-hand sexual experiences or second hand through pornography. The exploitation of the vulnerable strikes at the very heart of God’s Torah, His basic laws on how we are to love one another.

But people won’t give it up because they feel as though they can’t live without that high. They don’t want to live without it. And so they oppress. You cannot be a pornography user unless you are also an oppressor or the vulnerable–like I was. And if you are an oppressor of the vulnerable then it doesn’t mean a damned thing if you keep the other commandments. Tithe all you want, keep the festivals, be nice to everyone, eat kosher, don’t work on the Sabbath. Doesn’t matter. You are no different than the residents of Sodom, victimizing the vulnerable and living in ease while others suffer.

Telling God you are sorry knowing full well that it is a sham and you will do it again isn’t repentance, it is nothing but a self-centered alleviating of guilt. It is every bit as much a violation of God as your porn use is a victimization of the least of these. And until you care about something other than your pleasure, you are dead in the water. You’re a goat, no, worse than a goat because the goats of Matthew 25 merely neglected the vulnerable, while those who are porn users and who pay for sex are themselves, oppressors. And if you don’t care about that then I just don’t know what to say. There’s nothing I can say. You need to change. You need to stop cold turkey and never go back. It’s the only way. You don’t need sex to survive, or porn, you just want it no matter who pays the price.

If you want to do something about sex trafficking and child rape, please look into taking the free online training course at www.ourrescue.org/training –learning to spot trafficking in our own communities, organizations, congregations, and families is how we will defeat this scourge of modern-day slavery in our own backyards.

Also, this is the prayer that I pray during the day as I think about it:

Lord, please act according to your wisdom, justice, and mercy and confound the schemes of the traffickers. Let their cleverness become foolish. Please send your angels to be deceiving spirits to their advisors. Let them fall victim to their own traps. Please send loving people, dreams, and visions to their victims and give them hope. Open up their hearts to be unafraid of those who are there to help them. Stir up our consciences that we will stop looking away and stop covering up for the abusers who are in our own families and congregations. Expose those in positions of authority who are complicit. Turn the hearts and minds of all their abusers, both their pimps and the Johns, to your compassion and love. Inspire pity in the hearts of the Johns that they will rescue instead of violate. Let the oppressors become liberators. Save and deliver everyone who is part of this to end this once and for all. Help us to raise up a generation that says no to sexual oppression. Stir up the compassion of everyone who is complicit in this terrible thing–from the porn users who are willingly enjoying the fruit of the trafficking of souls, to the men and women who buy sex from adults, to the child rapists. Give them new hearts that are not bent on satisfaction and pleasure but upon serving others. God, turn our hearts away from worshipping this beast of seeking out pleasure and possessions at the cost of the humanity of others. Strip away the blindness that excuses our complicity in service to our own enjoyment and desires at the expense of anyone else’s needs. Destroy our complacency. In the Name of my Master Yeshua/Jesus, please help us establish Your Kingdom on Earth.



The Importance of Being Honest–With Ourselves and Others

Sometimes God will give me a shocking dream in order to drive a particularly uncomfortable point home about character issues. I never emerge from nights like this particularly well-rested or happy. 

Last night was one of those nights. So be careful poking at me, I might snap at you. (Just kidding)

The dream started out with a familiar face, a face that I trust more than most to be kind to people. But she wasn’t being kind. She was saying something positively vile, just beyond the pale of civilized conversation, about our server–the woman who had taken our order. The comments were unnecessary and based on conjecture, cruel conjecture at that. They were personal in the worst sort of way and not because she knew our server but just because. This otherwise seemingly kind person was being incredibly petty and cruel. I was stunned. I still am hours later.

Then I watched as the realization swept over her face (I love in dreams how I can read people’s minds even though I can’t in real life) that this server was making the food and might spit in it. 

Yes, I know, servers don’t make the food but this is a dream and not a documentary. 

My friend panicked and, when the server came back around, begged for forgiveness but she told a huge lie in order to secure that forgiveness. Plus, I knew she wasn’t sorry but concerned over the consequences. This was an escape act of the highest caliber, containing just enough of a grain of truth to draw the victim into the lie. I am going to change the story in order to protect the person in question (remember this was a dream meant to teach me something and not a newsflash about this person’s character–the overwhelming majority of dreams are not predictive):

“Oh, I am so sorry,” she sniffled, starting to pour out the waterworks. “I can’t imagine how you must feel about me right now but I have a terrible medical condition that I have suffered with for many years and when it strikes I just say the cruelest things and oh my gosh I am so embarrassed. You have no idea what it is like to just be like this but that’s no excuse, what I said was so terrible and horrible. I am so sorry…” and the excuses and the sobbing continued on and on and on until the server, struck with compassion, told her that it was all okay and that she totally understood and not to think anything more about it.

