God, guilt, and shame

Do you ever notice how sometimes you read something from one source and then something from another source, and the two pieces of information synthesize in your head to form a connection you hadn't noticed before?

Just now, I was in the process of my morning self-improvement routine and this happened, and I want to share my minor epiphany with you.

He Loves Me! Learning to Live in the Father's Affection is a book that has significantly reshaped the way I perceive God's regard for me, and I highly recommend it.  The premise is that Christians have seriously misconstrued God's intent and love for us, and that in order to understand fully what He has done, is doing, and will continue to do for us, we must repudiate a performance-based idea of our relationship with Him. The sentence that caught my attention this morning is as follows:

If we define God only in our limited interpretation of our own circumstances, we will never discover who he really is.

I copied this sentence into my diary for further mulling over, and went on to checking my email. There was a message from Gene Monterastelli. Mr. Monterastelli is a practitioner of EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), which uses acupressure principles to direct and control change in your attitudes and actions. This is a very useful technique, although no one really understands how it works.

But I digress. The point is that the title of this morning's newsletter is "The Inconvenient Truth About Shame and Guilt." If you, like me, have a working conscience and are aware of how short you fall from the ideal standards of conduct, this title probably grabs your attention like it grabbed mine. So I clicked the link to this article. Here are the relevant statements:

"When you feel guilty about something, you are holding the other person in a victim state."

When I think I have done you wrong, not only does my guilt impact the way I see myself, but it also impacts the way I see you, and therefore the way I interact with you.

When I feel like I have hurt you, I will call you less, be hesitant in your presence, and be reluctant to spend time with you.

With an almost audible "click" in my head, the two concepts merged and I realized:  This is true not only of human relationships, but also of our relationship with God!

When I am very conscious of my sinful nature, I feel shame and guilt and do not feel that I can approach God with the bold confidence of His child (Hebrews 4:16). When, out of shame, we hesitate to pray, open the Bible, or in some way seek God's face, we both hold back our own development and growth AND grieve our loving Father, who desires an intimate relationship with us. It feels odd to think of it as holding God in a victim status, but it is a useful analogy, in that our reluctance to pursue a relationship with Him grieves Him as much as it is detrimental to our own emotional and spiritual states.

So there's the problem: Guilt and shame prevent us from experiencing the full joy of an intimate relationship with our loving Father and God, and retard our own spiritual and emotional maturity.

What's the solution? I see several parts:

1. 1 John 1:9 promises that if we confess our sin to God, He will immediately forgive and restore us to fellowship. Confession is not complicated. It merely consists of telling God that what you did, said, or thought was a violation of His perfect standard.

2. If you have wronged someone, apologize. That clears the air between you and permits resumption of the relationship.

However, confession and apology, while removing the fact of guilt, do not always remove the feeling of guilt or shame. So how do we deal with that?

3. Use tools such as Bible study, therapy, "acting as if," and EFT.

Some Christians take the attitude that psychological tools are not valid; however, God created the human psyche and permitted us to discover certain principles and tools that work regardless of faith. I believe that both therapy and EFT are tools like this that should be available for everyone's use. Click the link above about Gene Monterastelli to explore his website and learn about EFT. I encourage you to try it. You'll be amazed at how well it works to help remove negative emotions that are otherwise entrenched in your heart.

Once we can remove the emotions of guilt and shame from the equation, a more intimate and fulfilling relationship with a loving God can be discovered. And really, isn't that a desirable outcome?

 

Forgiveness

The subject of forgiveness has been on my mind a lot lately. Real life drama, along with my own introspective journey into my past and figuring out what I need to forgive in order to stop impeding my own spiritual growth.

It is a sad fact that to be human is to be hurt. Someone will lie to you, cheat you, harm you emotionally or physically, betray you . . . the list goes on. Each time someone wrongs you, you have two choices: Hold on to it, or let it go. Or in other words, resent or forgive.

Forgiveness is necessary for mental, emotional, and physical health. My grandmother is a champion grudge-holder. She can recite every slight or insult, real or imagined, she has ever received in her 90+ years of life. Is it really any wonder, then, that she has had chronic stomach problems for most of her life? Not according to The Mayo Clinic it isn’t. A simple Google search of the word "forgiveness" leads to a multitude of sites discussing the effect that both forgiveness and resentment have on a person’s health.

Forgiveness is a conscious choice. Forgiveness is foreign to human nature. Our instinct is to treasure every wrong, remember every slight, because it feeds our sense of entitlement. "I deserve such-and-such because that person treated me this way." Our natural response is to seek revenge for a wrong done. To forgive requires rising above that base impulse, which must be a conscious decision.

Forgiveness does not mean restoration. By forgiving someone, you release the negative emotions connected with the wrong, but that does not mean you must then restore the person to the same position of trust he had before. A battered spouse must forgive the abuser before emotional healing can begin, but must also leave the abuser before one of them dies. A friend who betrayed you can be forgiven, but that does not mean she gets to continue receiving the confidences you once trusted her with.

For me, as with so many things in my life, the issue of forgiveness is tied up with my faith. According to Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, the word forgive" appears 800 times in the King James Version of the Bible. Eight hundred times. Forgiveness is an important topic with God, apparently. Sometimes it’s a command (Luke 17:3-4), sometimes it’s a plea (1 Kings 8:33-34), and sometimes it’s a promise (1 John 1:9). But there’s no doubt that it’s mandatory. If someone hurts me, I must forgive him, as God has forgiven me.

But sometimes it’s hard let go of the hurt, anger, and resentment, and move on. So how do you forgive when you can’t forgive?

I visualize a closet with two shelves. The lower shelf is labeled “Stuff Erin Has to Deal With” and the upper shelf is labeled “Stuff God Has to Deal With.” When I can’t let go of a wrong someone has done me, I visualize taking that hurt, anger, and resentment and putting it in a box. I put a lid on it and put it on the shelf of Stuff God Has to Deal With. Every time I find myself thinking about it, I put it in the box and on God’s shelf. Eventually, I find that I can think about the incident or the person without that anger and resentment, because God has helped me to forgive.

Because I have to repeat this process, I’ve come to the conclusion that forgiveness is not a one-time act for us. You will probably have to forgive the same wrong again and again, and even again. But it’s necessary to do so, because the alternative is to hold that rot in your soul, where it will fester and spread, infecting your entire being. Not forgiving someone doesn’t harm that person. It doesn’t affect that person in any way. It only harms you.

I’ve seen the following quote attributed to various people, and wish I could remember the book where I first saw it, because it’s such a striking simile. I’ll end this entry with it, and hope to see you again next time:

“Harboring resentment is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die.”