Ain’t No Shame In My Game

“Fear not: you will no longer live in shame. The shame of your youth and the sorrows of widowhood will be remembered no more” (Isaiah 54: 4 NLT).

“I gave my back to those who beat me and my cheeks to those who pull out my beard. I do not hide from shame, for they mock me and spit in my face” (Isaiah 50:6 NLT).

I can recall two incidents from my past that caused me great shame. The first occurred when I was about ten or eleven years old. While playing with my friends in the neighborhood, my father came home drunki, early from work. He urinated in front of all of us. My friends howled in laughter and teased me incessantly. I tried to play it off and laugh with them; however; I felt shame for my father and did not know how to process the shame, so I internalized it.

The other incident occurred at my eighth-grade graduation. My family could not afford a suit for me, so I wore an old shirt and tie. No one from my family showed up. After the graduation, while the other children enjoyed their families, I walked alone to 79th street. I got drunk. I felt a mixture of anger, shame, self-pity, and intense loneliness.

These and other experiences contributed to a shame-based personality. I did not feel good enough, strong enough or smart enough. I felt inadequate and unworthy even though I possessed a keen intellect, strong body and a sharp wit.

I sabotaged any success in my life because of an inherent sense of unworthiness. I accepted failure as something I deserved. I developed a loser’s mentality, and my life fulfilled the message that resided in my spirit. The voice always said, “You will not make it. Something will happen to mess up the happiness you are feeling.” I looked for the other shoe to drop.

A sense of shame is one of the most toxic emotions we can experience. Modern medical understanding of addictions and compulsivity tells us that our drivenness is often an effort to escape from or compensate for a profound sense of shame and inadequacy. What is the shame that can envelop us and paralyze us? We may feel shame about our estrangement from God. We may harbor shame feelings about our inability to pull in the reins on addictive or compulsive behaviors. We may feel ashamed for the damage we have inflicted on others through our lifestyles. We may carry shame about the dysfunction of our childhood families.

King David knew about shame. He wrote, “My dishonor is continually before me, and the shame of my face has covered me, because of the voice of him who reproaches and reviles, because of the enemy and the avenger (Psalm 44:15-16 NKJV).”

We define shame as a deep-seated feeling that something is wrong with me. We feel inadequate and unworthy and develop a shame-based personality that keeps us from attaining the potential God intended for

our lives.

According to Brené Brown, a researcher at the University of Houston, shame is an “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” It's an emotion that affects all of us and profoundly shapes the way we interact in our everyday lives.

Children from dysfunctional families can absorb shame directly or indirectly.

Indirect shame can come from many sources:

1. Parents’ attitude can teach a child shame.

2. Children can feel shame for their parents’ problems.

3. Family secrets can produce shame.

4. Abuse, in whatever form, can produce shame.

Direct shame comes from:

1.) Verbal abuse from family members i.e.

a. “You’re just like you’re no good daddy/mother.”

b. “You’re stupid.”

c. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

2.) Peers transmit shame from cruel statements towards other children.

3.) Churches create shame by giving messages of condemnation instead of hope and grace.

4.) Direct shame can come from the actions we commit to maintain our addictions.

Shame originated in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve’s sin (Genesis 2:25; 3:10, 11).

a.) A shame-based personality makes you want to hide who you really are. You wear a mask to avoid intimacy because of the fear that someone will see the real you.

b.) Shame robs us of God’s blessings because we do not feel worthy to receive them. It can mask itself as a sort of pseudo-humility. We live a life of defeat because we fail to exercise our faith in God.

1.) The Process of Shame’s Work

a.)You learn to feel shame as you grow up in a dysfunctional family.

b.)The shame develops into a shame-based personality.

2.) The shame-based personality begins to have a drastic impact on how you think and act.

a.) You engage in behavior that creates its own shame.

b.) You deny the presence of shame in your life.

3.) God’s Remedy for Shame – “Own It To

Disown It”.

a.) Talk about your shame with God through prayer (Hebrews 4:15, 16) realizing that Jesus bore our shame on the Cross of Calvary (Isaiah 53:3-6).

b.) Share your shame, following the lead and guidance of the Holy Spirit, with a safe, trusted, spiritual Christian (James 5:16; Galatians 6:1).

c.) Submit to the cleansing power of God (Romans 8:1, 33-34; Isaiah 54:4; Psalm 25:3; Psalm 32:5; 1John 1:9).

d.) Accept the cleansing of God, for guilt and shame. God said, “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool (Isaiah 1:18 TLB)”.

When we throw off the heavy weight of guilt and shame, it frees us to live an abundant life unencumbered by condemnation. The guilt and shame an addict feel never breaks the cycle; rather, it pushes him or her into another episode to escape how bad he feels. The answer is simple, and the answer is total forgiveness (John 12:47).

Discovery Questions:

Explain your understanding of shame.

What are some of the signs of a shame-based identity?

What are you ashamed of from your past?

How is shame holding you back from fulfilling God’s purpose in your life?

What are your plans to rid yourself from shame? Be specific?