Tag: guilt

Not Ashamed (2 Timothy 1:8-12)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

So never be ashamed to tell others about our Lord. And don’t be ashamed of me, either, even though I’m in prison for him. With the strength God gives you, be ready to suffer with me for the sake of the Good News. 

For God saved us and called us to live a holy life. He did this, not because we deserved it, but because that was his plan from before the beginning of time—to show us his grace through Christ Jesus. 

And now he has made all of this plain to us by the appearing of Christ Jesus, our Savior. He broke the power of death and illuminated the way to life and immortality through the Good News. And God chose me to be a preacher, an apostle, and a teacher of this Good News.

That is why I am suffering here in prison. But I am not ashamed of it, for I know the one in whom I trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until the day of his return. (New Living Translation)

Guilt and Shame

Shame is a nasty feeling. Whereas guilt is a function of the conscience, and helps steer us toward making things right with others, shame lays an unnecessary heavy burden on the soul. Guilt says that I did or said something that wasn’t good. But shame says we did or said something because I am a failure.

The Apostle Paul insisted to his young protégé, Timothy, that there’s no basis for shame when it comes to proclamation of the gospel. In fact, the Good News confronts shame by putting a wooden stake through its heart.

Shame is a vampire that lives in the shadows and feeds on secrets. But the light of the Gospel penetrates life, disintegrating shame and putting it to death.

God’s word is alive and powerful! It is sharper than any double-edged sword. God’s word can cut through our spirits and souls and through our joints and marrow, until it discovers the desires and thoughts of our hearts. Nothing is hidden from God! He sees through everything, and we will have to tell him the truth. (Hebrews 4:12-13, CEV)

Not a Failure

From a particular perspective, Paul would seem like a failure to many. He was an up and coming star in Judaic circles, but gave it all up to follow Jesus. And then, his life was marked by continual hardship, even persecution. To top it off, he landed in prison. Ironically, Paul found himself in a bad place just for being a preacher of good. He never left his imprisonment, and was eventually killed.

Yet Paul had no shame about any of it. Rather, he embraced the suffering, the difficulty, and all the circumstances that went sideways. Why? Because he had complete faith in who he was serving and what he was doing.

A lot of people, especially church pastors, struggle with shame. Most of them don’t have “successful” ministries when looked at from a certain angle. They see themselves as failures, and end up leaving the ministry and never going back.

Our strength and our help, however, no matter whether we’re clergy or laity, is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth; our assistance is found in the Good News we proclaim, in Jesus Christ, who himself was not ashamed of being tortured and killed.

Let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-3, NLT)

No More Shame

Christ has defanged the vampire of shame. And because of the work achieved on the Cross, we can now live in confidence, knowing who we believe, and trusting that the shame-busting Good News of grace will have it’s penetrating way in the world.

Salvation entails being delivered from something so that we can live for something else. We have been saved from the terrible grip of shame – which then allows us to live a vulnerable and confident faith in Jesus through the power of the Spirit.

Deliverance from shame enables us to respond to our holy calling from God.

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. (Ephesians 1:4, NIV)

God chose us to be holy. He does not want us to live in sin. (1 Thessalonians 4:7, ERV)

“Salvation” is a wonderful word which needs to be reclaimed as so much more than going to heaven someday. In reality, it is the divine purpose by which God makes us just, right, and holy, forgiving our offenses and transforming us by the Spirit into the image of Christ.

Christ, in his incarnation, life, ministry, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension has redeemed us. Jesus has torn down every wall, removed each barrier, and built bridges in connecting us to a life without shame and with everything we need to live well.

Christians embody the life of Christ within them by living a holy life, free of the weight of shame, and boldly proclaiming a message of grace, forgiveness, and freedom from the dark secrets we all carry.

This isn’t merely an ethereal gospel; it is Good News of great joy that has real impact for the nitty-gritty of our everyday lives.

O God, the author of peace and lover of harmony, to know you is eternal life and to serve you is deliverance and freedom: Defend us, your humble servants, in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in your defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries, through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

The Fall of Humanity (Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die….”

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. (New International Version)

Lent is a 40-day season of preparation and repentance for Christians anticipating Good Friday’s cross of Christ and the victory over sin in Easter’s celebration of Christ’s resurrection. To understand why there is a need for repentance, let’s turn to where disobedience, shame, and guilt first entered the world.

Ever since humanity’s fall into sin, our human nature tends to look at the one thing we can’t do, instead of seeing all the range of possibilities that we can do.  The serpent (the devil) was successful in getting Adam and Eve to focus on that one tree they needed to avoid. In our fallen condition, just tell us what we can’t do and we’ll probably be sure to do it – rather than enjoy all the vast prospects we presently have and can actually do with God. 

