Cruel and Unusual
but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, 1 Corinthians 1:27-28 NASB
Shame – Does God inflict cruel and unusual punishment on those who don’t believe? If you read this text from Paul, you might conclude that He does. Of course, none of this applies to you, right? Therefore, we can allow that God would treat the wicked this way because, as we well know, they deserve it. But Paul doesn’t say that God does this to the wicked. Paul says that God does this to the wise, the strong and the glorious (opposite of “base things”). Buechner concludes, “It is the worldly ones, the ones wise as the world understands wisdom and strong in the way the world understands strength, who are utterly doomed.”[1] Isn’t it nice that we aren’t one of them? We never sought wisdom or strength or glory. No, oh, no! We were always humble, self-denying and fools for God, right?
But even if we escape this invective against what the world values (by some miracle of grace), doesn’t it bother you just a little that God would shame these people? After all, shame is incredibly debilitating.
Shame is an emotion. It is how we feel when we have certain experiences. When we are in shame, we don’t see the big picture; we don’t accurately think about our strengths and limitations. We just feel alone, exposed and deeply flawed. My friend and colleague Marian Mankin described the difference between shame and self-esteem this way: ‘When I think about my self-esteem, I think about who I am in relation to who I want to be, where I come from, what I’ve overcome and what I’ve accomplished. When I feel shame, I’m taken back to this place of smallness where I lose that sense of context. I’m returned to a small place—I can’t see everything else. It’s just a small, lonely place.’”[2]
Is that what God wants? Does He want to make those whom the world admires feel utterly worthless, alone, helpless, afraid, emotionally destroyed? I thought He was a God who cared for each one of us, a God who so loved the world that . . ., a God who wasn’t willing for a single one to be lost. Then how is it that He would actively make His own creations feel shame, that “intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”?[3] No, something is wrong here. This is not the kind of God that I want, for who knows, maybe I am also someone who sought the wisdom, power and glory of the world’s ways.
Fortunately, Paul isn’t speaking about “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”[4] He uses the Greek word aischýnē, a word that isn’t about the inner experience of flawed worthlessness. “The main point of aischýnē is not ‘feeling of shame’ but ‘disgrace,’ i.e., the shame brought by divine judgment, though sometimes with a stress on ‘being ashamed.’”[5] It is judgment that Paul has in mind, not psychological terror. Yes, the world’s value system will be judged by the divine standard. Yes, those who have embraced it as a way of life will discover that they banked on the wrong side. Yes, they will be ashamed that they made such a woeful choice. But that isn’t the same as saying that they are inherently worthless. It is their behavior that’s messed up, not their existence.
And that means there is hope for me. I can take Paul’s warning if it’s about how I behave rather than what I am. I can believe that God could love someone as messed up as me despite my attempts to find the world’s version of wisdom, strength and glory. I can still change, because it isn’t me, the me I desperately want to be that God is going to destroy with an emotional whip. It’s my mistaken value system, my thinking that I had to take care of myself first, my lack of empathy and compassion; things I can still do something about. Thank God He isn’t terrorizing my soul! From that there would be no recovery.
Topical Index: shame, aischýnē, 1 Corinthians 1:27-28
LET ME CLEAR UP SOME CONFUSION
I announced that the blog part of my web site will close on September 1. Let me clarify. Today’s Word will NOT stop. I will continue to write each day except Shabbat. But comments about what I write will no longer be possible, and all the archives of those comments, hundreds of them, will be removed from my site. So, if there are ones that you wish to save, please copy and paste while they are available. After September 1st they will no longer be on my web site. I also recognize that for many of you this was the way you entered into this globally-diverse community. I know losing this is difficult, but it’s time for me to close it, for a lot of reasons, so I hope that if you made some friends through the comments section, you will keep the email addresses and continue to enjoy fellowship. Thanks for all your input over the years.
[1]Frederick Buechner, Listening to Your Life(HarperOne, 1992), p. 25.
[2]Brené Brown,I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t), (2007), p. xxii.
[3]Ibid., p. 5.
[4]Ibid.
