June 6 - Shame triggers fear of consequences
Scripture focus: He told the Woman: "I'll multiply your pains in childbirth; you'll give birth to your babies in pain. You'll want to please your husband, but he'll lord it over you." He told the Man: "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from, 'Don't eat from this tree,' the very ground is cursed because of you; getting food from the ground will be as painful as having babies is for your wife; you'll be working in pain all your life long. The ground will sprout thorns and weeds, you'll get your food the hard way, planting and tilling and harvesting, sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk, until you return to that ground yourself, dead and buried; you started out as dirt, you'll end up dirt." The Man, known as Adam, named his wife Eve because she was the mother of all the living. Genesis 3:16-20 (The Message)
Adam and Eve experienced serious consequences for their poor decision-making. Most of us can relate! Clearly they receive consequences for their behavior. But what is the motivation behind God's parental discipline? Is it to punish, or protect? Is it to disgrace, or discipline? The motives we ascribe to God and others will seriously affect our own sense of shame.
At a recent TrueFaced Conference, one of the presenters said something that I particularly appreciated: "If we believe and fear that disclosure of a sin will cost us as much as discovery of that sin, then we will wait to be discovered. We will wait for someone to discover it." If we believe that God (and others) are driven to punish and disgrace us, we will always hide our sin (a very unhealthy response that actually increases our sin vulnerability). When we believe that God (and others) trust and love us, even when they discipline us, we understand that this discipline is for our protection. Does this help make sense of why we tend to hide at the very time when we are in greatest need of support?
It will take a powerful motivational source to convince us to become honest, open, self-disclosing people. Fortunately, God has made just such a provision for times like these. Why do we even care whether we disclose or wait to get caught in the act of sin? More on that later.
For today, prayerfully try to wrap your brain around the idea that disclosure is a gift that will actually reduce our sinful ways; discovery increases our shame and causes those we love to doubt our willingness to change.
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