Parents Disowning Their Children: A Common Occurrence?

I read today about how parents shame their children in Shame & Guilt. Another way of naming the chapter, which is less predictable and more true to what the writer talks about is, "Ways to Disown Your Children Other Than Saying, 'I Disown You'". In thinking about the way I view myself, I often wonder if my parents have anything to do with the shame I feel. Though there have been times when I wanted to say it's all because of the way I've been raised, I think it is hard to argue that. My parents never got a divorce. There was always someone at home to take care of me (Most of the time anyway, and if they weren't there they were only a telephone call away). Perhaps one of the more painful things I remember, though it seems quite trivial now, is when my dad promised to take me driving out in the country and then he changed his mind later on.

Dr. Smedes does well in pointing out that the crux of the issue here is that when parents disown their children, which can be done in a number of ways, they give a big blow to that child seeing him/herself as a valuable commodity. Dr. Smedes points out here in this chapter the difference between "own" and "possess" as it applies to human beings. Of course it is no longer legally possible to own another person but there is in fact a difference between say I own a person and I possess a person. I certainly recall the many times when I said in jest as a child that my parents only had me so that I could work in the family business.

Whether or not these are worthwhile criticisms or feelings remains to be determined. After all, surely no parent can say s/he raised his/her children perfectly. But for whatever reason, there is a sense in me that I am not worthy of being "owned". I'm coming to realize that this is the real crux of the issue with Sinae. There is this voice inside of me that says, "She loves me now, but what if I don't change or don't do this, that or the other thing just right. Will she stay?" I don't know where this comes from. I don't think I can blame this on my parents but perhaps there is something in my paternal family's background, not just in my dad's generation where brothers manage a trivial relationship at best and aren't speaking at worst, but also because my paternal grandfather wrote many nasty letters to other family members who were not his only family but his wife's as far as I know, though he also was at odds with his own brothers at times.

And what I am coming to terms with is that with the ring on her finger and more important, the promise she made to me, that Sinae is not going to leave me. When I think about this too much I start getting tears in my eyes because this is the very type of relationship that I've dreamed of for a very long time but I don't think that I ever thought it would really happen. I think that is why I tried dating as many different people as I did and why I haven't always been careful about the ways that I related to women or whether or not I was being wise about meeting a woman one-on-one. Shame seems to be a devastating thing. I'm thankful for the woman who has really been my salvation, a gift I ought never take for granted, who owns me. And this is a good thing.

When the Joker meets God

Yesterday I went against my intentions of reading Shame & Guilt on the subway. I thought it would be a bad idea because of how deep it goes with the emotions and I was right. First of all, for some reason, something was bothering me about Sinae. Then we weren't able to talk on the phone because she needed some time for herself. Then she called me for only a minute because of a lack of time on her part and then we ended up meeting in a place other than we had planned. And on top of that, she hung up the phone while I was telling her that I loved her (Koreans don't usually say "goodbye" when they end the telephone call). On top of all of that, reading the book on the subway took me into the emotional valley of the shame that I feel and I felt even worse after I realized I misunderstood Sinae when she told me where we would meet. Further, I ended up making two mistakes on the subway when I transferred. The first time I thought I got on the wrong train. It turned out that I got on the right train but I quickly got off before it departed, thinking it was the wrong train. And then I realized it was the right train and so then I had to backtrack two times. By the time I arrived, I was about 40 minutes late. Had I been in a better mood, there wouldn't have been any problem but since I was in a bad mood we both started our date off on the wrong foot. Fortunately, we made it through about an hour later, though we had another misunderstanding which was probably my fault for bringing it up anyway and then the way I spoke of the future sounded different to her than what I intended.

In any event, I don't think that what I read on the subway was in vain but I'm still not sure it was wise to read this kind of book in public because it is quite daunting on the emotions. When I first started reading the book, I was excited because I felt like the writer was talking to me. But as the writer continued he spent a lot of time dealing with the details of what this shame is and how it feels and why we shame ourselves before getting to the solution. So these days, when I read this book, I sometimes feel worse and I think it is because of the reality of how much shame I really feel. I think it is really opening up a wound that I've needed to deal with for a very long time.

In Chapter Six, the next Chapter, Dr. Smedes talks about spiritual shame and how this can be an appropriate response to God but also how it can be a bad thing unless our "shame [is] overcome by grace" (p. 50). But what makes it difficult is that I think I have felt more shame than grace. Or perhaps I just never learned what to feel beyond that shame.