It was a masterful performance on a number of levels. Of course, I knew it was pure bupkiss. She wasn’t currently suffering from her condition and hadn’t been for quite a long time–plus, she misrepresented how it affects her anyway. But she sure sounded convincing, I will give her that. 

The most interesting thing was watching as my friend wove this woeful story, how as she got deeper into it, the more I could see her beginning to believe it herself. No, she wasn’t the bad guy. She wasn’t responsible. This woman didn’t have the right to feel injured or wronged. And not only that, I watched as she fooled herself to the point of actually beginning to feel good about herself, justified even. Yes, she and only she was the true victim. 

I could see it dawning on her, “I am not a bad person. I am not the kind of person who would say such things without a really good reason.”

The yarn she was spinning became the very web she was now entangled in. 

As the server’s face softened and her shoulders lowered–as we all do when we begin to believe and empathize with someone else–my friend’s guilt lifted away and she began to feel more and more justified. By the time the server told her how okay everything was, my friend was fully engrossed in the righteousness of her own cause–feeling like a good person once again.

Dang, I half expected the server to return with a free cupcake for my friend.

**************

Yes, it was just a dream but how often do we lie in order to escape the consequences of our own actions? How often do we render our apologies meaningless by explaining why we don’t need to apologize at all? How often do we fool ourselves into thinking we have apologized when the necessary words have never crossed our lips? How often do we turn ourselves into the victims instead of the villains? All too often. 

(And as a side thought, how many times do we get angry that our non-apology wasn’t accepted because the other person saw right through it?)

I even wonder if the dream had continued on (which it didn’t but I wish I had been able to smack her to her senses–and hard) if going forward she might have actually related the entire incident differently to others–just in case she wanted to head off any outside consequences or to continue to reframe the narrative in her mind whenever her pesky conscience reared its ugly head. I’ve seen people do that as well. 

The truth is that we tend to be liars when faced with seeing ourselves and our actions for what they really are. We want to be the heroes of our own life stories. We can’t bear to remember the horrible things we do and so we change them. We change them even to the point of believing it when we do. And, I mean, the crazy thing is that by doing this we make ourselves twice the villain and our victims doubly wronged–or more if the story really gets out there. But we have saved our reputation, even if it is based on a lie, and thus evaded the well-deserved consequences of our actions. 

This is why it is healthy to come to a place where we see ourselves as one part villain and one part hero, part wronged, and part perpetrator. We can never lose sight of the evil we are capable of and we must embrace that truth or we can slowly inch our way over to a place where we become unsafe and tyrannical–to the place where we cease to be trustworthy because lies never get smaller, only bigger. Those who lie to strangers to avoid consequences are going to lie to friends and family because the need to be trusted and seen as good comes to outweigh the need for actually being trustworthy and good. But we can never stop at lying to strangers, or to loved ones–in order to live with ourselves as liars, we must also deceive ourselves into believing that we are, in fact, justified and even good.

And it generally starts with the anti-fruit of pride and fear. Fear of consequences. Fear of having to change. Fear of confrontation (that’s a biggie). Pride in a non-realistic perception of our own integrity–one that we have not earned because the illusion can only be maintained through lies and excuses. And when religion gets thrown into the midst and we need to be seen as super-spiritual warriors fighting the good fight? Oh, man. Seeing ourselves as anything less can be devastating–and yet we are less. We are all less and when we embrace that, we can begin to become what we need to believe we are.

But dishonesty is never the way. Avoiding confrontation is nothing but cowardice. Shirking consequences is just making someone else pay double for what we have done wrong.

The people we wrong deserve justice and truth–and not to be further wronged. The path toward justice and righteousness begin with the truth–not what is modernly labeled “our truth” because that is often a lie but the truth. What really happened. What we decided, of our own free will, to do. Taking full responsibility. No excuses.

Refusing to embrace the consequences of our bad acts is the same as refusing justice for someone else–in doing so we become oppressors.

Our God can work miracles with our courageous honesty. The enemy can work his own wonders with our lies, fears, pride, and cowardice.



The Seven Deadly Hangups–Neediness

I remember getting the social media friend request from a complete stranger. I accepted it on my home computer right before Mark and I drove the forty-five minutes down to Costco in Pocatello, Idaho. This was in my “pre-smartphone” days (yes, I have only been plugged in for 2 1/2 years now and I still only rarely have messenger functioning) and so you can just imagine my shock when, three hours later, I return home to a bunch of hostile messages:

Her:

*wave*
“Hello, new friend!”
“Hey there, how are you?”
“Are you there?”
“Boy, it must be nice having SO MANY FRIENDS that you can ignore people who are reaching out!!”

