Who Told You to Be Ashamed?

Shame.

Shame on you. 

You should be ashamed of yourself. 

Shame.

According to David Hawkins in the book Power versus Force, shame is the lowest, heaviest, and basest emotion we can feel. It's lower than grief, lower than apathy, and even lower than guilt (though just barely). 

The marginal difference between shame and guilt is interesting to ponder. I've heard it said that guilt is feeling you've done something bad or wrong while shame is feeling you are something bad and wrong. I don't exactly disagree with that idea, in fact, I think these quick definitions give an easier understanding of guilt vs. shame. Unfortunately, so often when people express the difference between guilt and shame there seems to be this belief that while shame is obviously a negative emotion, guilt is...not exactly positive, but...beneficial. Yes. Guilt is seen as beneficial. After all, if you don't feel guilty for the things that you do, how will you ever change?

While the purpose of this post is not to discuss guilt in all its forms and misunderstandings, I do just briefly want to point out how incorrect it is to believe that guilt is beneficial. If Hawkins is correct (and he has scientific research to back him up), then guilt is a lower emotion than apathy (the state of doing and caring for nothing). If guilt is lower and less active than apathy, then guilt is even less likely to instigate a change of behavior or a change of heart than apathy. Which means that guilt is not useful and it is not beneficial. Feeling the weight of something you've done that is "bad or wrong" will not keep you from doing it. If anything it's more likely to cause you to keep doing it because if you wallow in guilt long enough you fall into shame and the moment you choose to believe that you, your very being, is bad and wrong is the moment you decide it's impossible to change. 

Shame. 

Where does shame come from?

Why do we feel ashamed?  

What causes us to fall so far from love and grace that we believe we're nothing? No, not nothing -- less than nothing. 

I have a scary question for you. Do you believe that God wants us to feel ashamed? Is He ashamed of us? Does He tell us "shame on you" when we mess up? Were we intentionally designed to feel shame?

What's your answer? Your honest answer? 

My honest answer is 'Yes." I did believe God wanted me to be ashamed. How could He not? I mess up all the time! Scriptures are seemingly full of accounts of God putting people to shame. I also erroneously believed that shame, like guilt, would motivate me to change and repent and become a less sinful person. While I couldn't imagine God saying, "shame on you" or even that He was ashamed of me, I could find ample evidence in scripture that God condoned shame. And not just that He condoned shame, but that He built it into our very human nature so that we would not be able to experience life without feeling shame. 

I sort of felt like shame was wired into us and all we had to do was mess up enough and we would trip the switch to turn on shame as a part of our conscience to keep us from messing up worse. 

I was wrong. 

For the last few weeks I've been trying to figure out where shame comes from. I've been reading a fabulous book, Toxic Psychiatry, by Dr. Breggin and he's been discussing how shame and guilt are the root cause behind a lot of different severe mental illnesses. It's been fascinating to read his perspective. It was especially interesting when he started pointing out that shame and guilt always come from outside a person. We feel guilty because we are told to. We feel ashamed because we are told to.

Shame on you. You should be ashamed of yourself. You're guilty. You're bad. You're wrong. 

Never has a child voluntarily said, "I'm ashamed of myself" without first hearing the phrase from someone else. 

So where did it start? Where did shame come from in the first place? 

My thoughts took me to the first recorded account of shame--Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Shortly after they ate the forbidden fruit they realized they were naked, and, when God came to visit they were ashamed of their nakedness and hid. 

At first glance this story seems like evidence to support the idea that we are inherently designed to feel shame and be ashamed of ourselves and, especially, our bodies. But look one verse closer. God finds Adam and asks why he was hiding. Adam explains his shame over his nakedness. God's first question was "Who told thee thou wast naked?"

In other words, who told you to be ashamed? 

That is an incredibly important question for two reasons. First, if God's asking who shamed Adam and Eve then it obviously wasn't Him. Evidence that God does not tell us to be ashamed. Second, it proves that shame isn't second nature to us. It is not natural to feel shame. It is not godly to feel shame. As the story progresses it becomes clear that the serpent was the reason behind the shame. Shame is, quite simply, from the devil.

Which makes me wonder if the worst thing the serpent did in Eden was not convince Eve (and subsequently Adam) to eat the fruit, but to shame them for it. It is easy to let go of the past, forgive, and love when you feel worthy of forgiveness and love. It is nearly impossible to accept forgiveness and love when you believe you are inherently unworthy of forgiveness and love. 

What if it is our shame not our sin that keeps us from God? 

He's covered our sin. He's made a way for us to escape and change and come back to Him. His grace is sufficient. 

But He can do nothing if we do nothing. God can save us from our shame. He cannot save us in our shame. So long as we believe we are bad, wrong, unworthy, undeserving, and unwanted we won't turn to God. We won't ask Him to change us or heal us. We will remain stuck in a cycle of sin and guilt because we believe our shame. 

And yet, it isn't even our shame! Someone else told us to be ashamed. And we believed them. Why? And why are we still believing them? 

The answer to that question is personal and unique to each of us. I hope you find the answer and I hope it sets you free to realize that you don't have to feel ashamed. You don't have to listen to others when they tell you to be ashamed. You don't have to live in shame. 

I'll just leave you with two, hopefully inspiring, thoughts.

"Fear not, for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither be thou confounded, for thou shalt not be put to shame; for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy youth..."

It's possible, my friends, very possible to let go of shame and no longer be put to shame by anyone else. And someday we will be able to stand and say, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth..." 

In other words, I am not ashamed. I turn to God and He saves me. He can save me because I believe that I am inherently good, inherently loved, inherently valuable, and designed to be forgiven and when I believe that, anything is possible with God.

I am not ashamed. 

Moses 4:15-23; 3 Nephi 22:4; Romans 1:16