Shame...it can also be a bad thing.

I must have chosen to read this chapter at a bad time of the day or perhaps the chapter was just not all that enlightening. That may be because I already know that the shame I tend to engage in is unhealthy. That on top of the fact that I feel tired after sitting through an orientation for a few hours. I think I found listening to this orientation almost as difficult as listening to people speak in Korean. This makes me wonder if the shame battle I fight every day is somehow related to how tired I have been feeling lately. It seems like I can't sleep enough. Hopefully this will change with English Camp starting next week.

Nonetheless, I think it is good for me to see that shaming myself is not a good thing and that it comes from others in many different forms. One of the enlightening historical perspectives is the family of John Quincy Adams, who family was made to feel like their calling was to be morally superior to other people which drove some of his siblings to alcoholism and suicide.

This made me wonder how many things I have done wrong as a result of the shame that I feel and how many times I have criticized people just to make myself feel better. This makes it extremely difficult to criticize others when I'm not really sure what to think myself. And how many times when I have done something wrong has it been because I have already felt shame.

Some key aspects that Lewis B. Smedes points to are shame coming from the outside including secular culture (i.e. you're not pretty or handsome enough), graceless religion (i.e. I have to be perfect no matter what) and unaccepting parents. The consequences of the first are that a person is made to think that s/he can't be good enough looking. This reminds me of when I went to middle school thinking that students wouldn't pick on me because I was skinny. But they found other ways to poke fun of my appearance. I'm not sure where the graceless religion comes in. I grew up under a pastor who was very relaxed and I recall my mother always encouraging me, though of course there were those times when I didn't do my homework and the times when I went to college and seminary against my father's will were difficult for both of us. Whoops! I guess I segued into "unaccepting parents" without realizing it.

Here is a checklist of ways for a person to check to see whether or not s/he has unhealthy shame. I will allude to each characteristic for myself. Would you do the same for yourself?

1. Unhealthy Shame Exaggerates Our Faults
This is an interesting one because I remember hearing all kinds of stories in church about how bad someone was and how much God changed her/his life. I regretted the fact that as a child I didn't have that kind of story to tell. I don't have to blink twice to recognize my tendency to do this. There almost seems to be a glory in doing it, as if that makes me one of those wretched people that God can use like I heard about in the years I grew up in church.

2. Unhealthy Shame is Chronic
I'm not sure if there is a way to use this as a criteria as to whether or not one shames oneself in an unhealthy manner, other than to see if one recognizes shame as being one's bedfellow, so to speak. I would imagine this is also true of me. Early on in my relationship with Sinae, I found myself shaming myself and being in utter disbelief that she would actually love me if she really knew who I was. And it seems that the longer I shame myself the more detrimental it becomes.

3. Unhealthy Shame Is Put On Us By Others
There are certainly the images in my mind of the many people who have shamed me. The most unforgettable experiences were with the people I went to school with who called me all kinds of names. Even if they didn't call me names, there is the shame that I didn't respect myself enough to stand up for myself. And when my dad's side of the family visited, I had a harder time controlling my attitude than when my mom's side of the family visited. I hated myself for this.

4. Unhealthy Shame Pervades Our Whole Being
This is what I am wondering about when I speak of being tired all of the time. It would seem more exhausting to have to deal with the constant shame nagging me than if I could naturally see myself as a good person without the shame.

5. Unhealthy Shame Is Unspiritual
Now this seems to be the most ironic of all the notions of unhealthy shame proffered by Lewis Smedes. Could it be that I have somehow picked up the idea that to shame oneself is the most spiritual? What about the tax collector who asks God to forgive him in spite of being a rotten person juxtaposed against the pharisee who merely thanks God that he is not like the tax collector. Is this story not praising the notion of shaming oneself in the presence of God?

6. Unhealthy Shame Makes Shame-bent People Proud of Their Shame
This also seems ironic that someone who is "shame-bent" would become proud of that shame. I can see this in myself because it seems to involve some kind of moral justification something like this. "If I didn't feel bad about myself, I wouldn't be able to relate to others who feel bad about themselves."

Wow! I didn't realize until now how much this chapter speaks to me as well and paints me very well. How about you?

The Good News that Dr. Smedes leaves us with at the end of this chapter is that "we do not deserve to suffer unhealthy shame and have every right to be rid of it" (p. 44).

