The Bankruptcy of Shame

I was reminded these last few days that shame and contempt aren't the best motivators for me. Honestly, I think shame works for short-term changes but it always seems like a flash in the pan with much more residual pain than true progress. I talked about some of this with a friend tonight over dinner and was reminded of a few things.

As a Christian, we tend to be reminded much more often that we are fallen and broken than we are reminded that we bare God's image and that creation came before the fall. We all tend to know our faults on a deep level, even at a crippling level. We often believe lies about ourselves and see this caricature about us as ultimate truth. But what if what is most true about us isn't the wrong that we've done? What if the things we are most ashamed of actually don't define us as largely as we think they do?

The last few years we have picked words for the year. These words are things we hope to believe more or live out more. For 2021, I chose the word beloved. Honestly, more days than not I feel like I'm the farthest thing from beloved. I'm self-critical, I'm doubtful, and yes and I am sinful. I have faults. I have made mistakes, and continue to every day. The radical thing is there are people in my life who look at me with mercy and grace and call me beloved. More importantly, my creator, the God of the universe looks at me with tears in his eyes, not because of shame or contempt, but because of love, and he calls me beloved. He sees and knows it all about me and He doesn't run away.

I think this is important because I think love will always be a better motivator than shame. This feels even more true today because we went on a run earlier and it was hard. We ran in high temperatures and we had to go over some tough hills. I was reminded during the run by my wife that I may never really like running, and it might never be easy, but I was made for hard things. She spoke to my dignity, not my depravity, and that made me want to keep going. This is even more true for the end of the run when I turned the corner to come home and see my daughter standing near the road clapping and cheering for me. Her claps weren't for my faults. Her cheers weren't in celebration of a broken man. She was cheering for all of me which includes my goodness. And that makes me want to go run again tomorrow.

I've been on this journey for several years now. I wake up and every day I have the internal battle of believing who shame says I am versus who God and my loved ones say I am. The invitation for us is simple, look for dignity in others and speak the truth about it when you see it. And when we hear things pointed out and celebrated about us, we need to fight to believe it more than the lies in our head.