The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves

by Curt Thompson

Via neuroplasticity and Hebb’s axiom, practice tends to make permanent. Thus, if we tell ourselves, using imagery and sensations as much as words, that our life isn’t going anywhere, we literally wire our brain to continue in that pattern of storytelling.

we always take our family of origin with us to work,

I would suggest that shame’s mention—juxtaposed to humankind’s nakedness—is significant not simply because of what follows but also, and perhaps mostly, because it is primal to what follows. The vulnerability of nakedness is the antithesis of shame.

We are maximally creative when we are simultaneously maximally vulnerable and intimately connected, and evil knows this. To twist goodness into the seven deadliest versions of its opposite, shame is necessary and effective, and its virulence explicitly exploits our vulnerability.

in the biblical narrative when we experience shame, we are not simply encountering one of an array of possible emotions; rather we are engaging evil in its most fundamental mode of operation.

really good stories—and this is a good one—tend to compel our curiosity about what the characters are thinking, feeling, sensing and so on. To refrain completely from considering the workings of the inner lives of Eve and Adam ultimately leaves us unable to relate to them in any meaningful ways, for surely what we do is an extension of our inner life, as Jesus himself reminds us (Matthew 15).

But there is a darker side to doubt, and the serpent in Genesis 3 has every intention of exploiting it. In this scene, doubt is planted as a way to discredit not so much Eve’s rendition of the facts, which could easily be resolved by waiting for God’s next stroll through the garden. It is used to rupture relational connections. It is one thing to use doubt in the service of creating goodness and beauty, and of enriching relationships. It is quite another to do the opposite.

So often when we doubt ourselves, especially in the face of what we consider to be important events in our lives, we are actually doubting our sense of connection with others, not least with God.

In stating flatly that the woman will not die, the serpent offers her a new rendition of the truth. A startling one, to be sure. But this is not merely a factual sleight of hand. To be told that you will be like God may seem like a good thing. I would love to hear that. But the subtle corollary to this idea is that, given the prohibition to the fruit of this particular tree, by implication God does not want you to be like him. God does not want you to have what he has. He does not want you to be as close and as connected to him as you might think he does. And by further implication, therefore, you are not as important as you think. You, as it turns out, are less than you think. You. Are. Not. Enough.

Of course, the most effective—and possibly the supremely threatening—way to prevent the slide into this trap is to talk with God, rather than about him. But this idea never gains an audience in the Genesis story. And as we know, to relationally confront our shame requires that we risk feeling it on the way to its healing. This is no easy task.

all sin, all idolatry, all coping strategies in which I indulge are ways for me to satiate my hunger for relationship, my longing to be known and loved, my desire to be desired.

It is a hallmark of shame that though I experience it as something being fundamentally wrong with me, I draw that conclusion only as a byproduct of my emotional sense of it as a harbinger of abandonment, as a function of the potential for a catastrophic rupture in relationship.

Shame has led to her replacing relationship with a pear. She walks away from engagement with Adam or God—a neurobiological state of “we”—and into the dark, blind alley of independence, all as a way of regulating the emotional disruption that has been introduced by her interchange with the serpent.

Hiding is the natural response to shame. This is especially true when we experience it in a toxic form, but most of our hiding takes place in the everyday comings and goings of life.

This is one of shame’s most powerful characteristics. When it lassos a group of people, shifting from its individual to corporate expression, shame’s energy and intensity expands geometrically, the whole of its presence becoming far greater than the sum of its individual parts. The group’s capacity for vulnerability shrinks, and the notion of being known disappears in favor of the need for protection from the very members that compose it. The community of faith that began in Genesis 2 now devolves, running into the woods.

Our shame screams out in judgment of those closest to us. Sure, it is easy and common for us to judge those who are the furthest from us. But we reserve our most venomous moments for those that circle most closely in our relational orbits.

As we read about the triune God considering the possibility of creating humankind in his image (Genesis 1:26-27), we get the impression God knows that inviting humans to join him in this joyful life on earth would necessarily mean that God was setting himself up for a rough go of it.

vulnerability is the state we must pass through in order to deepen our connection with God and others, given our condition. There is no other way.

But in the Trinity we see something that we must pay attention to: God does not leave. The loving relationship shared between Father, Son and Spirit is the ground on which all other models of life and creativity rest. In this relationship of constant self-giving, vulnerable and joyful love, shame has no oxygen to breathe.