I will spare you where it went from there.

So, I got home and found all this, reading with growing disbelief, and replied,

Me: “I was shopping. We had to drive to another town and shop. I don’t have Facebook on my phone because it’s a flip phone. Even if I did, why do you expect me to always be on my phone and why do you think I have an obligation to answer your messages right away?”
Her: “Oh, well maybe I was wrong. How are you today?”
Me: “You WERE wrong. Otherwise, I am a liar.”
Her: “Oh well, it’s no big deal.”
Me: “It is a big deal, you just subjected an absolute stranger to abuse because you figured that by accepting your friend request I owed you my undivided attention and when you didn’t get it you got really nasty and you haven’t even had the decency to apologize. You’re still holding out hope that this is actually just a misunderstanding but I understand perfectly–you are always going to be demanding and I don’t have time to deal with a demanding stranger.”

I unfriended this person and blocked further messages because I recognized the poison of neediness coupled with entitlement. A lot of people are needy but when it is coupled with an unfettered entitlement complex then they need counseling and an in-person relationship to get through it. I am well aware of the limitations of my skillset coupled with the inadequacy of Facebook messenger. Dealing with an already hostile and needy individual who is quick to jump to conclusions, when she can’t see the look on my face or hear the tone of my voice, was just going to be one big mistake. Any further communication was going to feed right into her paradigms.

But, you know, I have also been that needy person–just not with the added hostility. And I see neediness crop up in so many people’s lives in so many ways but it always comes down to the same thing–we have developed an unreasonable expectation that we can find significance and joy only in others or in stuff and our lives become a reflection of that misperception. Neediness, however, is never about actual needs–it is about desires. A desire not to be lonely anymore. A desire not to feel pain or sadness. A desire for significance. A desire for respect. A desire to be attractive. A desire to be approved of.

We all have these desires, and a little bit of these is okay, but neediness is when they get out of control and they rule over us and do harm to anyone else who gets close.

A single parent whose desire to not be alone anymore outweighs their good sense will often subject their children and themselves to terrible abuses in the quest to satisfy that neediness.

A desire not to feel pain or sadness often ends in addictions to food, sex, porn, online gaming, alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.

A desire for significance, and especially when it is sought out in the ministry, can destroy lives as one person’s desires swallow up an entire congregation or community.

A desire for respect often manifests in manipulation and lies in order to maintain the illusion of being worthy of that respect–not to mention the tearing down of anyone who threatens that respect in any way.

A desire to be attractive can become a financial and emotional pit of despair as people spend more and more money on cosmetics, clothing, surgery, and worship their own perceived image at the gym.

A desire for approval–that can be the most deadly of all. I have seen people completely deny themselves in the quest to be approved of and I have also seen them destroy anyone who seems to disapprove.

As I said, a little bit of each of these is normal and even healthy. But neediness is never good. Neediness is always going to hurt those around us. Neediness is always unreasonable and a horrible taskmaster. Neediness is a liar. Neediness tells us that we can find fulfillment in others and in things but have you ever noticed that neediness is never satisfied? No matter how much it gets? Neediness always demands more as nothing is ever truly enough.

We have to confront our own neediness head-on. We have to learn the difference between what we actually need to survive and what we want to have in order to make us feel good. They aren’t even remotely the same thing. Neediness poisons every personal relationship and every relationship with things that could otherwise be beneficial–like food. Neediness is never satisfied. Neediness is the god of our own desires and will prevent us from serving the Kingdom of God.

Speaking from experience, God can heal neediness but He doesn’t do it by giving in to it. He conquers it. He doesn’t mollify it or enable it.

And it is so desperately important that we cooperate with that process. Otherwise, we will suck dry the lives of everyone around us in our neverending (and ultimately futile) quest for self-satisfaction and unrealistic ideals of fulfillment.

Part one–shame

Part two–rejection

 



The Seven Deadly Hangups–Shame

This is the second part in a series concerning the mindsets that hold us back from growing in Messiah and becoming fully functioning members of the Body. Last time, I covered rejection but this time we are going to explore a much more complicated issue–shame.

