It must have been so wonderful. In the Garden of Eden, initially there was no shame, because as human history began, there was no sin in the perfect creation that God made. But that all totally changed with the first couple’s rebellion, not only for them, but for all of humanity (Gen 3:10). Guilt came, and shame came with it.
Guilt can be a healthy response of a person with a moral compass - an absence of guilt about wrong would obviously lead to personal and societal chaos. According to one best selling author, guilt is ‘the most useless of all erroneous zone behaviours. Guilt zones must be exterminated, spray cleaned and sterilized forever’. But the idea that all guilt is negative is completely at odds not only with biblical Christianity, but with any commitment to life within ethical guidelines or peaceful co-existence.
So what is the difference between a positive sense of guilt and a destructive experience of shame?
Guilt, aided by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, points to specific acts of error and sin - it signals that we have specifically done wrong and need to revise our behaviour.
Shame smothers and insists that we are wrong, unworthy of love, and lacking in value.
‘Shame is a very heavy feeling. It is a feeling that we do not measure up and maybe will never measure up to the sorts of people we are meant to be. The feeling, when we are conscious of it, gives us a vague disgust with ourselves, which in turn feels like a hunk of lead on our hearts'.
True guilt is actually a sign of nobility, a hint from heaven that we are more than mere animals. It’s been said that the feeling of shame is a fact which absolutely distinguishes us from lower nature. We weep as we consider the Nazi guards who themselves shed no tears of remorse as they herded naked Jewish women to the gas chambers, but we must mourn for the guards as well as their helpless victims.
Jeremiah, the saddest prophet, had this in mind when he saw the shamelessness of the shameful: 'they acted shamefully, they committed abomination; yet they were not ashamed; they did not know how to blush'. (Jer 6:15).
Mark Twain said, ‘Man is the only animal that knows how to blush - or needs to’.
Ironically, many Christians are addicted to shame, which smothers their lives like a blanket, choking any possibility of joy.
Martin Luther said, ‘Most Christians have enough religion to feel guilty about their sins, but not enough to enjoy life in the Spirit’.
Fighting with God
Some of this shame is caused because we resist or even fight with the God who offers us grace and forgiveness so freely. Consider some biblical heroes who fought with the Lord - or at least tried!
Jacob was a famous wrestler. On one occasion, he picked a fight with the angel of the Lord. He limped away with a dislocated hip, a new name and a blessing upon his life. (Gen 22:22-32)
Father Abraham went on an incredible life journey of faith, but he had a few major arguments with God at the beginning of the voyage. The Lord told the elderly patriarch to change his name and prepare the nursery: Isaac was on the way. Abraham’s response? He fell over laughing, literally (Gen. 17:17), and later, when his wife Sarai heard the news she found the idea even more hilarious, and burst into helpless gales of laughter, even though God was listening (Gen. 18: 12-15).
Abraham made an alternative, more rational proposal: ‘Just bless Ishmael, Lord. I’ll be happy with that.’ A compromise, something easier for the Lord to deliver. But God had bigger, better ideas. He normally does, and it’s whenever he announces his ambitious plans that the arguments usually start.
The mighty Moses knew how to put up a fight, and lived with the memory of an Egyptian skeleton buried beneath the sand as a result (Ex. 2:12). He then followed that disastrous fight with a struggle with God, only this time he lost. Commissioned and called to set an entire nation free, courtesy of an angel lurking in a flaming bush (Ex. 3:10), Moses had other ideas. ‘Send someone else, Lord,’ was his repeated response (Ex. 4:13). In fact, Moses struggled with God with such tenacity – a whole chapter is used to recount the fight – that, in the end, the Lord got seriously irritated. ‘Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses…’ The Hebrew word used here for ‘anger’ graphically describes the rapid blowing of air out through the nostrils…
Weeping prophet Jeremiah tried to take God on as well. ‘I knew you before you were born, son, and I want you as my mouthpiece to the nations’, was the good news from God (Jer. 1:5). Jeremiah’s retort? ‘Look, Lord, you may be sovereign, but you’re wrong. When it comes to experience, I’m just a pre-adolescent who can’t even string a few sentences together.’
