People say that shame is the feeling you have when you believe something is inherently wrong with who you are. Guilt, on the other hand, is feeling there’s something wrong with your actions.
But really, shame stems from a fear of exclusion. It’s not just about how you relate to yourself, but how you relate to other people.
I learned about this when I read a definition from a 2003 paper by Thomas Scheff. He wrote that shame is:
“the large family of emotions that includes many cognates and variants most notably embarrassment, guilt, humiliation, and related feelings of shyness that originate in threats to social bond. This definition integrates self (emotional reactions) and society (the social bond).”
Scheff, Thomas J. “Shame in Self and Society.” Symbolic Interaction, vol. 26, no. 2, 2003, pp. 239–262. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/si.2003.26.2.239. Accessed 23 Dec. 2020
Suddenly a whole heap of experiences made sense to me. Including those times when I haven’t felt shame.
You see, when I felt no shame, it’s because I had no fear of exclusion – even if I was aware that something I had done wasn’t fabulous.
I get the feeling that some people see their walk with God in quite a negative way. As if it’s like forever walking up a downward escalator. Unless they constantly put in the effort, they will be excluded from God. But I don’t believe redemption is like that.
Instead, the Bible says that God has made us part of his family. This is the image to take to heart. It’s not because families are the ‘designed’ and ‘ordained’ societal construct, where everyone finds their assigned and proper place. It’s because family should be homely and healing; it’s a context where people are more important than their differences. No one earned their way in and no one’s place is temporary. And yes it might be messy sometimes, but no one is shut out. Each person is equally family.
Of course, not everyone experiences family in this way. And it’s not an excuse to play the “But I’m family” card. That’s manipulative.
But the dynamic of everyone being equally family is what I believe relationship with God is meant to be like. We have privileged access and seats at the table; we have a permanent place.
I don’t know how, but when the Holy Spirit makes me aware of something I shouldn’t be proud of, I don’t feel shame. But if redemption is about being in God’s family, and I’m included, then it makes sense.
Because I’m never afraid of being outcast.
A short look at the Bible
Today’s passage is Luke 2:39–52.
This is the only story in the Bible that tells of Jesus as a boy. I find it deeply fascinating though. You get the impression that Jesus was oblivious to his impact on Mary and Joseph. It’s like he assumed they would think the same way he did. Therefore, they would just know that he was OK, and that he would be in the temple.
By the way, the Greek is ambiguous when it says they found Jesus “after three days.” It’s possible that Mary and Joseph searched for three days in Jerusalem; but it’s also possible that the three days starts when they first left Jerusalem. That is, they travelled out for a day, back for a day, and searched for a day — so ‘after three days’ they found him.
There are various schools of thought concerning how Jesus’s humanity and divinity interacted. The Orthodox Church often has an adult face in icons of Jesus as a baby; it’s to remind the viewer that they’re looking at God incarnate. For some, the theology goes beyond this; they believe that Jesus was fully formed, in full knowledge of his divinity, even as a baby.
For myself though, I think it makes more sense to understand Jesus as someone who learned – just as he grew physically. Even Luke’s gospel says he grew in wisdom.
I imagine one of his hardest lessons was learning that other people didn’t relate to God the way he did. Things that were obvious to him, were not obvious to them. And when you read the gospel accounts, it seems he never outgrew this problem. He was frequently surprised by what he had to spell out and explain to people.
When I read this visit to the temple when Jesus was a boy, I wonder whether he also had a learning curve the other way: things that were obvious to other people, were not obvious to him. Mary would have known that, if anyone asked, Joseph was Jesus’ father. She would have known the social stigma and shame that would be attached to both her and Jesus, if anyone suspected that Jesus was conceived outside of wedlock. I imagine she would have told Jesus the stories about Simeon and Anna, and how they celebrated his birth; but I also imagine that Jesus had to learn not to speak about these stories in public. So I wonder if this story of the 12 year-old Jesus gives us a glimpse of how he had to transition from childhood assumptions, and even naiveté, to the awareness of context that he would need as an adult.
That kind of awareness wouldn’t have changed who he was or undermined his sense of self or caused him to doubt God’s love for him. But it would have made him wiser, and even more shrewd, in how he presented himself.
Invitation to pray
We each pray in our own way; some of the best advice I had was ‘Pray as you can, not as you can’t.’ So I offer an invitation to pray – not an instruction.
Ask God to make his unconditional love known (or more known) to you.
All posts in the series can be found via the tag Xmas2020.