I don't think that happens overnight but I'm ready to absorb these truths, own up to them and recognize that I am a better person than I give credit for while I look on to the next chapter.

Shame...a good thing?

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.

Finding things

After waiting longer than what Amazon.com predicted it would take for books to arrive at my door, I finally received them today. These are significant books, as evidenced by my decision to pay for the extra shipping in order to have them shipped internationally. These books are perhaps my most intentional attempt and sorting through my self-esteem struggles, which I would imagine will be an every-day battle for me.

The first of these books that I started reading is Shame & Grace: Healing the Shame We Don't Deserve. Lewis B. Smedes is the writer and he apparently taught at Fuller Theological Seminary and was known as an author, ethicist and theologian. I learned about this book, and the other two which I will mention later when I start reading them, from the Professor of Pastoral Counseling at the seminary I graduated from.

This book hits the nail right on the head for me. I've only read the first section, three chapters, and there have already been moments where the tears started to well up though I didn't actually cry. It's funny after all the years that I've struggled that I am just coming to realize that I feel shamed. I wish that in all the lessons I heard in youth group about waiting to have sex until I got married that someone would've talked about how to manage thoughts or how to deal with sexual temptation beyond making a boundary or something like that. But then again, maybe these lessons were there and I just didn't pick up on them.

One of the key areas that struck me is in the third chapter where different types of shame (people) are described. One of them that I clearly identified with was in the description of people who feel a burden for the problems of the world, as if the problems will only get worse if that person (me) doesn't do something about it. The other one was in reference to morality, feeling like everything a person does is either right or wrong. This makes me wonder about my whole sense of vocation in working in the inner city. Or is it possible that while my emotions or shame has been extreme that I could still do that kind of work but in a more healthy way?

I'll try to share more later and do an in-depth reflection once I finish the book, something I intend to take my time doing.

Choosing to believe

The last few days have been a little difficult for me. Well, actually the last week has been difficult and it probably has to do mostly or all with my self-esteem struggles. When I first came to Korea, and probably before, I wasn't as careful about the settings in which I encountered female students or how many students I met with. This means that sometimes I have been seen in public with only one student which led to all kinds of rumors. I should have learned through all of this but it took the insight of my girlfriend, who is much wiser than me, to come to this realization that I need to change my habits of meeting students one on one, particularly at a restaurant off-campus.

This issue was difficult for me to confront because I have found the most satisfaction in my job by developing relationships with students. I think that part of this is healthy and part of it is unhealthy. Perhaps the healthy part comes from a huge sense of gratitude for my professors who invested in me. On the negative side, it probably had something to do with my need to be affirmed.

After telling Sinae my struggle about this issue of a low self-esteem, which was later complicated by my accountability partner strongly urging me to find a group of guys to meet with as well as students not trying to practice speaking in English at a time when I was emotionally drained, I realized that when I am hurting Sinae is also hurting. That means I need to be even more aware of my own healthy well-being because when I'm not it will cause conflicts between Sinae and I.

With all of this in mind, I made a conscious decision tonight to believe I am a good person. This came after realizing that Sinae really loves me and that if I tell her I don't think I am a good person then in a sense I am calling her a liar or perhaps myself a liar because I am telling her that what she sees is not what she is getting.

As I think more and more about getting married to Sinae, I worry a lot about my habits as far as cleaning and cooking are concerned. Since I didn't grow up with a model of men helping in the kitchen in my immediate family, I am worried that I will slip into those kinds of habits and that Sinae will love me less or find out that she didn't marry the guy she fell in love with. But tonight I decided to make a concerted effort to be the guy that Sinae loves. Interestingly enough, I found that I had more energy tonight after not having to fight the inner struggle about whether or not I am a good person. That of course does not mean I am flawless but at least at my core I am a good person. I'm not sure what that sounds like theologically, but sure there is a sense of goodness even when one is still tainted by Original Sin. I'll save that discussion for a later post since I had an interesting discussion about that with my office-mate today.

I have made my decision...

It's been way to long since I've posted anything on here. I'd like to get ready for bed but I feel like I have too much energy to go to bed just yet. Besides, I'm so tired these days that it doesn't seem to take away my feelings of exhaustion if I sleep more.

A lot has happened, at least to me, since I last posted on this blog. The biggest thing that has happened is that Sinae and I have decided to prepare for getting married. I haven't proposed to her yet, and I won't say my plans on here in case she is reading along, but we have basically made a decision to move forward in our relationship, being convinced that we love each other so much that we can't imagine our lives without each other.