Paul indicates that being known by God is the signpost that we love him. And to be known necessarily means that we are willing to expose each part of us, especially those parts that feel most hidden and that carry the most shame.

to be known is necessarily to be vulnerable, to open ourselves to God’s love. It is to be asked questions. To be observed. To be seen.

progression from Bethlehem to Golgotha. Rather, that he was enveloped in the relationship revealed at his baptism and heard in the words “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

Before being crucified, victims were usually stripped naked. It is difficult to imagine a more humiliating event. There is reason to believe this was true for Jesus. But we find it virtually impossible to look upon his naked form, or even consider it, given how embarrassing it feels. Our own discomfort is revealed even in the way we represent it artistically. With few exceptions, depictions of this event usually portray Jesus’ loins covered with a cloth. This is not to argue in favor of a different way to portray Jesus’ crucifixion, but rather to point out that although we assent theologically to how Good Friday delivered us from shame as well as sin, actually permitting ourselves to be there on that Friday, being with a naked Jesus, is an entirely different matter altogether. But only to the degree that we take the time to image, sense and feel what it would have been like to be there can we answer yes to the question “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” The point here is to emphasize that Jesus’ literal naked vulnerability is a testimony to us that he knows exactly what it is like to be us. To truly be with us Jesus—Immanuel—not only knows what it means to be vulnerable, he knows how painfully, frighteningly hard it is to live into it, given shame’s threat. He knows the agony of sweating blood, looking for a way—any way—to avoid being stripped naked, being seen for who he was and left alone to die. He does not require anything of us that he does not first do him...

To this God, whom we meet in Jesus, we must direct our attention if we are to know the healing of our shame. We must literally look to Jesus in embodied ways in order to know how being loved in community brings shame to its knees and lifts us up and into acts of goodness and beauty.

It is in our rhetoric about sexuality and immigration. Shame screams at players on the court and at soldiers in basic training. It writes and speaks about the politician as well as her opponent, depending on which paper’s editor has the pen. It repeatedly tells a story of the world that is made up of “we” and “they.” And “they” are always the bad guys.

Jesus’ experience of hearing his Father telling him, “You are my son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased,” which is what God is telling all of his sons and daughters at all times (not to the exclusion of other things he is also saying). What set Jesus apart was that he heard it and acted on it. It is imperative that we do the same.

Everything he reminds himself of pays attention to his relationship with his Father who loves him, is pleased with him, will be faithful to meet his deepest longings and will bring Jesus’ creative calling to its climax. As he listens to his Father’s voice reminding him who he is, Jesus remains intimately connected to his Father.

To “fix our eyes on Jesus” means watching him and doing what he did. It is to intentionally seek out our shame, expose it and reframe it in light of our Father telling us that we are his daughters and sons in whom he is well-pleased. For this to happen, we must practice embodied acts of imagination that enable all our sensations, images, feelings, thoughts and physical actions to reflect our sense of God’s delight with us.

This was not the story that shame planned on telling. Rather, it was the story of redemption, the story of God’s kingdom breaking into the world in real time and space, the story that God wants to tell every moment of every day in each of our lives. If only we have ears to hear it and voices to tell it.

For we must remember, we are dust and breath, and healing shame will necessarily mean we act differently with our bodies. We will move when before we were literally unable to due to our emotional paralysis. We will speak when before we were silent. We will demonstrate physical agency in the real world, as God did in Jesus by telling people to stretch out their hands (Mark 3:5), take up their mats and walk (John 5:11), and to go and wash (John 9:7). Healing shame is never only an inside job.

Naming and despising shame, while liberating, will also necessarily reveal all who are actively responsible for propagating it.

After a few weeks of meeting with them, it was clear that this family lived with the motto that you don’t have to be perfect, you simply have to do your best. As one of my college professors remarked, possibly one of the least helpful things a parent can tell his or her child is “We only expect you to do your best.” No one can do his or her best at everything, for no one has that much time or energy. Shame in this family did not show up as abuse or as a result of someone’s alcoholism. There was no divorce on the horizon. Rather, the subtle undercurrent of perfectionism had led to this sudden change in events.

the process of being known in the context of our vulnerability within the church becomes one of the most powerful means of evangelism and healing.