What’s more, the devil subtly planted a terrible and untruthful idea in the heads of Adam and Eve – that God was somehow holding out on them and was not providing everything they really needed and wanted in life.

Sin may look attractive, and even initially taste good. Yet, disobedience has an awful aftertaste and damages our insides. Indeed, sin always over-promises and under-delivers.

Perhaps the greatest and deepest effect of sin is the shame of disobedience which causes us to hide from God, one another, and even ourselves. All this hiding causes spiritual blindness. We end up sleepwalking through hell, unaware of our awful spiritual plight. 

Because of this reality, we need deliverance; we need a Savior to intervene and save us from our ignorance and guilt. As mere dust, we need God’s Spirit to breathe new life into us so that we may again enjoy the Lord in Paradise.

Our fallen spiritual condition does not want to acknowledge our need for the sheer grace of God. Sewing some fig leaves together is symbolic of Adam and Eve’s new independence from God; from now on, they’re going to operate on their own.  The introduction of sin into the world causes people to look for ways to cope and deal with life apart from God.

We want to return to Paradise. We don’t want to hurt and struggle and be overburdened anymore. So, we devise all kinds of ideas and ways of doing that. And the Paradise we seek always seems to be “out there” somewhere, just out of our reach. 

In our fallen condition, we are plagued with the “if only” syndrome:

If only I had _____ (fill-in the blank) then I would be happy and be in Paradise.

If only I could meet the right person, then that special someone could meet my needs and complete me.

If only the people in my life were better, then everything would be okay and I could enjoy Paradise.

If only I had more money, a bigger house, another car, more power and influence.

If only other people would stop being jerks, care more, serve more, love more. If only my family would listen to me.

If only I could have my way, then there would surely be a restoration to Paradise.

The point to all the “if only” is that it twists us all up into believing that I’m either unlovable or that everyone else is the problem. If they would just change, then the world would be a better place. Or if only I was better, then I wouldn’t have so many problems.

The truth, however, is that we already have what we are so desperately looking for. And since we are unaware that God is with us, and wants to provide for us, we sew fig leaves together and look love in all the wrong places.

No man or woman is going to complete you because no person can fix what is broken in your heart. If you had your ideal relationship, perfect family, and dream job, you would still be empty. Why? Because you and I need a Savior to deliver us from our sin.

We all need deliverance from our disordered loves and misguided attempts to find Paradise in this life apart from God. The temptation after The Fall is to try and manufacture happiness outside of God through perfect relationships and ideal circumstances. 

What to do? Repent. Turn from the shame and guilt of disobedience and deal with the brokenness in our own lives. And that is what the season of Lent is all about.

Without God there are hidden feelings of mistrust, alienation, conditional love, selfishness, greed, and injustice. But with God there is forgiveness, grace, and unconditional love – the very kind of love that we need.

In this season of Lent, we must repent of our hiding and wishing for everything and everyone else to be different without any cost to myself. 

What do you need to repent of in this season? 

Who are the people that you look to do for you what only God can do? 

Have you forsaken your first love of Jesus Christ? 

How is the state of your relationship with God? Has it been stale, dull, and lacking passion, desire, and energy?  Has distance replaced intimacy between you and God? 

Do you avoid the spiritual disciplines of bible reading and prayer because you believe something else will satisfy the real needs of your heart? 

Are you keeping up appearances and hiding, while on the inside you have doubt, depression, and despair that things will never change? 

The prayers of this season are to be prayers of repentance:

Merciful God, we confess that we have hungered after things which do not satisfy.  We have doubted your ability to provide for us. Forgive our lack of faith. Restore in us such trust and love that we may again walk with you in Paradise. 

Loving God, we admit that we’ve given ground to Satan by believing his deception that we can find ultimate happiness in things other than you. So, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we resist all of the devil’s strategies to hold us in spiritual blindness and darkness. 

Blessed Holy Spirit, we invite you to bring the fullness of your power to convict us and lead us into faith in Jesus. We humbly ask that you bring all the power of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection directly against all forces of darkness seeking to destroy us. Set us free from all that blinds us and keeps us in bondage. 

Grant us, O God, the grace to be faithful and persistent in our walk with you.  Amen.

Get a Different Perspective (Isaiah 29:1-12)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel,
    the city where David settled!
Add year to year
    and let your cycle of festivals go on.
Yet I will besiege Ariel;
    she will mourn and lament,
    she will be to me like an altar hearth.
I will encamp against you on all sides;
    I will encircle you with towers
    and set up my siege works against you.
Brought low, you will speak from the ground;
    your speech will mumble out of the dust.
Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth;
    out of the dust your speech will whisper.