Prior to that decision, I realized that my self-esteem problems were hindering our relationship and that I was afraid to commit to marriage even though I told Sinae that I had been thinking about her many times in the context of marriage and that I used debt and time as excuses for putting this decision off. The amazing thing is that Sinae discerned all of this through one sentence about me saying I thought we should get married after my debts are paid off. After a long and difficult week we both agreed that we wanted to get married. I've been living in bliss ever since then while also dealing with my own shortcomings that I hope to at least start working through before that blissful day.

For those of you who know me well, you know that self-esteem is a constant problem for me. I realized that even when one is in a romantic relationship with one s/he loves, a low self-esteem continues to be a thorn in my flesh. One of my former professors recommended a few good books to me on this subject and I am debating on whether to buy them now and pay the higher cost of shipping to have them sent to Korean from America or wait until I am in America again. Even though the books may be more expensive I think I should start reading them now.

The two biggest areas where I see my self-esteem holding me back is in terms of my relationship with Sinae as well as in getting things done on a daily basis. I have yet to catch up on grading things that should've been done shortly after the Mid-term exam. I feel a constant war going on inside of me about whether or not I am good enough.

A Good Weekend

I usually post on here for a specific reason, like if I want to work on my Rule of Life, complain about culture, talk about a problem with Sinae or sort through some of my negative thinking. But I'm not going to do any of that tonight.

Instead, I'm going to talk about my splendid weekend that was quite different than normal. Before I get into it, I am surprised that one of the events that I was looking forward to before, wasn't quite as perfect as I hoped, and then afterward ended up being a good experience.

The start to my weekend was attending the required KOTESOL conference which the university paid for, as well as our membership in the society. I almost renewed my membership with them, but I decided not to and I am glad I did. The two best presentations I saw were the first and the last. The first was about the narrative of those teaching English as a second or foreign language. She is an Australian doing Ph.D. studies on qualitative research. I found this interesting just because she's looking at how teaching in another culture changes one's own beliefs about a variety of things. The last one, which was related to a sales pitch though done much better than any I've seen before, was about incorporating English education with technology. After hearing the statistics about people who are involved with technology, it is no wonder that my students are having trouble communicating in English in my classroom. I'll be posting more about this on my "We Can English" blog. The most interesting and unfortunately, the most difficult for me to stay awake to, was the presentation by a well-known ESL/EFL scholar about vocabulary.

Today, I returned to that area again today in Seoul to meet Sinae for our weekly date. We intended to go to the largest Church of the Nazarene in Seoul but ended up missing that service after making a mistake on the subway. We went to a service at a church near her alma mater this afternoon. The preaching pastor was not the main pastor but she received grace through his sermon and she helped me by writing a few sentences related to what he was saying.

We had many good conversations today about our future and I finished the book, "In Love But Worlds Apart". This book lists a lot of practical questions which I'm going to start e-mailing to Sinae and perhaps posting parts of on here. I am learning that talking on the phone for 4, 5 or 6 hours at a time isn't always the best thing for our relationship because of the language barriers and communication problems that take place over the phone.

And now it's time to get myself to bed in hopes of getting up early enough to get geared up for Mid-Terms which start tomorrow as well as making a telephone call to my parents. It's hard to get a hold of my dad these days since I teach at 9am every Monday morning.

Things to Do

My life has become serious chaos in recent weeks due to poor time management. If you know me at all, you know this is a big struggle for me. When I was in seminary, I wrote a Rule of Life, which I think would be a good exercise to revisit. I don't remember the exact details but I'd like to start by making a list of all the things I need to incorporate into my schedule in a wholesome manner. Then I'll try organizing all of that and you can also tell me what you think I should do to organize these thoughts.

1. Respond to comments on my English blog.
2. Register attendance online.
3. Research Project
4. Study Korean
5. Devotions
6. Clean my apartment
7. Think about my future and contact the appropriate people.
8. Exercise
9. Read
10. Class Preparation
11. Class Reflection
12. Record grades for assignments
13. Prepare for a new Bible Study
14. Accountability
15. Initiate conversation with someone I don't know.
16. Practice Justice
17. Develop Relationships (i.e. family, Sinae, friends, colleagues etc.)