Though we usually think of learning as the acquisition of knowledge, we also acquire knowledge for the power it grants us. But acquiring knowledge depends on admitting that we do not know many things, that we need help from others in order to learn. Learning, in fact, is a declaration of vulnerability.

As we grow older, however, we become more distressed. We fear in the future we will be found to not know enough, to have not worked hard enough, to have not scored well enough. We will not be enough. To admit in our culture that we do not have our lives neatly packaged and wrapped, that we are a mess, that we need help from someone else is tantamount to blasphemy. To admit that we do not know something, are not good at something or have made a mistake—to be vulnerably known—is not one of our best skill sets.

Curiosity depends on being relationally safe (which assumes physical safety). And relational safety rests ultimately on the experience of being known. When we sense the safety engendered by being in the presence of someone we can trust, we are launched into new areas of interest. We are not motivated by the belief we will not fail, but by the conviction that when we make mistakes they will not be our ruin. In an environment where we are unafraid, mistakes are not our enemies but our friends.

One way then to facilitate learning is to offer what might be called creation conversations. These dialogues offer space to discuss where people feel vulnerable or weak—the inevitable nakedness that a child, employee or congregant might be feeling.

in education, and in many other realms as well, praise is offered routinely to those who perform well. It is not intuitive that this response on the part of teachers (or coaches or parents or CEOs) could be counterproductive to genuine maturation and creative initiative over the long haul.

an important predictor of long-term learning effectiveness is the praise of effort rather than outcomes.

If, however, each time I attempt to solve a problem or answer a question my teacher recognizes my effort, I begin to anticipate a different future. If my sense of well-being and connection with my teacher is related to her or his praise for my effort (rather than outcome), even when I am facing a problem I cannot easily solve, I tend not to give up because I anticipate that praise is still coming as long as I put in the effort.

At issue is that knowing, which represents the necessary information about how things work, is always in service to being known, which represents the relationships for which all of that information matters.

In the same way of being known from before the foundation of the world, we were destined to create a world of goodness and beauty, following Jesus’ lead in doing things that are the bright shadows of his kingdom that is here and not yet. Vocation—work—in this context is to be equated with creativity. This applies to all vocational expressions in life: parenting, sculpture, engineering, farming, architecture, theology, plumbing, teaching, friendship, music composition, performance and so on. And with each act of joyful creation—right down to the diaper we change in the middle of the night—we proclaim the gospel.

to create goodness and beauty. When we resist the disintegration customary of the soul of shame, one byproduct is that we establish space for enhanced creativity. For when the mind is more integrated, it is less distressed. We then have more access to energy for creative endeavors, energy that was being used previously to manage and regulate shame’s interpersonal, neurobiological networks.

We cannot form the soul of our company, church, school or family well if we fail to see them in this light. Shame’s mission is to disintegrate all institutions in the same way it intends to disintegrate individuals, and isolation is no small part of its tactical arsenal.

In so doing we erect barriers within our own minds, cutting off certain parts of our self, those parts we judge to be not enough, from other parts we judge to be more adequate.

To flourish, a mind or a community must turn its attention to where shame is hiding in order to create space for even greater growth, even in the way Jesus moves from his place in heaven to join us (Philippians 2:5-8). This is no less true in the context of running a hardware store or a multinational corporation than it is in the church.

“love never fails.” It does not fail because it always has another move to make, another gesture toward connection. And there is no end to its movement. We never “arrive,” but rather are, and even in the new heaven and earth will be traveling, as C. S. Lewis bids us imagine, “further up and further in.”2 Where shame attempts to push us into static inertia, love bids us to move.

All that we do—parenting, pastoring, farming, playing basketball, carpentry, police work, structural engineering—is done in response to love and shame competing for our attention, wrestling for authority over our memory, emotion, sensations and behaviors. These two dominant affective forces of the universe represent the struggle between good and evil. Within each of us, these two affective states—represented by the presence of the Holy Spirit on one side and our shame attendant on the other—are at war over us and the culture we are making.

To live faithfully is to trust, to deeply attune to the presence of the Holy Spirit in whom we live and move and have our being. As we live faithfully, we actively imagine that he joyfully delights in being in our presence, and that all we do, we do with God, mindful that we live in dependence on him and each other.

We are God’s sons and daughters in whom he is very pleased. He is delighted to be in our presence. And it is love’s business to draw us together as a people in an integrated whole of differentiated, linked parts who are capable of amazing creativity.