Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection

by Edward T. Welch

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Shame has much more affinity with the leper who cries out, “Unclean!” and contaminates others with a mere touch.

People who live with shame believe they don’t deserve anything good. Sure, others get hurt by shame’s self-destructive ways, but it’s not as if you wanted to hurt them.

You will ruin lives eventually, so you might as well get it over with.

In his case, shame reflected his shameful behavior, but his biography was complicated. Find shameful behavior and you often find people who were also shamed by others.

Sometimes we do shame, sometimes we are shamed, and many times we are a combination of both.

The language of shame is extreme.

They already have been calling themselves those names for years.

No one can blame you for wanting to minimize the experience. After all, who wants to stare into something that seems to cannibalize our humanity? But that is hopelessness talking. Don’t forget, there is a way to be cleansed from shame, and for that reason, shame can and must be confronted.

To have one’s body spread out on the ground like dung or to have dung spread on your face was a severe form of shame.

But for those who live with shame, they are speaking literally. They are describing themselves as they believe they really are. They feel like they have permanent dung on their face, they believe they deserve it, and they believe everyone else can see it.

Hope is not a sign that you have failed to numb yourself.

If you have more shame, it is an opportunity to have the hope you thought was impossible. For us all, it is a time to marvel at how God speaks more deeply to the human soul than we ever imagined.

Have you ever tried, unsuccessfully, to talk yourself or someone else out of shame? You would think it would be easy: “I love you”; “I think you are beautiful”; “It was their fault, not yours.” But shame is like a resistant virus. It is unmoved by treatments that would seem highly effective. What are some unsuccessful ways you have tried to talk yourself out of shame?

A parent?

Do you think this kind of perspective is possible for you? Do you think it might be possible to reject shame and return it to where, at least in the Nazis’ case, it truly belonged? How would you do that?

But ultimately this contrast is intended to remind you of your need for the covering, acceptance, and cleansing that only God can and will provide.

Cleansing, acceptance, and even honor will appear long before the story ends.

You can be sure of one thing: Scripture is about shame from start to finish.

Grace is what is operating when you receive good things you know you don’t deserve.

On the other hand, if it sounds too good to be true, you are hearing it correctly.

You were not intended to carry such a load. Shame is an intruder and, as such, maybe it can be dispatched

Does that seem impossible? If you feel like you are shame,

Maybe there is the possibility of friendship, complete forgiveness, freedom, openness.

What is the way out of shame? It is the way of humility, not humiliation. It is the way of being known, not exposed. Listen, really listen, to a story of hope.

But shame rarely responds to quick fixes.

Hiding. Covering up. Self-protection. Feeling exposed. They are telltale signs of shame.

though wherever you find rejection you will also notice the sense of nakedness and contamination

“Unclean” or contaminated,

“Unclean” appeared first in Exodus. In the book of Leviticus it became the preferred way of identifying shame.

Please don’t think this means that your shame is essentially a result of your own sin. We have all sinned; no one can deny that. But all sins are not necessarily shameful sins—at least they aren’t always shameful before other people.

On this part of the walk you also have the opportunity to realize that you are, in your very heart, not much different from Adam. You can replicate his actions each day. With this in mind, you are watching your family history unfold, but you are also watching yourself.

We continue to feel shame before other people, but we are blind to the fact that shame is also, and primarily, before God.

You will find that once shame has been addressed in your relationship with God, it won’t constantly attack you in your human relationships.

unpresentable.”

In this opening story the reason is because of what you’ve done. Adam and Eve contaminated themselves by moving toward something God said was forbidden. They brought shame on themselves.

Scripture distinguishes between shame that comes from our own actions and shame that comes from the actions of others. If you really want to know cleansing and acceptance, you should distinguish between them too.

Of course, I can still feel horrible about what I said, even though my mother is no longer alive. Shame, my own shame in this case, doesn’t erode over time. My point, however, is that you can see a human instinct operating here. I understood that I was connected to my mother’s status. Because I thought it was low, I wanted to break the association.

It works in a similar way with God. If we turn toward him and trust him, we associate ourselves with him and share in his reputation. If we run from him, we may enjoy a moment of independence, but it will be followed by the enduring sense that we are outsiders.

Notice the finger-pointing that begins when shame is made public.

There is such a thing as victimization.

Adam and Eve’s response to shame was the opposite: they blamed other people for what they did. When you feel relentless condemnation and don’t know where to go for forgiveness and cleansing, you look for a way to prove your innocence. When you feel dirty because you have caked the mud on yourself, you try to say that other people have been slinging mud at you.