You see, shame is the proverbial double-edged sword. Shame can be very good and shame can be very bad. The entire Bible was written from the vantage point of honor and shame, the ancient societal mindset that still governs two-thirds of the world today. In its proper context, shame can be a powerful force for good but, used improperly, shame can be crippling. Now, in the past, people who are not familiar with me or what I teach have made the accusation that I advocate a return to honor/shame dynamics but that’s absolutely untrue. The western world could not function sociologically that way, we just couldn’t. And frankly, I really wouldn’t want to! I teach the sociological context of honor and shame so that people can better understand the Bible, but anyone who suggests more than that is being untruthful. Anyone who has come from a shameful family past would want to avoid living in the type of society that takes “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” with deadly earnest. Western society judges people as individuals who make personal decisions to be good or bad, honorable or shameful, on their own. I like that.

But what I am wanting to discuss today has absolutely nothing to do with the Biblical concept of shame! So, if you are familiar with my teachings on that, just put that to the side. I am wanting to discuss modern shame from a Western standpoint–where there is a lot of overlap with ancient shame but also some very significant differences. People in the ancient world were not as introspective as we are and, if they were accepted by society, didn’t spend time feeling ashamed of themselves. They only cared about what other people thought about them.

So, what is shame? Let me start with an amusing example:

A lack of shame is why toddlers delight in streaking. I will never forget the day the Pastor’s daughter escaped from the group on the way to the nursery, ripped off her dress, and paraded nude and giggling through the sanctuary during services. To the delight, of course, of absolutely everyone in attendance. We were roaring with laughter–well, except for her parents. We all laughed because it wasn’t our kid. Shame is why an adult wouldn’t do the same, and why, if he or she did, no one would be laughing (except any teenagers in attendance).

You see, in this sort of situation, shame is good and a lack of shame is bad. There is nothing wrong with healthy societal norms that are enforced by a reasonable dose of community-implemented shame. Pedophilia was considered to be respectable in ancient Greece and expected even as one of the rights of adult males. If you tried to shame them over it, they would look at you like you were nuts. Nowadays, pedophiles go to extreme lengths to go undetected, because their actions are grossly shameful to us. In fact, they use a weaponized form of inappropriate shame in order to keep their victims from exposing them. They have shunned good shame and are using inappropriate shame in order to control. Their world is upside down and that is a big part of the reason why molestation victims have such a hard time healing and often offend themselves–their sense of shame is manipulated and warped out of shape.

So, we aren’t going to talk about good shame here, at least not yet. I want to talk about shame that was once good but has been held on to for way too long, past the point of usefulness, and shame that never should have existed in the first place–what I call inappropriate shame.

Inappropriate shame can come in many forms–I already mentioned one:

(1) When the victims of a crime are manipulated into feeling as though they are to blame for the actions of another. The Bible explicitly speaks against this–rape victims are labeled as innocent as murder victims. Deut 22:26 “But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death. For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor…” Now, I know men and women who have been raped and children who have been molested–as well as teenagers who have been seduced by much older manipulators who took advantage of their position of authority. The shame lies with the person who had the intent to do evil, who chose evil actions. We would never shame a murder victim, nor does the family of a murder victim feel any shame. They feel grief. As a society, we need to look at this situation the way the Bible does and put all the shame on the person who did evil and give all our love and compassion to the person they victimized. To do otherwise is upside down and unbiblical. A good example, biblically, of handling this wrong is found in how King David handled the sexual assault of his daughter Tamar by his eldest son Amnon.

(2) Hanging on to shame over things we did as children. Oddly enough, we tend to look back on our own childhood with adult eyes–as though we knew then what we know now. Nonsense! We were foolish idiots, every single one of us. Whenever I am talking to people about the shame they feel over things they now regret having done as kids, I ask them if they would subject a child who is doing the same things now to the same sort of vitriolic abuse they are heaping upon themselves. Generally, they think about it and are horrified at the very idea of treating a child the way they treat themselves. At that point, I point out to them that they are doing harm to an innocent–the innocent just happens to be their younger selves. The repenting for the sins of their childhood has to end at some point, and they have to let that child go. Really, that child has been gone, dead and buried for a long time and only that child’s memories and scars remain. Let the child rest in peace.

