It’s Time to Give Shame the Boot

Religion in general and the church in particular has done more to perpetuate shame than anything else on the planet. If you were raised in the church, as I was, much of our religious upbringing was based in shame. And much of that shame originates in the third chapter of Genesis, which you can read here.

The thing to remember, however, is that it is not the Scripture itself that intends shame, it is the interpretation that it has received through the years from the church. That’s right. Scripture doesn’t shame. The church shames.

It’s important to distinguish between guilt and shame. Brene Brown writes, “guilt is about what we do, shame is about who we are. Guilt says I did something bad; shame says, I am bad.”

We’ll tackle guilt next week.

From a young age we are taught to be ashamed of many things, but mostly of our bodiliness. We carry shame about our bodies. We are too tall, too short, too thin, too fat, too fill in the blank. And much of it has to do with sensuality, what it means to be sentient beings. To be sentient means to be born with the ability to perceive or feel things. This is not just true of us as humans, most created beings have some level of sentience. 

The verse that is translated in Genesis 3: 10, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked and hid myself.”

There it is. Nowhere does it say Adam was ashamed. Nowhere does it say there was an apple. Nowhere does it say there was original sin. Nowhere does it say there was any sexual behavior. Nowhere does it say being naked was a bad thing. Nowhere does it say there was a fall from grace. Nowhere is the name Satan used, or the word temptation. Bad theology and folk lore have added to the story to the point where it is almost indistinguishable from its original intent.

This story, this myth has been misinterpreted and mistranslated for thousands of years. In truth, it has a very different meaning.

And when I say myth, I mean nothing disrespectful about Scripture. Joseph Campbell describes four sacred functions of myth that help define us in our full humanity.

The first is mystical. Myth opens the heart and the imagination to the wonders of the universe and the mystery of existence. The second is cosmological, humbly understanding that we haven’t got all the answers. The third is sociological. Myths can support, validate or challenge certain social orders. Finally, the fourth function is the instructional function. Myths can teach us to how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.

The first function of the creation myth is to open us to the mystery and wonder of the universe and of our very existence. It is our human capacity, God given, God installed ability to wonder, to feel reverence and awe. And the fourth, the capacity to live a full and fulfilling life is present in this text if we scrape away all the stuff that’s been piled on it for centuries.

As this text has been misappropriated by the history and the patriarchal institution of the church, it added an essence of shame that simply is not present in the text.

The Hebrew word that is translated into English as afraid, is the word for awe in Hebrew. Adam and Eve were awed by the knowledge and mystery they were able to apprehend from eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They disobeyed instruction. And there were consequences. But those consequences in no way reversed the awe and wonder that they were able to understand as a result of that. 

Imagine how differently we all might have grown up if we had been taught that this was a myth that teaches us to be awed at what it means to be human. To be silenced by the wonder of the world as it exists and is recreated with every season. Imagine how different our society and cultures might be if we were taught to reverence our bodies, to allow us to apprehend these miracles. Imagine how different our lives might be if we were taught to be stewards of the mysteries of our bodies, to understand that salvation is not about believing a certain set of doctrines, but living in reverence for the world, one another and ourselves.

The word salvation in Hebrew has the same root word as Jesus. It signifies freedom from what binds or restricts us and thus makes us whole. The Greek word for salvation is sozo which means to bring wholeness.

In case you’re wondering how the church managed to get it so wrong…Augustine is a big part of the answer. He was a north African bishop from the fourth century. His version of the Genesis story is the one I would venture most of us grew up with.

It goes like this. God created paradise for humans to live in, but Eve messed it up by eating the apple and this caused a fall from grace. So now humanity is cursed and there is original sin and it is all Eve’s fault. Therefore, men should control women so they don’t mess things up any more than they already have. Thank you, Augustine.

There are two things that shame needs to flourish: secrecy and silence. The things we are most silent about and are most secret about are most likely the things around which we feel the greatest shame. And it is high time we got rid of shame and lived into the wholeness and joy that God intends.

The first thing to get straight is that shame does not need to be confessed. It needs to be healed. Through the years so many people have come to me to confess that they were abused, or battered, or the victim of something completely beyond their control, or they made a right decision for them that the world would judge. My response is always the same. Shame does not need to be confessed it needs to be healed.

This junk we carry around is profoundly linked to our bodiliness. And the God in whose image we are created loves us as we actually are, not as what we think we should be, the thinner, more loving, more fill in the blanks part of ourselves that seem to constantly fail.

The God in whose image we are created loves us for the holy image that is at the very core of who we are, once we scrape away all the baggage that church, society and family have heaped upon us to make us more controllable.

It’s time to give shame and the patriarchal interpretations of scripture the boot. We are gloriously made in the image of God, and our bodies are to be celebrated and reverenced.