But your many enemies will become like fine dust,
    the ruthless hordes like blown chaff.
Suddenly, in an instant,
    the Lord Almighty will come
with thunder and earthquake and great noise,
    with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.
Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel,
    that attack her and her fortress and besiege her,
will be as it is with a dream,
    with a vision in the night—
as when a hungry person dreams of eating,
    but awakens hungry still;
as when a thirsty person dreams of drinking,
    but awakens faint and thirsty still.
So will it be with the hordes of all the nations
    that fight against Mount Zion.

Be stunned and amazed,
    blind yourselves and be sightless;
be drunk, but not from wine,
    stagger, but not from beer.
The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep:
    He has sealed your eyes (the prophets);
    he has covered your heads (the seers).

For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say, “Read this, please,” they will answer, “I can’t; it is sealed.” Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, “Read this, please,” they will answer, “I don’t know how to read.” (New International Version)

Reading the Bible may sometimes feel like a weird Catch-22. We’re supposed to read, observe, and obey the contents of Holy Scripture; yet there is so much within it that we often just plain don’t understand – and even are not going to understand, at least on this side of heaven.

For many people, this is maddening. It may even cause them to throw up their hands and say that God is some mad scientist who merely tinkers and experiments with people like mice in laboratory.

I understand how some could think that way. The Lord comes along and does a mysterious dance of proclaiming judgment, then pivoting quickly around to assure deliverance. Reading through any prophetic book of the Old Testament is likely to make our heads spin with questions and our hearts to reel. No matter how you slice it, there are a lot of difficult passages in Holy Scripture.

So, I invite you to take a few differing perspectives.

First, if God is a Being who is infinitely higher and greater – the Creator who has made all things – then we are the creatures who are neither privy to all God’s reasonings nor even able to understand such a Being who is other than us.

Second, it seems we rarely even attempt to try and see things from God’s angle. We see our own situations, many of them confusing, and we wonder why the Lord doesn’t just step in and fix all the crud. However, none of us has the full picture, as God does – which is why we are continually invited to pray for wisdom, to see our life, relationships, and circumstances from a divine perspective. (James 1:2-5)

The prophet Isaiah, along with the other prophets, proclaims a double message of judgment and deliverance. Indeed, it appears there is a continual rhythm of identifying guilt and giving grace throughout a large chunk of the Old Testament.

And that is perhaps where we need to pay attention. People have a great predilection for saying and doing things (or failing to say and do things) which bring guilt. Our guilty actions and inactions are not okay; they cannot simply be dismissed as stuff that people do, as if we were just silly folks who don’t know any better.

Maybe we would like to view God as some geriatric grandfather who lets everyone do what they want, but that’s not the God we get in the Bible.

No, our words and actions have real impact and consequences for others. And the Lord is a real force to contend with, for whom we cannot escape nor ignore for long.

In Isaiah’s day, the people were called to account for their abject callousness toward their fellow humanity. God’s commands all have to do with living in harmony with creation. Chaos, disorder, and systemic evil result whenever the creature rebels against the Creator by trying to be a little god of their own making – taking the perspective of using people rather than serving them.

The Lord will have none of it; God will intervene. Hence, the judgment portions of Scripture. Yet, because God is gracious and loving, the judgment doesn’t last forever; mercy takes hold and overwhelms the guilty sinner.

If we could understand everything God does or doesn’t do, then God wouldn’t be God. But the very fact that God is mysterious, and in some ways unknowable, tells us that there is indeed a God.

Our task is not to take over God’s job because the Lord isn’t doing what we want. Our mandate is to reflect the image of God placed within us by loving the Lord and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Yes, we are all guilty of a great many things. Yet, grace always has the last word, and not judgment. This, then, gives way to a life of gratitude that has learned to sync one’s heart with the heart of God.

Catch-22’s are certainly maddening… if we are truly in one to begin with. It could be that we just haven’t yet gained a different perspective on our situation, learned to accept it, and made the choice to live in harmony with the world as it is, rather than the world as we think it ought to be.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

God and the Human Condition (Romans 1:18-25)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been seen and understood through the things God has made.

So they are without excuse, for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. (New Revised Standard Version)

Exchanging Good for Bad

Nature abhors a vacuum. Everything is filled with something. If one thing is given up, another thing will take its place. Change is actually more like an exchange of one thing for another. Something is taken out, then replaced with something different.

