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

by Edward T. Welch

Whether shame leads you to take the blame for everything or shift the blame for everything, you will experience hopelessness.

Shame comes from what we have done, our past associations, and what has been done to us.

In the desert, she learns that God cares for the marginalized, the oppressed, and the outcast—for her.

Your task—and it is a challenging one—is to get to the right answer. Intelligence isn’t the issue.

Shame’s hold over you leads you to believe you don’t deserve to be rid of shame. As a result, you treat hope as if it were a contaminated substance.

Hmm. Since almost everyone who experiences shame feels like he or she deserves it, you too might be pre-programmed to avoid all things hopeful and encouraging. But deserving or not, just listen. You will hear that God says good words only to those who feel undeserving.

If you’ve put your hope in this answer, ask God for mercy. Confess that you are looking for rescue in the wrong places.

Instead, try a counterintuitive approach to escape shame. Try changing the subject so it is more about God than about your shame. The basic idea is to focus on the matchless worth of the Lord God and then get connected to him.

The character of God is the basis for our connection to him, not our intrinsic worth. Self-worth, or anything we think would make us acceptable to God, would suit our pride but it has the disturbing side-effect of making the cross of Jesus Christ less valuable. If we have worth in ourselves, there is no reason to connect to the infinite worth of Jesus and receive what he has done for us.

Or you can turn to him and discover that he has a heart for the unworthy. He pursues those who, like Hagar, have no glory or honor in themselves.

Can you understand that when you believe him, you are associated with him? (And when you don’t believe him, you are not associated with him?)

There are clean and unclean people.

With these four categories of holy and common, clean and unclean, God gives us the basic building blocks of the spiritual universe. You will find yourself, and everything else, in two of the four groups. Notice how clean and unclean fit the experience of shame.

Uncleanness strikes us all. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6).

People could become unclean from what they did or what was done to them.

If you do and are found out, you will experience shame. If you were the victim of such a boundary

That doesn’t mean the unclean are unwelcome, but it means God must do something for them before they can enter his presence.

The unclean might be guilty; they always experience shame.

makes perfect sense: people can be unclean. What you may not have anticipated is the fact that the unclean could return to the community. The Old Testament spends a lot of time explaining how people could become part of the group again.

There’s no reason to cover up, nothing to hide. Your conscience is clear.

You assume that there is no path between the two, only thick, impenetrable walls. And you are right. You can’t simply decide to walk over to the clean part of town. But you can do something.

If no, you still think you are too disgusting to receive cleansing and acceptance. Maybe you feel like you have to punish yourself a little longer—a kind of self-imposed exile: “Bad girl, go to your room and you can’t have supper.”

The truth is that God himself gave this system to his people. He provided a way to be clean and, since you have nothing, he essentially gave you the sacrifice to offer.

You could put it this way. If you were an Old Testament Israelite, you could make up your own system to make yourself clean, which would be ineffective and silly. Or you could a...

If you are still reluctant, there could be one other explanation. You are plain ...

though you feel stuck, you can be sure that God isn’t. He is the one who makes the first move. He will continue to show mercy and grace to you. You will find that resignation and trust in the Lord is better than you think.

At first glance, the Old Testament system had its advantages.

So there are, indeed, ways we can become unclean. The clean can be defiled, but the unclean can be purified.

The clean and the unclean, though very different from each other, both have the same parent—the common.

The category of the holy is all about God.

They were consecrated, made holy, or dedicated to the Lord.

To be holy you had to be clean, but clean didn’t automatically make you holy.

To come into the King’s courts, you had to be clean; to come into his presence you had to be made holy.

Basically, every person and created thing is common.

In the New Testament the journey from common to holy is called sanctification.

The opposite of consecrated or sanctified is profaned. It happens when you take something declared holy and treat it as if it were common.

We aim to be holy and enjoy the presence of the Holy One. That is the deepest answer to the problem of shame.

What would it mean to be holy? Can you imagine that? Don’t forget, you do not make yourself holy. You are made holy by an act of the loving God. What is the way out of shame? The unclean become clean. The clean become holy. The naked are clothed in royal garments. The outcasts are accepted as children of the honored King. You might decide that life is worth

What we know so far is that humans were created naked and unashamed; they made themselves naked and ashamed. As a result they ran and hid. They did not want to be seen. God’s response was to cover them with animal skins.

Glory, beauty, and consecrate are all words that identify things that are holy. They belong to God, and everything that belongs to him is made beautiful by association. Now,

but you will get the point: this is a very elegant garment. And what is an outfit without a hat? (Stay with me, men.) The

It marked the wearer as someone associated with the Holy King.

but the designer put his or her name on it. That’s why it is so costly.

But these priestly clothes have more significance to you than you think. You will have to work to make the connections, and once you do, life as you know it will not change immediately. But it will be another step of hope and encouragement. Even more, it could grow into a God-given vision of what you actually look like and who you are becoming.

First,

The point is, you don’t have to be perfect to be made holy.

Second,

your identity was tied to your representative, who was usually a king. The status of the king w...

to be a true Israelite, which is no problem. If your allegiances are with the true King of Israel, who is also the King of the world, you are indeed engrafted into the community. True Israelites, as we later learn, are defined by their spiritual commitments rather than their genetic line (Romans 4:16; Ephesians 3:6).

Third,