I've been thinking a lot about shame today. In fact, I think I've been carrying this concept with me in some way, shape or form most of the day. I suppose much of this is due to my new revelation that it is shame that I've been carrying with me for the last however many years, which has led to me having a low self-esteem.
As I think of all the things that have caused this shame, there are many voices. There are the few times when my teachers called my name to get my attention because I was talking while they were talking. This led to a vow on my part never to talk because it seemed I couldn't control myself once I started talking. There are the numerous times that I was scolded by my family for things that were probably routine but for some reason I heard something else (This is only a guess). Sometimes this was because I was teasing my dad in front of his mom and she thought I was disrespecting my dad or the time when my uncle squeezed my arm because I casually asked if we were going to my OTHER grandma's house in front of my paternal grandmother. My uncle was worried that I hurt his mom's feelings so he scolded me while she went into the grocery store and we stayed in the car. And of course there are the numerous times that kids made fun of me in school, sometimes applying physical force, and I couldn't find it within me to stand up to their ridicule, to say that I don't deserve to be talked about like that. I remember going home from youth group on Wednesday night or from a special event feeling like a loser because I didn't perform very well while we played a game. I'll never forget when the whole youth group laughed at me because I let the girl pay for her movie ticket on what I deemed as my first date.
And yet, Lewis B. Smedes had the gall to say in the fourth chapter of Shame & Grace that shame could be a good thing. He even outlines how he considers shame to be a healthy thing in the face of the many psychologists who "seem to assume that all bad feelings we have about ourselves are unhealthy" (p. 31).
I may have said it wrong. Dr. Smedes outlines five ways that one's true self is good, which can be a sort of gauge to test whether one is being ruled by one's true self on the outside or if one's "lower self" is ruling one on the inside as well as on the outside.
He says that one's true self is (1) a grateful person, (2) an integrated whole, (3) tuned in to what is really going on around a person and in a person, (4) the conductor of one's private inner orchestra and (5) has a freedom to love with passion. That means such a being is really able to love.
Now there's more to this but I have to admit that it is harder for me to see these virtues in myself than his description of shaming personalities in the chapter before. Nonetheless these are things that I can presumably see if I'm not too hard on myself.
The crazy thing about all of this shame stuff is that Dr. Smedes thought that shame could be telling of something deeper than the shame. Now by this point I felt like I was having a breakthrough. Not only does this acknowledge that I feel shame but that it might be saying something to me about the way that I'm dealing or not dealing with myself. For too long I think I have been carrying this shame with the notion that something is severely wrong with me and that there is nothing I can do about it. This involves sins I've committed and especially reminds me of when I was a seminary student and how much of my homework that I didn't get done. I really would've liked to do all the reading I was assigned. Though I did work a lot of hours, I don't think that was the problem, at least not always. I remember times when I would watch TV for hours as I chronically put things off. The worst I remember was when I had to make a presentation on Thomas Aquinas and I had shamed myself into a bad presentation because I didn't think I could do it well enough.
Well now I seem to have gotten off the subject. Perhaps this suggests I still don't have my mind wrapped around this whole shame thing. But here's the point. There is a sense in which shame is a good thing. That's where I went wrong this morning as I only thought that there must be something wrong with me to feel that shame. But Dr. Smedes tells us that this healthy shame protects us from our falseness, that part of us that feeds us bad information. I hear Dr. Smedes speaking of some kind of dualism within us at all times and that a healthy shame will keep our false selves from defeating us by motivating us to do the right thing simply because we "do not want to feel ashamed of..." ourselves. Now Kant might argue that is not true religion but hopefully this motive carries into the realm of doing something for the sake of the other and not just merely for the sake of our own reputations.
As the chapter presents itself, I feel the most compelling progression in the last section of the paragraph where Dr. Smedes says that "whenever we feel shame, it sets us at a cross-road. We have a choice: do we rush to get relief, or do we first ask what causes the pain?" (p. 36). Now here is the pinnacle of crazy for me. I can acknowledge that feeling of shame by asking why it is there rather than being victimized by it. In other words, "...our heart may be breaking, and only when we see where our shame came from will we know why it feels so heavy and why we do not deserve to feel it at all" (ibid.).
Did you hear that? We don't deserve to feel that shame so why not deal with it and move on rather than allowing that shame to suck the life out of us?
Although Dr. Smedes was a professor at a theological seminary, I appreciate his focus on the issue of shame rather than using theology for counseling purposes. Yet, I seem to recall the many revival services I heard during the years I grew up where I heard pastors/preachers speak of the shame that God wants to deliver us from. How come I've managed to bear that shame myself in spite of the many services I've attended, the many prayers I've uttered and the innumerable times I responded to altar calls at the end of church services?
However, I do recall one time while I was in seminary that I experienced something similar to what I experienced towards the latter part of today. I heard a sermon that was not all that impressive and yet the pastor spoke to my heart when he talked about self-esteem and how some people don't believe they are worthy of God's forgiveness in Christ. I responded to that altar call, told a pastor what I was feeling and struggling with and after we prayed I must have experienced a liberated heart for the next 24 hours. That experience was preceded by urge from a good friend to overcome my self-esteem struggles.
For the next day or two, I found myself more able to easily accept other people without judging them because I wasn't constantly criticizing myself. But then the same old false self presented itself to me and I succumbed to its urgings.
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