“A most insolent submissiveness, like a tiger clinging to his shoulders.”
Jean Genet describes shame so beautifully, yet exactly. When I started Hairdressing, age 19, I was fortunate to have the Qualified Stylist I did. He was a strong, masculine, heterosexual man who pushed me hard. Oneday, shoulders slumped over, shame all over me, like a tiger, he slapped my back saying, “Lift your head up. Be proud of yourself.”
Until that point, I had mostly experienced people who belittled me, so it was foreign hearing someone say I was allowed to be alive in the room. I suffered severe inferiority complex, and was crippled by shame.
* Shame for being a creative male
* Shame for growing up poorer
* Shame for not being a studly man
* Shame for not being the best
* Shame for being alive
It has taken, years of my life, much therapy, tears for years, and much failure to just get to the point of accepting that God made me for a reason and I am allowed to be alive, and thrive.
Man,, I love Messiah King Jesus.
Lastnight, in my international Theology study group, we delved into the question of, “When does a person get saved?” It is a complex question, but a delightful Aha-moment when the answer is found in plain sight. The answer, in a nutshell is, “When God draws them.”
As the Zoom call ended, I sat in awe of Jesus who had not only made clear the new level of my relationship with Him (it has been building for a while), but I knew God was going to show me something about shame in His Holy Word. And voila there it is, Psalm 119. I didn’t need to go search for it. I just sat with my coffee, read my Holy Bible as my commitment requires, and Jesus threw Himself into me. Arms wide open. So open in fact they had to be stretched to maximum capacity and nailed to a cross to be the eternal symbol of Agape Love that draws.
Notice Psalm 119 vs 6, “Then I will not be put to shame.”
BUT, WHAT PUTS US INTO SHAME IN THE FIRST PLACE?
When we aren’t acknowledged as GOD’S DELIBERATE CREATION, purposed to do something for Him that He has given us gifts and talents for to achieve, and forced into humanist ideas, we die inside. We become caricatures of an imagined reality trying to make sense of the senseless.
Psalm 119 vs 5 has the antidote to climbing out of shame that we mercilessly do by partaking in the bidding of a merciless enemy whose agenda is to ‘steal, kill, and destroy’, “Oh that my ways may be steadfast in keeping your statutes!”
Before, we look at how Jesus frees us from the tiger on our shoulder forcing us to submit to it, Dr. Robyn Bone, PhD, digs into the tigers claws to help us understand the danger of shame.
To quote:
‘Making mistakes is inevitable. No matter how much of a perfectionist you are, whether your mistakes are intentional or not, messing up in some type of way will forever be a part of our story.
As you work on yourself your mistakes may seem less extreme, especially as you take a journey on the self-improvement path. However, in some type of way, we will continue messing up, continue hurting people’s feelings, and continue doing something wrong.
The beauty in this is that we all face the same reality. Which also means we can learn something from the ones that are able to see their mistakes as a path to improvement rather than as a detrimental part of who they are.
There are two main ways that mistakes are typically handled:
Shame: A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior
Guilt: Culpable of or responsible for a specified wrong doing
Shame is when your mistakes become part of your identity. Rather than saying, “I did something bad” you may start to say “I am bad.”’- https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.familymatterscounselingcenter.com/amp/how-to-overcome-shame
The devil knows that if he can get us to live in the shame and guilt of our sin, mistakes, and conditioned unworthiness stemming from a fallen world, WE OURSELVES will manifest that into psuedo-identities.
Brilliant mind, and wonderfully outspoken teacher Thomas Sowell says something so profound about letting feelings rule our way of being.
Like Dr. Robyn Bone states, “Shame is when your mistakes become your identity,” Mr. Thomas Sowell is drawing us to measure feelings against fact.
Psalm 119 vs 5, tells us that the answer to why we shame entered into our consciousness is because we reject God’s Love. God gives us instructions on what His Love us and requires, but we, as Adam and Eve did, and everyone since, get into our imagined reality of supremacy thinking we are smarter than God.
AND THEN WE FIND OURSELVES BEING CLAWED TO DEATH, AND EATEN BY A CRUEL TIGER.
Messiah King Jesus, didn’t have to die for a gazillion sins, He had to only overcome ONE SIN from which all sin is birthed disobedience to God. Jesus got it so perfectly right that He faced death in His quest to obey God’s Love that the one sin of disobedience by Adam and Eve that brought us shame was crushed. That shame has birthed every ill-feeling and dysfunctional behaviour we now live in.
Think about it like this…..
You have had a terrible day at work. What do you do? Most of us, take our hostility out on others and ourselves. We perpetuate shame to express ourselves by making others feel like we do. We struggle to admit we need help.
THERE IS HELP, AND GOD DRAWS US TO IT, BEFORE WE EVEN COMPREHEND WHAT IT IS, BUT WE NEED TO BE WILLING TO NOTICE IT.
The 12 Steps of Recovery is a beautiful methodology to help us get honest with our ill-feelings, shame, guilt, conditioning, and behavioural manifestation of our internalized self-loathing. Step 1- step out of denial.
The 12 Steps helps us to start ‘exposing delusion and error’ in ourselves first.
Messiah King Jesus, by taking on the shame of all humanity, has opened THE WAY for all of us to no longer be ruled by the tiger. We are fully allowed in our God-given right to approach God to:
1) Expose our inner-narratives to His Light so that He can teach us to overcome the lies that keep the tigers claws in us.
2) God grows us, ‘line upon line, precept upon precept’ out of the lies into His Truth which helps us choose Life instead of the slow torturous death of being eaten alive by the tiger.
I am a same-sex attracted person (caused by tauma) living with HIV, a survivor of rape, and clean off a crippling drug addiction for 6.5 years. I have chosen to give up sex and sexual identity, both because the academics proves homosexuality is socialized behaviour and not a genetic predisposal and the Bible says so. More importantly, I am steadily growing in my love of Jesus who is the love of my life. It is Jesus’ love that got me to stop feeling ashamed for being alive, and surrendering to the fact that there is A WAY OUT of the mess this cruel world put me in. A shameful mess that I repeated on myself until I heard God say, in my 1st rehab, “I LOVE YOU, ARION, MY BOY.”
3) We discover that Jesus is real and exactly who He says He is. This helps us draw from His strength to persever in our climb out of the pit the tiger dragged us into.
4) We learn how to become God’s Child of Light as Jesus’ Holy Spirit brings us to humility and repentance, acknowledging our faults and asseptance of God’s Help which is and always has been available. The tiger loses his power.
Shame is forsaken, stop giving your power away to a tiger whose only agenda is to feed off you.
PRAY THIS:
Father God,
Help! I cannot carry this tiger on me anymore. I want Your Freedom. Please help me give up my conditioned internalized hate. I come now to You, acknowledging that this blog is You drawing me towards Your Freedom. Help me learn to trust You, and accept Messiah King Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. Jesus I choose You. Thank You for killing the power of death caused by shame so that I can find Your Truth, Your Way, Your Life. Please be my Lord and Saviour. Fill me with God’s Holy Spirit and bring me to the right Christians to guide me into The Truth of Your Holy Word.
In the Holy Name of Jesus, I give You my shame and take on Your Holy Freedom.
AMEN
#Hayibo 