Shame Is A Liar 

by Mara Clements

PART ONE

           

            The smell of crayons and apple juice fill the room as I squirm anxiously in my plastic chair under that familiar paneled ceiling with fluorescent lights. Our Sunday School teacher finishes up her flannel graph on the story of Adam and Eve as we polish off our snacks and toss our paper napkins in the trash. Activity time begins and I watch the helper pass out a leather string and some colored beads to each child.

            “The black bead is your heart filled with sin,” our teacher informs us as she holds up the dark plastic pendant, reminding us that we are all born sinners. She goes on to explain that the gold bead represents God’s holiness, and how our sin makes God angry and separates us from him. “The red bead represents Jesus’s blood that washed our sins away so we can spend eternity with God in heaven.” She talks about how God sent his son Jesus to stand in the gap between us, and how God loves us because he sees Jesus when he looks at us.

            She continues explaining the craft as our chubby fingers clumsily begin to thread our beads and wrap our heads around this concept of sin we’ve been taught since we could crawl to an electric outlet or reach the stereo settings. She is sharing a piece of the Gospel with us but, without realizing it, she is also painting a portrait of our worth, like our parents do at home. I absorb her perspective of the Gospel like a sponge and my 5 year old minds begins to expand with a love for this Jesus, but at the same time invite in this subtle concept of shame that tells me I am inherently bad.

            I know our SundaySchool teacher’s intent was to share the message of salvation through Christ, but shame has a way of seeping through even the greatest news and the best of intentions because it also speaks directly to our identity and worth. Our teacher was supposed to give us an explanation for our behavior and a way out of the guilt, but the subtle message I carried away with me into my subsequent lessons was that I was not good, that I was shameful, that God couldn’t stand to look at me and that’s why Jesus had to die.

            My own journey to break out of shame and into wholeheartedness and freedom was impeded by more than just my religious upbringing. Another roadblock was the Purity Culture that was so popular as an adolescent growing up in the evangelical church. The Purity Culture was characterized by female modesty, courtship instead of dating, and saving sex for marriage. The shame attached to this philosophy was the isolation and the spiritual consequences we were warned we’d experienced if we failed to meet these specific standards of sexual purity.

            In all fairness, I think the Purity Culture was intended to protect us from the harsh realities that come from unplanned pregnancies, STDs, and emotional distress due to promiscuity. Unfortunately, the conviction also perpetuated body shame, unhealthy expectations for marriage, and a myriad of lies about holding responsibility for other peoples’ behaviors. We moved on from Gospel bracelets and flannel graphs to Purity rings and books that told us to kiss dating goodbye. The unhealthy messages entangled in the healthy ones created a skewed view of reality that we took as truth. For one thing, virginity was something you lost, which spoke shame to anyone who had already had sex (willingly or unwillingly) and made it hard, for those who were able to wait, to actually celebrate sex when they finally did get married.

 As a middle schooler and high schooler, I wish I could say it was the good news of God’s grace and love that motivated me to protect myself from the consequences of promiscuity, but instead I was motivated by fear. While I was told that my good works didn’t get me to heaven, I never felt free to make mistakes. The dichotomy between what was said and what was acted out around me left me afraid and unsure. I didn’t understand the fullness of God’s grace, so I believed that getting things right was what made me acceptable. I thought that as long as I was striving to be good, I would stay in God’s favor, and that’s a lot of pressure to feel as a teenager. I doubted God’s unconditional love for me, so while I searched for love and meaning from other people, especially the opposite sex, it was fear of judgement that kept me from taking our physical relationships very far. I kept my struggles to myself and a couple of close friends because asking questions and practicing vulnerability would have opened me up for rejection. Shame told me I was wrong if I did something wrong, so I learned to separate my body from my mind and my spirit to add another layer of protection. There were many times I pretended to be someone I was not in order to safeguard myself from isolation.

            On top of everything, we were told that girls were responsible for mens’ reactions to their bodies, so another burden too heavy for us to carry was added to our modestly covered shoulders. Instead of calling up life and wisdom in boys and men, we enabled their struggle with self-control and respect by shifting blame onto young girls and women for their behavior. I never felt free to love my body because it was always suspect, never celebrated. I was implicitly taught that it was merely an object that could cause people to lust or cheat or rape if I wasn’t careful.       

Since we saw ourselves as the source of all these terrifying things, we covered our figures out of fear of degradation, dressing modestly so people wouldn’t accuse us of causing men to stumble, not because our bodies were worth honor and respect. These ideas implied that men were either weak or animalistic because they couldn't be trusted to own their struggles and work toward controlling their urges by practicing healthy boundaries.

            By the time I started packing for college, freedom and the abundant life were only dreams. All the striving for spiritual growth through perfectionism and all the shame attached to my mistakes had left me feeling trapped and alone. I had perpetuated the very thing I had feared because I did not feel like I had permission to be myself, to take risks, to mess up, and to find grace and unconditional love waiting for me on the other side. Thankfully, by God’s grace, my university experience provided me with the very things I was searching for. I was given a chance to start from scratch and discover what was important to me when it came to faith. I was challenged by a number of brilliant professors to explore my beliefs and watch my view of God and sin evolve through each new year. I was encouraged to ask questions, express my doubts and share my perspectives without the fear of shame. And while my eyes were still not opened to the fullness of God’s grace, I can see how God was revealing Godself to me as I look back on my time there.

