Beautifully written. (Oh, I feel so ashamed that my writing is sloppy, and totally void of quotes from C.S. Lewis.) This may marked 50 years since my doctorate in Christian Counseling. Over the years my calendar was packed with Christians overwhelmed by thoughts dominated by should and ought! Our inpatient unit was overflowing with miserable Christians whose failures to do enough for Jesus to keep His chronic condemnation at bay despite a chronic attempt to confess the awful sins of going to sleep during devotions!
The root issue is usually found in two misunderstandings. Perfection is impossible and True Moral Guilt and Shame. I will leave perfectionism to another time but share the difference between guilt and shame.
Guilt is the sense that justice is demanded for breaking a law. Confession and forgiveness remove guilt.
Shame is a loss of identity in the family of God. Eve and Adam went from ‘naked and not ashamed’ to ‘covered up and ashamed!’ But God covered them with them and welcomed them back into his family.
Romans 8 makes it clear that after sin God still claims us as his children.
This is SUCH an amazing comment. Thank you for sharing your insight... I agree wholeheartedly. Also... I'm glad you appreciate my Lewis quotes... sometimes I fear they are a crutch lol, but I am glad they are resonating. :)
My therapist told me guilt is healthy, it means you know you did something wrong... but shame is when we say "I'm broken. I'm wrong." As you say, loss of identity!
I think the core issue is SO many of us Christians grow up in a culture that is wired with doing, achieving, self improvement... so in our formative years of learning to go to school and complete assignments, we ALSO are learning how to spend time with God... and the principles get conflated. We end up treating our devotional life as one more task to either succeed or fail at.
In this phase of my journey as a Christian, I am learning to practice the presence of Christ in the chaos... the "unforced rythms of grace."
Western Christians are not taught about the topic of shame as one of the basic results of fallen nature. Most Eastern Christians focus on Shame not Guilt. When western missionaries deal with Muslims and most Asians the ‘guilt confession’ axis is rejected. Sinner in Chinese is ‘criminal’ so the message is often rejected.
This was profoundly helpful for my faith walk right now (it put a lot of feelings and issues in words I’ve wished to have), and I look forward to reading and praying over these thoughts for a while. Thank you.
Beautifully written. (Oh, I feel so ashamed that my writing is sloppy, and totally void of quotes from C.S. Lewis.) This may marked 50 years since my doctorate in Christian Counseling. Over the years my calendar was packed with Christians overwhelmed by thoughts dominated by should and ought! Our inpatient unit was overflowing with miserable Christians whose failures to do enough for Jesus to keep His chronic condemnation at bay despite a chronic attempt to confess the awful sins of going to sleep during devotions!
The root issue is usually found in two misunderstandings. Perfection is impossible and True Moral Guilt and Shame. I will leave perfectionism to another time but share the difference between guilt and shame.
Guilt is the sense that justice is demanded for breaking a law. Confession and forgiveness remove guilt.
Shame is a loss of identity in the family of God. Eve and Adam went from ‘naked and not ashamed’ to ‘covered up and ashamed!’ But God covered them with them and welcomed them back into his family.
Romans 8 makes it clear that after sin God still claims us as his children.
This is SUCH an amazing comment. Thank you for sharing your insight... I agree wholeheartedly. Also... I'm glad you appreciate my Lewis quotes... sometimes I fear they are a crutch lol, but I am glad they are resonating. :)
My therapist told me guilt is healthy, it means you know you did something wrong... but shame is when we say "I'm broken. I'm wrong." As you say, loss of identity!
I think the core issue is SO many of us Christians grow up in a culture that is wired with doing, achieving, self improvement... so in our formative years of learning to go to school and complete assignments, we ALSO are learning how to spend time with God... and the principles get conflated. We end up treating our devotional life as one more task to either succeed or fail at.
In this phase of my journey as a Christian, I am learning to practice the presence of Christ in the chaos... the "unforced rythms of grace."
Legalism is deadly!
Western Christians are not taught about the topic of shame as one of the basic results of fallen nature. Most Eastern Christians focus on Shame not Guilt. When western missionaries deal with Muslims and most Asians the ‘guilt confession’ axis is rejected. Sinner in Chinese is ‘criminal’ so the message is often rejected.
This was profoundly helpful for my faith walk right now (it put a lot of feelings and issues in words I’ve wished to have), and I look forward to reading and praying over these thoughts for a while. Thank you.
Really stoked it blessed you, bro.