Hide and Seek: The Shame Game

We all have experienced things we do not want others to know about us. It may be a past choice or event in our life. It may be a current real or perceived shortcoming. Shame is a real issue, and it leads to a desire to hide. We continually seek ways to conceal our source of shame from not only others, but ourselves as well. It's a perpetual "bob and weave". It's amazing the things we can come up with to do this.

Adam and Eve put on fig leaves after eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Moses begged God to have someone else do the public speaking for him because he felt he was not adequate. Abraham told other men his beautiful wife was his sister, out of fear that he could not handle the situation if those men knew he was her husband and they decided to try to take her from him. King Saul had severely low self esteem, which led to many bad decisions based on trying to hide his weaknesses from others. King David did everything he could to hide the fact that he had gotten a married woman pregnant, including murdering her husband.

Shame is a consequence of sin. It can bring to light the fact that we have fallen short in some way. It brings out the need we have for restoration. When we hear the Gospel message that we have someone to rely on for that healing and renewing, we find hope and freedom. There is a remedy for shame in our Savior, Jesus. In Him, we are adopted as God's children and become new creatures that we couldn't become on our own.

In you, O Lord, do I take refuge; let me never be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me! (Psalm 31:1, ESV)

For His followers, we have access to that saving Grace every second of every day through faith. However, we often lose sight of who we are in Him; chosen, loved, forgiven, and saints. When we fail to rest in those truths, the feelings of shame return. It drains us. It holds us back. It leads to bad decisions. Ironically, although it's good for pointing out our own sin, it can even confuse us into believing we are guilty for other people's actions. To catch myself in this downward spiral, I must be willing to be honest about how I hide because it is the biggest evidence of shame. If I ignore it, the feelings of shame are only stored up, to fester and grow, until they burst out again and slam me face first into the ground.

I plan to spend some time over the next few weeks on this topic and blogging about some ways in which I have discovered myself hiding. As always, it's vitally important for us to take a real look at how we can take steps of faith each and every day. Since shame is so often used as a vicious weapon by the Enemy against us, it's important to examine what it looks like for us to win battles against it.