We have exchanged:

  • Behavior that attends to the common good of all persons, for self-interested behavior to what is good for me and my family and/or group
  • Good deeds done from a pure heart, for good deeds done from an impure heart which give me an advantage or leverage over another
  • Steadfast committed love of others, for hustled love that gets discarded whenever things get hard
  • Submission to one another out of a sense of sacred reverence, for disobedience to anyone I don’t like
  • Dignity of being an image-bearer of God for the shame and ignominy of self-image
  • Majesty and worth of all persons in the world, for becoming masters of small worlds
Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.com

And that’s not all, there’s more. We also have a nasty tendency to replace:

  • Freedom for shackles
  • Virtue for vice
  • Morality for immorality
  • Justice for injustice
  • Goodness for ungodliness
  • Truth for a lie
  • Wisdom for foolishness
  • Immortality for mortality
  • Honor for dishonor
  • Devotion for disregard
  • God for gods

These are all very poor replacements. In fact, the exchanges are so dark that they leave us in a state of guilt before God and all creation. Indeed, we all have sinned and fallen short of our intended purpose on this earth.

Guilt and Shame

Our response must not exchange guilt for shame because they are different words:

Guilt is assigned by God so that repentance and reconciliation might happen.

Shame, however, is introduced by us; we are the ones who label ourselves as a bucket of pig slop, not God.

Guilt is a function of the conscience, letting us know when we have said or done something wrong or hurtful; it is specific to a particular action or lack of action.

Shame, however, is a function of the “inner critic.” It interprets bad words or actions as we ourselves being bad, focusing not on actions but on our very personhood in the form of judgmentalism leveled at myself.

Guilt says, “I have done something bad.”

Shame, however, says, “I am bad.”

Guilt serves a redemptive purpose through alerting us that we need to deal with a wrong.

Shame, however, damages our spirits through telling us we are flawed and unworthy of love and connection with others.

Because guilt and shame are not the same, they need to be dealt with in different ways.

Guilt, if not faced and dealt with, becomes gangrene of the soul. Over time it festers and poisons our spirits, leading to significant emotional and sometimes physical problems. Forgiveness (both in apologies and in forgiving oneself) is the primary tool in dealing with guilt.

Shame, however, lives in the shadows and feeds on secrets. If shame persists, we withdraw from others and experience grinding loneliness. Therefore, the path out of shame is to openly name your shame and tell your story – thus taking away shame’s power and giving it back to yourself. Vulnerability is the tool which erases shame.

“Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged and healed.”

Brené Brown

Emotional Creatures

In the absence of light, there is darkness. Purging oneself of belief in God merely means that another god will take her place. Scripture labels this “idolatry.”

What’s more, in the absence of feeling, in the quest to absolve oneself of unwanted emotions, there still remains emotion – because humans are emotional creatures.

People mostly rid themselves of any god concept because of how they feel about it. In fact, we do just about everything in life based on our emotions. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. We get into problems and fuss about emotions mucking up things, only because we never faced those feelings to begin with.

A person will never know God unless they understand this. The worship of God and the practice of Christianity is not only to engage the mind and the spirit, but also the body and the emotions.

Emotions and feelings are not like foreign microbes that enter the body as unwanted interlopers. They didn’t enter humanity as part of the world’s curse, after Adam and Eve’s fall into disobedience. No!

Rather, we are our emotions, just as much as we are our body, mind, and soul. Therefore, every emotion which exists, resides in us, all the time. We cannot purge ourselves of our emotions any more than we can remove the heart, the brain, or the bowels, and then expect to live.

Denying our emotions, suppressing feelings, and leaving them unacknowledged is terribly unhealthy and will slowly kill us – because our emotions are vital to our very existence.

Getting Rid of God

There are millions of spiritually dead zombies walking the earth who have jettisoned God altogether – either deliberately or unwittingly – because they discarded their emotions, long before they exchanged the sacred for the secular.

We all sometimes get physically ill; it’s part of the human condition, and we all understand that. So, we go to bed, or to the doctor, or to the hospital’s emergency department – depending upon the severity of our illness. We even go to a physician when we are healthy, just to get a check-up and make sure everything in the body is working as it should.

We also all get spiritually and emotionally ill; it’s part of the human condition. But we all don’t understand that. So, we soldier on, going about our regular business as if everything is hunky-dory. We don’t attend to our emotional selves. We don’t slow down and address what’s going on, or go to a church, or go to anyone. Instead, we suffer in silence.

Just as it ludicrous to get rid of the body altogether whenever we get a disease, so we must not rid ourselves of God whenever we get spiritually and emotionally sick. We face the illness and deal with it. It might require surgery. Recovery will hurt. That’s all part of facing it.

Ignoring God is about as smart as ignoring a heart attack. It might go away for a short time, but it’ll come back with a vengeance and do you in.

Emotions aren’t to blame when things are rough. Neither is God to blame when bad stuff happens. Both our emotions and God are realities we must deal with.

Just like the force of gravity is always there and needs to be respected (by not simply walking off the roof of your house, believing you don’t need gravity anymore) so the person and the power of God is always here and we absolutely need to come to terms with that reality, instead of walking away.

What will you do?…