I like this image, because it represents God as parent, God as mother, God as Father.
It’s a healthy way to see God, to feel God, if we can separate it from our own experience with imperfect parents, or of h being imperfect parents.
We’ve been talking about a lot of things in this course that normally don’t come up in regular conversation or in public programs.
There are particular topics that we are generally encouraged to avoid, classically those include politics and religion.
But something that we often do not discuss with others is shame, or guilt. Both of those topics can be triggering, and both of those topics can be tied up in a whirlwind of emotions.
No one likes to think about their shame. No one likes to dwell on their feelings of guilt.
So why are we talking about this today? It’s because guilt and shame are human realities.
That means if you are human, at some level you do have, or had had, struggles with guilt and shame.
And very likely, because guilt and shame occupy a similar zone in our psyche, in our brains, they can become conflated, mixed together, mistaken for one another.
And when they find expression in our minds and in our emotions, they seem to intermingle in a way that would indicate that it is worth our while to disentangle these two things: guilt and shame.
And you might wonder, well how are they different? Aren’t they synonyms? Two words that basically mean the same thing. The answer is, no, they are not the same thing.
Shame comes from a negative focus on the self – our core identity; guilt comes from a negative focus on a specific behavior.
Guilt says, “I made a mistake,” shame says, “I am a mistake.”
Guilt says, “I did something bad,” shame says, “I am something bad.”
So the focus of guilt is behavior; the focus of shame is identity. That’s worth saying again. PPT
We feel guilty when we know that we have done something that we know is wrong.
And at the same time, to complicate things even further, another thing that leads to feelings of guilt is we often enough don’t do the things we know we should do.
Doing things that we know are wrong is an ancient human thing. Being at times a confusing mystery to ourselves is an ancient human thing.
The Apostle Paul wrote very candidly about his own internal turmoil. In Romans chapter 7 he wrote:
Romans 7:15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
The Message paraphrase of the Bible puts it this way: 15 What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.
Can you relate? A few seconds later he writes: 18b ...I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.
So...Being a confusing mystery to ourselves is an ancient, universal human thing.
Paul is giving us a very candid, very honest, brutally truthful insight into the universal human condition, the brokenness that comes with being human.
Of course this is not a constant reality that we consciously face every second of the day. That would be exhausting and overwhelming.
But it is a thing that we come up against in ourselves when it comes to the challenge of “walking the talk”, of living our lives in accordance with our values and beliefs.
It’s like our values and beliefs are under ours and life’s constant scrutiny and are being challenged on the regular.
But also note that Paul’s focus here is on his behaviour, his actions, what he does and NOT his identity.
He is honest about, he is able to be honest about his shortcomings, because he is clear on his identity.
Due to his faith in Jesus, Paul knew that first and foremost his identity was that of a beloved, adopted child of the most high King of the universe.
That knowledge served him well through a life of trial and struggle.
Again, guilt addresses what we do, shame attacks who we are. So we need to find a way to identify which emotion we’re feeling.
And that’s not too hard. We need to watch our self-talk.
If what we’re saying to ourselves and feeling is that we’re worthless, pointless, dumb and such, which by the way has a very energy- and hope-draining quality to it, then we need to put the brakes on it in our minds.
We need to pause, we need to slow down, we need to distinguish.
If what we’re feeling is guilt, it is likely, properly distinguished from shame, less energy- and hope-draining.
In fact, guilt can lead us to the resolution to do better, to better align our conduct with our values and beliefs. Guilt, handled well, can lead to remarkable personal growth.
Shame can make us question our very existence. The author Ken Wells says: “Nobody ever beat themselves to a better place”. And he’s right. [Pause]
And just to mention something that we’re going to unpack a little later on today, When it comes to childhood trauma, we can feel a lot of shame related to it. We can blame ourselves.
With our adult minds we can go back in our memories and criticize our childhood self for the trauma that was done to us. That’s a nasty trick our brains can play on us: judging our childhood selves with our adult mind.
So we need to think it through. Where does that shame actually belong. It belongs NOT with us, but it belongs to the one or ones who have perpetrated evil on us.
We need to take it off our shoulders and put it where it belongs, on the shoulders of the one or ones who by their actions earned that shame.
Let’s determine to not hold on to something that we haven’t earned and are not responsible for.
One last thing...as Paul indicates, we all share some level of brokenness in our beings.
And we all are our own worst critics, finding it hard to let go of our own failings, finding it tough sometimes to come to terms with our shortcomings.
Of course, on the one hand to be human means to be imperfect and to therefore of course have shortcomings.
But we can take on the burden of that and be pretty unkind to ourselves about where we may have sometimes failed to live up to even our own standards of our best behaviour.
That’s where a spiritual perspective can also give some light to the heaviness, the darkness we can feel in our spirits at times.
Here’s a passage of Scripture that gives insight and can perhaps help to correct our view of God, and give us insight into the Father heart of God
It’s from Psalm 103:8-12, and it reads like this: [PPT has a sentence at a time
The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
To fear is to honour and respect, to hold in very high regard.
If we find an openness in ourselves to such things, this can really help us to deal with matters like guilt.
If God is God, that means we are not god.
If God is God, then that means that His judgment trumps that of lesser beings, including ourselves and our loudest critiques, be they internal or external. (Pause)
And if God’s nature is indeed merciful and gracious, very patient and in fact abounding in love and goodness;
and his inclination is to be forgiving toward us and not deal with us according to our sins, our mistakes, our failings, then if we accept His judgment, His view of us,
then that can lead us to freedom from self-condemnation. “One greater than I says I’m forgiven. Who am I to contradict?”, becomes the orientation of our hearts.
That is immensely liberating. Tha can free us from chains that keep us oppressed.
So, to wrap this up, I want to encourage you that if you, like Paul, like myself, are often a bit of a mystery to yourself, you don’t need to fret.
You are in good company with everyone else who dwells on this planet.
And perhaps we can come back to this image as I read something else that Paul wrote.
It came out deep self understanding of his identity, that which was most truthful and most deeply true about who he was.
Paul wrote: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power...to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Ephesians 3:17-20
