Everybody experiences shame...at some level. We may not be in touch with it. But it's
there.
The Bible is right. Somewhere... somehow... something went
seriously wrong. We lost our way and fell short of what we were created to be.
None of us are perfect, yet... we long for perfection. When
we miss the mark, it feels bad. For some it's a fleeting twinge of pain that
comes on occasion. For other's it's a stabbing pain that stalks them daily.
That's shame.
Shame is a sense of worthlessness, a sense of being
defective. Someone described it to me once as being "damaged
goods"... like you are a dropped product in a store and so you get removed
from the shelf and tossed in the back, waiting to be thrown out. You've lost
your value. And because of that you have this overriding sense of not
belonging, not fitting in.
Shame also involves the fear of exposure. YOU know that you
are defective but the game of life is to keep other people from knowing it.
It's bad enough to BE flawed, but it's doubly bad to have the world gawking at
your flaws, either shaking their head in derision or laughing at your futility.
Shame causes you to live in a fear of rejection. If you are
flawed and don't fit in, then it's only natural that when you are exposed that
you will be rejected. Who wants to associate with a loser?
It's no wonder that shames causes so much pain.
Inherent to shame are the lies we believe. Where there are
no lies there is no shame. It's the lies of shame that cause us to leap from the
idea of "damaged" to "worthless" or from "flawed"
to "forgettable". That's where it's so important to find a source
outside of ourselves that defines our worth. If we return to the God that
created us we'll find that he's not there to condemn us but give us the value
that he always intended for us to have. That's where healing begins.
Read a sample of the book here.
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