[5]Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged (p. 30). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
Little children don’t feel shame when they fall down or can’t get the square block in the round hole: they just try it another way. Their emotional sense of their own value (and safety!) is all tied up in knowing whether they are pleasing the powers that be. Where did we all get off this track? I think it may partly be because we started thinking, like Peter on the water, that it was about ourselves: that some sort of glory (credit) ‘belongs’ to us for success. I think that this may be the world’s pathetic substitute for the holiness (where all glory is directed towards another) that we were created to operate in. Wait: we are taught that in all our societal institutions! Society rewards success and beauty AS IF those who have or possess these things were the source of them. Emotional shame is a sense of a fall. Humans on pedestals fall. Before they sinned, Adam and Eve had nothing to fall off of. I think they hid in the bushes from a sense of their own failure to be (covet) where God should have been in their lives (they were looking at themselves instead of at Him). I think they did that to themselves.
True humility has no sense of crawling on the ground, however: humility, like C.S. Lewis points out, is where we aren’t thinking of ourselves in that way at all. When we are truly humble, our focus is off ourselves because it was designed to be based completely on the object of our devotion. I believe we were created to be addicts to God: to be totally focused (or, devoted, which is what holiness is) on Him. Addicts (to anything other than God, that is) devote themselves to anything and everything – in part, I believe – to avoid the fallout of shame, which is the experience of that profound sense of ‘failure’, but if we had remained those little children, shame would not have been possible in the first place. I want to become as a little child, totally focused on pleasing my Father in heaven so as to be able to fit into the kingdom where all – including Him – are focused on others (which is what the essence of holiness is) already. No shame necessary: no fall possible.
Skip— thank you for all you do! I will miss the comments from everyone but understand the commitment involved becomes overwhelming. How do we find the email addresses of those we would like to contact? Thanks again Skip— be blessed in your new journey and TW postings. I am grateful for YOU!
In my view of all this, each comment has a email address. Maybe you don’t see the same as you are not the administrator. If you don’t, then I suggest you send a blog comment message to the ones you want to stay in touch with and ask.
Ok, thanks Skip!
Thank you for the description of shame, which was very helpful to me. Having come out of so much shame and imprisonment in my own little world, you become very aware when you begin to return or “shrink back“ into that isolation. No way Jose !! He who the son sets free, is free indeed ! But there is always a tendency to return to that place until you become more aware of the dynamics that we tend to take you back there. You wrote “where I lose that sense of context“. I changed that to” the bigger picture”. We begin to fail to see the bigger picture, the inclusiveness of not only our poor choices or behavior but all those things where we made good choices, did good service etc. God remembers our labor of love. The enemy seeks to steal all of that and cause us to feel small and insignificant. Interesting dynamic. Thank God that he sets us free from our isolationism. The thing I always have to remind myself about is how easily it can be to be fooled again if we’re not staying alert and paying attention.
Good word. Thank you.
In reflection on being involved in this blog site. It’s a wonderful opportunity to interact with others ( especially just learning to publicly express your opinions) but there is a tendency for a small group of people to just comment back-and-forth between themselves and it tends to exclude others. Almost like a blog clique. It happens in church all the time, the same people go out for lunch after church with the same people week after week. I think a person blooms into their beauty and purpose when they are encouraged.
Maybe there’s pitfalls to anything good.
All of us from time to time need encouragement and support but if you don’t get it eventually you stop investing. Just the way that it goes.
Larry that’s what has been so helpful once I came to the painful revelation that my way was so distorted and self seeking …the entrance of thy word gives light ! Someone mentioned when skip gave the announcement of the ending of the blog that we could possibly have a “parallel “ blog or something of that nature does any one know what how and so on????
I certainly don’t know. Wish I did. I guess the sheep get scattered and we all seek new grazing ground . The great shepherd will help us!
Or perhaps the sheep get sent, instead of scattered. ? or ? Doors open and close, we don’t get to determine when or how, we only get to avail ourselves of the opportunity to engage when the opportunity is available. A field planted is determined by its produce, not whether or not it was planted. There comes a time when all the fruit is ripe and it’s harvested and nothing else remains except what one chooses to do with the harvest. Save the good seed and plant it for the next harvest. If it’s good seed, it’ll prosper!
God uses all means. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the 12 tribes which are “scattered” abroad. Did the persecution scatter them or did God? Was the persecution a means to an end? I guess we feel scattered when things happen outside of our control and we have to look for alternatives, which is different then being commissioned or sent. Either way it provides us with an opportunity for growth and development outside of what we’re used to. Stretching us.
Just processing feelings ….
Might as well make it as much use of these blogs while we still have them !
Thank you Skip for the opportunity over the past couple of years. Challenging but hopefully productive! Thanks to this interaction I’m not the same man I used to be and thank God for that!