William Cowper was one of the greatest poets and hymn writers of the eighteenth century. Perhaps the words of one of his famous hymns are familiar:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Emmanuel's veins
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains
E'er since by faith, I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply
Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die.
But Cowper, cursed with a weak conscience, never felt he had lost all his own guilty stains. Wracked by terrible periods of depression that drove him to attempt suicide, he was convinced that he could never be forgiven for his own iniquities, and called himself 'Damned beyond Judas'. Even Cowper's close friend John Newton, writer of 'Amazing Grace', was unable to assure him that he was saved. He did not die with love as his recurring theme. He died believing that he was beyond forgiveness. He resisted the good news, and we can do that, even when the one who delivers the news is an angel!
As I’ve studied angelic appearances throughout Scripture, a consistent pattern emerges. In most cases it goes like this:
- An angel appears.
- The angel speaks some remarkable, amazing, potentially unbelievable good news.
- The person being spoken to quickly concludes that this news is just too good to be true.
- An argument begins.
The good news of God’s outrageous grace is for us. So why do some of us wrestle and struggle?
Some churches are shame centers
Some churches, especially those that are legalistic churches, with endless lists of dos and don’ts that have no biblical foundation - these are greenhouses for shame to grow.
This was a problem in Jesus’ day, and He rebuked the religious leaders who created rules and regulations that were an intolerable and impossible burden:
'You experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them'. (Luke 11:46, emphasis mine)
Forgiveness is contested in spiritual warfare
We should know that, just as Satan sought to undermine the character and especially the goodness of God in Eden, he will continue that work today. He is the accuser of God, and of us.
Satan uses accusation so much, he is even named in honour of the tactic. The word Satan means 'accuser'; so Old Testament writers occasionally refer to their human enemies and accusers as 'satans'. The Psalmist refers five times to the human “satans” that oppose him.
Satan is history’s most prolific and gifted prosecutor. He has handled cases against Job, Joshua, David. In the wilderness he came against the Lord Jesus. Through the wagging tongues of the Pharisees, he accused and blasphemed the Holy Spirit. If the Satanic attorney will point the finger at everyone - even the great Judge Himself - don’t you think that he’ll try to pull the same stunt on us?
Sometimes we rely to much upon our conscience - which is not infallible
Pinocchio was obviously a great sinner - that's how he got a telescopic nose. But thankfully, he was rescued from his deceptive ways by a little insect with a moral heart and a catchy tune. 'Always let your conscience be your guide!' sang the tiny green person. The great J.B.Phillips comments thus:
'...to make conscience into God is a highly dangerous thing to do. For one thing....conscience is by no means an infallible guide; and for another it is extremely unlikely that we shall ever be moved to worship, love, and serve a nagging inner voice that at worst spoils our pleasure and at best keeps us rather negatively on the path of virtue. Conscience can be so easily perverted or morbidly developed in the sensitive person, and so easily ignored and silenced by the insensitive, that it makes a very unsatisfactory God. For while it is probably true that every normal person has an embryo moral sense by which he can distinguish right and wrong, the development, non development, or perversion of that sense is largely a question of upbringing, training and propaganda....'
The God we serve casts our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Ps 103:12). Confession of sin brings the promise of forgiveness (1 John 1:9). Paul, a former persecutor of Christians, affirmed that he was determined to move forward from the deep shame that he felt. ‘Brothers and sisters, I don’t consider that I have taken hold of it yet. But here is the one thing I do. I forget what is behind me. I push hard toward what is ahead of me. 14I move on toward the goal to win the prize. God has appointed me to win it. The heavenly prize is Christ Jesus himself’ (Phil 3:13-14)
When we feel guilty, let’s respond with repentance and hope.
When we feel shame, let’s resist it, stand firm on the solid ground of grace, and thank God for His goodness.