"The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself." William Faulkner
Part I - The Dreaded Rewrite
Every writer from time-to-time publishes something that in hindsight needed more work. (i.e. That last sentence has competing tenses and really needs to be rewritten.) Well, this past Tuesday I spent the morning writing having thought I had gone to the mountaintop. Alas (sigh), that was not the case. A few of you voracious readers probably caught it before I took it down. The article was about shame. Since it was not the article I hoped it would be, I decided to do an extensive rewrite, mainly because I still think there is something worth saving. If I could look you in the eye right now I would tell you that God is not in the humiliation and shame business, but rather, in the business of redemption. But in my effort to demythologize shame, I wound up doing the very thing I set out to undo. In an attempt to reframe shame, shame prevailed. I fought the law, and the law won.
Part II - All You Need Is Love (yeah, that and a wife with a master's degree in psychology)
I'll come clean: My wife is not only my best friend, but she is also one of the smartest people I know. Aside from the tight jeans and clangy earrings she wore in college, what attracted me to her the most was her intellect. I dated some girls our freshman year in college who were pretty. But some of the conversations--(and I use that term generously)--was like trying to pour water into a grocery cart. Jen, on the other hand, loved hours of philosophical exploration. Not a bad kisser, either.
Over the past twenty years, we have gone through our degrees together, benefiting from one another's learning. But occasionally I think I have understood something than in actuality I have only begun to grasp. Thankfully, Jen is always there as a proverbial sounding board.
Below, Part III is a rewrite of the earlier post some of you may have caught called "Healthy Shame." That article is gone. After a few conversations, and reading Brené Brown, my thinking has shifted, even on what I wrote about Tuesday. What follows is different, healthier, and what I think to be advantageous to a Christian population that has been brought up on guilt ("I did something bad") and shame ("I am bad"). My prayer for you out there in bloggerland is that today will be a day that you feel the redemptive peace that only comes through Jesus Christ. Oh, and be kind to yourself.
Part III - Healthy Acceptance of Oneself in the Midst of Shame
I sat in the hard wooden pew mesmerized by the giant ceilings and the cold stone walls. It was my first Ash Wednesday service ever. The Episcopalians say they do not believe in guilt, but evidently they don't believe in seat cushions either. My professor Fred and I sat, knelt, and stood as we experienced the beginning of Lent, and more importantly, a thanksgiving to God for the gift of repentance.
The preacher said at the beginning of his homily: "For those of you who are not Episcopalians, we are like Catholics without the guilt." I giggled. But I wasn't buying it. Western Christianity has turned guilt and shame into an art form. The American education system comes in at a close second.
Let me go back and tell you a story from my elementary school days. It is a story about shame.
I became a regular in the principal's office in elementary school. That was back when they paddled with a big wooden paddle. We kids perfected urban legends on the playground when it came to that paddle. We used to tell the first and second graders that they drilled holes in the paddle to make it go faster before it slammed into your butt. We also told them that for fifth graders, they used an electric paddle.
(Speaking of therapy.)
Mr. Anderson's middle initial was "T." I know that for a reason. The reason has a direct correlation to the paddle wrapped in athletic tape that Mr. Anderson carried in his back pocket. Even as a kid I wondered why he carried that paddle around everywhere he went. I could not imagine a scenario when he would have to whip it out at a moment's notice like a big game hunter and put a kid down immediately for chewing gum. Hindsight makes everything clear. He did it to scare us. Yoda may say that fear leads to anger, but it also leads to humiliation, and humiliation leads to shame.
When I went to the principal's office, it was most often for getting into fistfights. When the other boys and I found ourselves sitting in Mr. Anderson's office, it was always the same drill. He would ask us why we were fighting. The boy I happened to be fighting that day would say something, and then I would say something. Mr. Anderson would lecture us for a while, take in a deep breath followed by a melodramatic exhale, pause, and then say, "You boys ought to be shamed of yourself."
He and our teacher would then waltz us into the boys' bathroom. We would place our hands on the wall like a criminal about to be frisked. Since Mr. Anderson was left-handed, he would place his right hand on the wall between mine just above my eye level. His class ring had his three initials printed diagonally across the dark stone in the middle of the ring.
MTA
I cannot remember how many times between third and sixth grade I heard him say, "Look at the 'T.'"
Each time, I looked at the "T." Then came the first lick. SLAM!
Just enough time to catch your breath.
"Keep your eye on the 'T.'"
SLAM!
The goal was not to cry. Whether you won the fight or lost the fight, you saved face if you did not cry after this sick ritual.
But what hurt more than the licks was the shame. It was humiliating. A child tolerates such things out of fear, not out of respect like some adults think. Children are small, vulnerable, and sometimes feel threatened by the sheer size of the adults around them. We adults need to be careful with that. I believe I have heard that somewhere before. Didn't Jesus say something about that?
My critique of corporal punishment in education, however, might also illustrate the way we Christians deal with one another in our churches.
Brené Brown says her career started around one sentence: "You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behaviors." In some ways, the education system has learned that lesson. I think it is at least getting better. We Christians, however, may still have a ways to go. That is true of the way we treat others. But it may be most true in the ways we treat ourselves.
Think about it this way, especially if you have kids: Would you talk to your child the way you talk to yourself in your head? How do you talk to yourself? Do you ever shame yourself?
Dr. Brown's book, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't), goes to great lengths to define shame as a debilitating force in all our lives. She asked a number of people in her early research to define shame. This one struck me: "Shame is that feeling in the pit of your stomach that is dark and hurts like hell. You can't talk about it and can't articulate how bad it feels because then everyone would know your 'dirty little secret.'"
Okay, my church pals, are you ready for some truth? Preacher 'bout to tell the truth. The church as it exists today, yes even Episcopalians, systemically cultivates shame. We dress up in costumes most of us only wear one day a week, and when people ask us how we are doing, we are conditioned to respond, "Fine."
What do you think would happen if we replaced our answers with the truth? And can you believe we are talking about church as a place where we need to tell the truth more often?
I know for a fact, because I have people in my office all the time who are drenched in shame, that some of you on Sunday morning would scare the pants off your fellow parishioners if you told the truth. Or most likely, they would look at you, not know what to say, pat you on the shoulder, say something like "I'll pray for you," and then walk off. You know why? Because in our churches we are not spending enough time encouraging one another to come as you are. Jesus says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." We prefer marketing strategies. "Come to us, all you who are a middle-class family of four, and contribute to the church budget."
Boy, this is getting heavy.
Picture this scene in your church's foyer:
"How are you today?"
"I'm in so much damn pain that I don't know why I'm even here."
"I'm sorry. Did you see the game yesterday?"
The church should be the primary gathering in the world where you can come, be vulnerable, and in authenticity, participate with others who exchange shame for the healing salvation afforded through Jesus. It is time that we Christians take seriously how we have participated in the ungodly system that makes men and women think our appearance, both physical and emotional, is more important than honesty.
But do you know why it is going to take a while to turn the corner? It is because elders, preachers, and gossipy church-types have used other people's confessions of sin to shame them.
Shame me once, shame on me. Shame me twice, shame on me.
Can we in our churches at least give this a try? The only way it will work is if we are all in it together.
After years of research, Dr. Brown finally developed this conceptual definition: "Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging."
Preacher 'bout to tell some more truth: That has no place in the life of a Christian, whether directed outwardly toward others, and certainly not in the messages we send to ourselves. Church is the last group where anyone should experience not belonging. Repentance is one thing. We all make bad choices. We all sin. But we are also washed clean. Redeemed. And those should be the lenses through which we see the entire world.
You are not flawed.