            My pursuit of truth (and my need to get things right) led me to study Greek New Testament translation, biblical hermeneutics, the history of the Church, philosophy, and anything else that would lend itself to a fuller understanding of my faith experiences and my Christian beliefs. Countless hours of reading, studying, researching and writing allowed me to walk away with a degree in biblical studies, but more importantly gifted me with an informed worldview and a more open mind.

            After graduation, I moved to a new state with my future husband and expected to find a church family that would appreciate my desire to learn, utilize my gifts, and cultivate a safe and exciting environment for me to grow in as a Christian. Unfortunately, I blindly walked back into a religious atmosphere that operated subtly out of fear and control instead of freedom and life.

            It was a new church environment, but it had the same fundamental beliefs and legalistic tendencies I had grown up with. I joined because it was familiar and comfortable. The pastor preached biblically-based sermons without apology and I’d regularly walk out of service with a Christian to-do list that appeased the first-born perfectionist in me. When the Gospel was taught, it was outlined as the ABC’s to Christianity, like it had been in my Sunday School classes growing up. Things were black and white, clear-cut and formulaic. There was an answer for everything and nothing was open for debate. Sermons were prepared years in advance and there could only ever be one right way to interpret any scripture.   

         

            As empowering as it felt to be in control of my own spiritual progress, it left very little room for questions and faith, which put me right back into a cage devoid of true spiritual growth and freedom without me even realizing it. Here again my femininity was stifled, this time intellectually because I was told only men were fit to teach and preach, and only husbands could make the final decisions for their families. My interest in biblical interpretation, my passion for truth, and my desire to question and share what I was learning were squelched under the concept of male headship.

            Whether or not their interpretation of Scripture was accurate or their motives pure, these traditions were under-girded with shame and enslaved each of us in specific gender roles. Men who had no training or experience were free to teach women and mixed groups, but when it came to females, teaching anyone other than women and children was a sinful and appalling suggestion, no matter how qualified we were. Instead of spurring all of us on to mutual submission (Ephesians 5:21) and servanthood (John 13), men alone were expected to be the spiritual leaders of the home and the church, which included having the last say in family decisions and especially in congregational matters. Subconsciously, I was again becoming convinced that my gender was of lesser value, and each time my ideas or opinions got shut down by a pastor or teacher, it confirmed the lie and led me to doubt the very Spirit of God within me.

            As a child, I was expected to listen and obey the authorities God had placed in my life without question, but carrying this principle into adulthood had left me wide open to manipulation, oppression, and even abuse in a patriarchal system that valued control and “being right” above everything else. Questioning authority in this new church environment, especially as a woman, was considered rebellion, and we all knew the verse about rebellion being like witchcraft.

            Instead of a pathway to relationship with God, slowly and subtly Christianity was becoming a ladder to better behavior. I began to consider that the authorities in my life may be ahead of me somehow, higher up, closer to God, and that they knew better than me. I was told that God did not just allow them to be in a position of authority, but that God had ordained them specifically for those positions so they could cover and protect me like my modest sweaters did in high school. These discriminating messages of hierarchy and submission were delivered over a long period of time through sermons, small group discussions, and private conversations. Like the story of the snake in the Garden, lies wrapped in truth are the most dangerous. As I became nearly immune to the voice of the Spirit within me, I began to value what I thought was the Spirit in others ahead of me on the journey toward becoming spiritually mature.     

 

            But even in that cage I’ll admit I felt reasonably safe. There were certainties I could rely on. If I signed their statement of faith and didn’t ask too many hard questions, I might be invited to serve in this ministry or hang out with that group. If I behaved and didn’t rock the boat, I would be welcomed and could expect to be taken care of. I may not have felt free, but I felt protected and like I belonged. Apologetics and systematic theology were the hidden idols of that culture and I complied because I believed they provided my security. Like bars on a prison cell, they kept me safe from the philosophies of “the world”. Formulas for salvation and acceptance were the satisfying fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and its branches reached easily into our enclosure. We ate from it regularly because judging others comes easier when you're constantly being judged yourself. I see now that it is a natural response to build walls and assign labels when your identity is wrapped up in being right. The lie of scarcity that tells us we’re not enough “unless”, leads us to create an “us vs. them” mentality.

            But there was always that other tree, the Tree of Life. It was present, but not as easy to get to and not as appealing as the other tree we were more familiar with. The Tree of Life was talked about less often and never really seemed to be the focus. It was shrouded in mystery and grace, two things that couldn’t be controlled. Mystery was dangerous because it left us at risk for admitting we did’t know all the answers, and grace was scary because it couldn’t be regulated.

            Not only had we built our own cages using Scripture and tradition, we had constructed one for Jesus as well. If the Tree of Life had always been the redemption we’re afforded through the cosmic Christ, we had chosen to put up a tall, white picket fence around it’s trunk with a nice sign that read: “Salvation: Please Only Enter Once”. Jesus didn’t belong outside of the gate because his job was to wait for us to bring people to him. Jesus was simply our formula for escaping hell and enjoying eternal life. But in the back of my mind I knew that Jesus was greater and more beautiful than I gave him credit for. I knew Jesus couldn’t be confined to a red bead on a Gospel bracelet or a fence we’d erected to keep him in his place. Deep down, I bet the majority of us had a suspicion that eternal life had already started and even though we were striving to follow all the rules, we were missing out on the abundant life Jesus had promised his followers would enjoy.