(3) There are folks who are masters of inducing shame as a means of controlling others over debatable personal choices that are neither moral or immoral, and sometimes over choices that are flat out immoral. I will never forget the time my friend had breast cancer and had to undergo a radical double mastectomy to save her life. Well, miraculously she got pregnant the next year. She was on a mom’s forum and there was a woman there berating her because “breast is best” and that, and yes she actually said this, my friend was dooming her child to mental retardation and a lifetime of illness because her child would be formula-fed. I mean, it is ludicrous. If this was true then every adopted baby would be in the special needs classes and sickly. BTW, I was formula-fed because my mom was never able to maintain a milk supply and I am a college graduate and my first job out of college, where I graduated with a degree in Chemistry, was in aerospace research. My own exclusively formula-fed adopted son is currently getting a degree in Criminal Justice and Criminology and he never gets sick. But I mention this to point out that there are a lot of people out there who, in order to promote their choice, will ruthlessly shame everyone who doesn’t want to go along with it. The homosexual revolution has been chugging right along on the very successful trail blazed by trying to shame everyone who disagrees with their lifestyle. I have seen homeschoolers call public school kids “brainwashed zombies” and public schoolers calling homeschooled kids “unsocialized” and women with a lot of kids calling women with no or few kids selfish and sinning, and being called all sorts of silly things in return. Moms who decide not to vaccinate, or fully vaccinate, are called uneducated and their kids are called feral–and those who do are called uneducated and fearful tools of big pharma. How do we battle this sort of shame? Well, first we need to see it for what it is. It is propaganda and recruitment tactics. Instead of making a case for why their choice is best, or at least acceptable, they are making all other choices bad and shameful–no matter how silly. Learn to recognize when someone is manipulating you with inappropriate shame and refuse to accept it. Heck, call them on it. It was probably done to them and maybe they don’t even realize what they are doing, might be totally subconscious, but don’t play along. This shame doesn’t belong to you–it’s theirs. Just be sure not to turn around and do it to others. If someone isn’t comfortable enough with their positions and beliefs to stand alone in them, they will often try to shame people around them–but they can’t do it without your cooperation.

(4) Shame which does not lead to positive action is useless. In truth, we all acted like beasts before we were saved to a greater or lesser extent. Everyone. Dwelling on it is generally just a facet of being prideful. Let me explain. I can’t even begin to tell you how much it offends me to know what I am capable of without Yeshua/Jesus. And for years I tormented myself thinking about it, being embarrassed, absolutely drowning in humiliation. But it wasn’t leading to repentance–I was already repentant. I was already living my life differently and was determined never to do those horrible things again. The truth is that my shame was a cover-up for the absolute gall I felt toward myself at the reminder of the decisions I made. I was offended that I could be so stupid, so sinful, so unaware of common decency and kindness. It was all pride. The memory of my decisions was the unbearable proof of my need for salvation and the new creation life that comes with it. I didn’t like to acknowledge who I am without the Cross. I didn’t want to face the weakness, the cluelessness, the focus on fulfilling my desires, and the sometimes mindless lengths I would go to in order to get what I wanted or avoid what I wanted to avoid. But it was fruitless. My sins had long since been recognized and repented for and are no longer part of my life. To move on, I had to own who I was and stop being embarrassed by it because nothing can be done to change my past. Healthy shame can change our present and our future, but it can’t do a thing to change the past–UNLESS we can turn it into an opportunity to right a past wrong. And so this shame, like the aforementioned examples, is inappropriate and fruitless.

So, when should we feel shame? Frankly, when we are doing something wrong now, or when we have done something wrong in the past where we could make things right but don’t, or when we could provide someone with justice but refuse to. That’s what Yeshua was talking about here in Matthew 5:

23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

Although we like to fool ourselves that telling God we are sorry is enough, this passage right here tells us that we aren’t completely right with God when we have wronged someone and don’t make it right before seeking restoration of our relationship with God. That’s what the sacrifices were about. Repentance and confession of sin happened first. The sacrifice was there to fix the broken relationship with God, the relationship that was damaged when we sinned. But Yeshua here tells us that before we can be right with God, it takes more than just saying we are sorry in secret–we have to go make things right with the person we hurt. I was reading a book once–I think it was Living on the Devil’s Doorstep. A man had participated in the commission a murder and had escaped his homeland only to come to salvation in Amsterdam, where he joined the ministry work there. But he was increasingly convicted of his guilt in the murder. He thought about the man’s family and that they deserved justice, that he had wronged them and needed to make things right. Finally, he decided to go back and take his legal punishment. We can only imagine how God used him in jail! Such a great saint! In the same way, people want to come to faith and simply forget the evils of their past but is it the right choice? Do we get to come before the altar with the blood of Christ while our victims are still wronged and call it good? What of them? Shame is a good thing in that case and we should always make restitution when we can. If it is impossible, we have to let that shame go. How terrible it is if we think we can get salvation and be on good terms with God while our victims are still suffering! What kind of salvation is that? We must always want justice for others just as we want it for ourselves.

That being said, we need to give ourselves justice as well and learn how to stop suffering for entirely wrong reasons.