Chapter Seven talks about social shame. This has a lot of application for me because I think this is probably the most plausible explanation for why I feel shame. As a child I was picked on by a lot of people that I went to school with and I sometimes felt the same thing when I was in church. I remember when my pastor was interviewing me regarding some type of scholarship I received from one of the denomination's universities and I told him my understanding of the scholarship which was different from his (in front of the congregation). Though he didn't say anything to me that was harsh in front of the congregation I felt shame because I was trying to correct the pastor in front of the congregation. Lewis Smedes talks about how we feel shame when we feel like we are being viewed as less than human. I feel that a lot in Korea where people look at me and even tell their family or friends, "Foreigner". During some of my difficult moments of culture shock I have felt like people saw me as some sort of an "English Tramp". One of the areas where I felt shamed was when I went to a Bible school with a slightly different doctrine from the way I believe. At one time, one student came to my room around 6am every morning to share a verse of why I should believe in Eternal Security. A lot of students and staff talked about me so much that I was known as "The one who believes someone can 'lose' his/her salvation" or as "The Nazarene". At the time I was proud of the latter title but I think it was still demeaning to me as a person. Or perhaps Lewis Smedes is correct in saying that, "It may be that all the shame we feel inwardly, alone, in the privacy of our souls, is rooted in the fear of being shamed by other people" (p. 60).

Chapter Eight talks about our own sense of shame and the mysteries we keep ourselves. I feel like I carry a lot of mystery and find myself thinking, "If this person who likes me really knew what I was like on the inside, or if s/he saw me the way I see myself s/he may not think so much of me." Perhaps none of these things are necessarily bad and that there is just a lesson here for me to find the time to reveal that mystery to someone close to me or just to spend the time in prayer. Lewis Smedes puts the concept of a prayer closet in a new light when he says, "When Jesus told his followers to get themselves inside a closet when they bared their souls to God, he revealed an uncommon sensitivity to the need for privacy that keeps alive our link to divinity" (p. 66).

I posted a picture here of The Joker from Dark Knight, the most recent Batman movie. For some reason, he was my favorite character because of the way he talks and the chills that go up my spine when he is in the scene. I think he has a lot of shame in this movie (And I have to wonder what kind of shame the actor himself had when he committed himself shortly after the movie came out). And I wonder what it would be like, what it was like, for him to meet God.

January 2011 Newsletter

Happy 2011 from Cheonan-City, South Korea. A lot of things have happened since the last time I wrote a newsletter and I’d like to share some of those with you, including some good news that you probably can’t even imagine.

The most traumatic event was having my mom get deathly ill during the time I was visiting home. I had planned on going to St. Louis and Kansas City but decided against it because of a lack of money. That turned out to be a wise decision because Mom ended up being admitted to the hospital and having high-risk surgery. I have never come so close to seeing one of my parents nearly die. I thought it would be a routine surgery but the anesthesiologist frightened us all when he told us we could lose her during the operation. This was the last thing I needed to hear. I was so upset that my brother thought I had gone overboard with being angry and even telling God so. We waited and waited and waited, not just in the OR waiting room but also in ICU but by the Grace of God, she came through and the first sentence I remember her saying was, “I’m alive.” Her voice was quite hoarse and her personality a bit more blunt than usual, but I was so thankful that I got a second chance at having a mom. I never quite worked out why all this happened, but I think at the very least it was a good reminder to us not to take Mom for granted. I talk to Mom on the phone quite often and she seems to be doing quite well, with a second surgery scheduled for March.

I have continued teaching English at the same university since I came here in April 2008 and am learning a lot about myself, Korea, Korean and how to be a better English teacher. But I still have a lot to learn and I have many moments of frustration and loneliness as I continue to develop relationships with people in hopes of developing a strong circle of friends. But I’m no longer wondering what it might be like to be in a long-term relationship with someone or trying to find the face of the one I will marry someday. After dating her for exactly one year, I proposed to Sinae Park (박시내) and she even said yes (You may pick yourself up off the floor if you will). We haven’t set a date yet but are hoping for either fall or winter of this year. Hopefully we will finalize all of this after I meet her parents for the first time on February 3rd, three days before my birthday. For you curious folks, I’m attaching a picture of Sinae and I for you to evaluate how good of a couple we make. For your information, this picture was taken at a wedding, but not ours, mind you.

With this news in mind, we are planning on living in Korea for at least two years after we get married and I am hoping that if God is willing, that we will be able to find jobs in America and that we will live there for a year or two so she can get a better understanding on what makes us Americans tick. But of course, as I am learning after living in Korea for nearly three years, it is very difficult to comprehend the way another group of people think.

I would love to hear more about what is happening in your corner of the world, wherever that may be. So feel free respond to this letter if you are so inclined. I pray that this will be a year of blessings and growth for all of us, and that we can come a little bit closer to experiencing God’s Kingdom on earth, with God’s help.

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.