You won’t hear me bashing shame altogether. On the contrary, I think our society would greatly benefit from a healthy dose of it! We would have fewer problems in the highly visible sins area, like drunkenness and deadbeat parenting, if people were free to be shamed without feeling ashamed of proper shame.

However, like all emotions, Satan has twisted shame from a tool that can be useful to drive us to repentance and restoration and made it into a flay to drive us away from God and man.

When we sin, we should be ashamed until we repent. However, once we have repented, we have received God’s forgiveness. Out relationship has been restored. Shame should be put away with the sin.

Godly shame is discomfort caused by the awareness of our falling short of God’s mark. Conviction (awareness of our sin) brings shame. Ungodly shame comes from another source completely; it comes from falling short of man’s mark.

This is why shame can be such a twisted thing. If we are ashamed of missing man’s mark, we will never, ever be able to lose our shame. We will never be “as good as” or “good enough” for people. We are shooting for an ever moving, and often undefinable, target. If we are prosperous, we are shamed for being well off. If we are not, we are shamed for laziness. If we are woke, we are never woke enough for the next new level of wokeness. If we are smart, we are not forgiven for errors. If we are lacking in intelligence, we have no worth. It goes on and on. Man’s mark is unachievable.

So is God’s, by the way. Perfection is what God requires. God defines it exactly in Scripture. He spells out His standard. There is not one of us that can hit that target. The difference is Jesus. Because of Jesus, God freely offers unlimited forgiveness and abundant grace. He offers full redemption.

If we try to hang on to our shame after we are forgiven, particularly in the presence of God, we are diminishing Christ by trying to bear something He already bore! Would we try to bear our sins and pay that overwhelming debt ourselves? Of course not! So why try to hang on to our shame? We are robed in Christ’s righteousness. The shame of our rags and nakedness are done away with.

We ought not roll in shame like a pig in mud. Like any emotion, it can be addicting. For some, it can become their whole identity. It can be something they crave, and whenever it starts to disappear, they conjure it back up like a sick necromancer calling up the spirit of their long dead tormentor in order to prolong the abuse.

We then use to sabotage our relationship with others. We assume they are thinking of our shamefulness every time they see us. The most innocent comment or look from our dearest friends can make us suspicious that they not only judge the shameful things they know, but suspect the secret shames we carry as well. We can’t enter into fellowship with them because we don’t think we have any peers. Our shame consumes us and we purposefully live in isolation.

We even use shame to sabotage our relationship with God. Every time He tries to speak to us, we flee away with Shame, our bosom companion. We become so ridiculous in our desperation to cling to this guilty feeling that we begin to scream our spiritual houses down.

It makes me think of my daughter, a truly delightful girl, who inherited my penchant for the dramatic. Even the gentlest correction can at times trigger an episode of ear splitting howls of, “I’m the Worst Daughter Ever! You wish I didn’t even live here! No one loves me!” She knows full well that all of that is completely untrue. She still, however, chooses to draw attention from time to time by basking in unworthiness and despair. (For all concerned, she is a very confident girl and actually has quite a high opinion of herself. She just enjoys the occasional tantrum.)

Of course she isn’t the “worst daughter ever.” All her fits do is demand attention. They create the drama she loves and make her feel more important. In the same way our shame fests and pity parties add nothing good to our spiritual lives. All the do is focus attention and priorities badly.

How much better if we take our shame as a cue to repent, and when we have done so, leave behind the shame with the sin, drowned in the neverending sea of God’s glorious forgiveness.