Embracing Accusation

When I was a child I loved collecting baseball cards and baseball stickers. I would save money and purchase a pack of cards or stickers. My parents gave my brother and I baseball cards and stickers as birthday and Christmas gifts. My brother played little league baseball (I did, too) and at his games there was a concession stand. The concession stand sold hot dogs, chips, candy bars, soda, and baseball stickers. I don't remember why but I'm assuming that my parents told me that I could not buy any baseball stickers because I didn't have any money. At one of my brother's games I "found" some money in the parking lot and my parents allowed me to use that money to buy a pack of baseball stickers. I "found" money in a few other places and when my Mom, who I suspect might have known all along, confronted me about lying I denied it. I wholeheartedly and staunchly denied it. 

My propensity for lying didn't end with the baseball stickers. It continued through elementary school when I actually managed to convince a classmate that Debbie Gibson (she was a pop singer who was big in the 80s) lived down the street from me and into high school.

The lying was a way of making me more than I was. For some reason, I didn't believe that I was enough. For some reason, I was ashamed of who I was. So, I tried to cover my shame by lying and through those lies making myself something and someone more than I was. 

In Genesis we see Adam and Eve do what God instructed them not to do (eat the fruit of the tree). This is what resulted from that choice: "Then the eyes of both [Adam and Eve] were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife his themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." (Genesis 3:7-8, ESV)

A conversation between God and Adam and Eve then follows. Adam blames Eve and Eve blames the serpent for eating the fruit of the tree.  

Their sin lead to them realizing they were naked and ashamed. They had always been naked but now they recognized their nakedness and were ashamed by it. They covered their nakedness and their shame and then they hid from God when they heard Him walking in the garden. 

We do the same thing. When we sin, when we do something that we know we aren't supposed to do we hide it from the people around us. We cover it up by covering ourselves up. Confession does not come easy to us. The idea of standing before the person you've hurt, the person you've sinned against and openly confessing to them what you've done makes us uncomfortable. Confession does not come naturally. We see in Adam and Eve that confession did not come naturally to them, either. From the beginning, our inclination has not been to openly confess our sins but, instead, to make coverings for ourselves and hide. 

This very behavior destroys us from the inside out. Right now, I'm confident that many of us have unconfessed sin. Maybe it's a broken relationship and we aren't willing to confess what we've done. Maybe we've done something without our spouse's knowledge and we haven't yet told them what we did. Maybe we've lied to people or about people. Maybe we're misrepresenting ourselves in our workplace in order to be seen as being better than we are. Maybe we've stolen something. Maybe we've done things with people or to people that we know we should not have done. In each or all of these cases confession is not our first inclination. Making coverings and hiding ourselves and our sin, not just from God, but also from the person we sinned against is our first inclination.  

Brene Brown, author of Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection, writes, "Shame is the most powerful master emotion. It's the fear that we're not good enough." When we feel shame we feel like we aren't good enough and when we feel feel like we aren't good enough we aren't compelled to openly confess our sins because they only further entrench our belief that we aren't good enough. Brown suggests (and this is an over-simplification of her work and writing) that we need to have the courage to be vulnerable and to share our true selves, good and bad, openly with other people. In Daring Greatly she writes, "If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive."

Where do we find someone who will hear our story and respond with empathy and understanding every time? Where do we begin to find the courage to be this vulnerable? I don't think it's inside of ourselves. I think it begins outside of ourselves.  

In Romans the apostle Paul writes,  "We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin." (Romans 6:6, ESV)

According to Paul our old selves have been crucified. This means that the person that we were prior to knowing Jesus and the way we lived our lives and thought about ourselves prior to knowing Jesus have been crucified with Christ. They've been nailed to the Cross. They are dead and do not have influence or sway over us anymore. Our sin has been reduced to nothing. All of our past, all of our present, and all of our future sins have been reduced to nothing and they are powerless. We no longer are slaves to sin and our former ways of life. Therefore, our inclination to cover ourselves and hide when we sin, our inclination to accept shame, is no longer how we're supposed to live. We do not need to cover ourselves or hide. Our sin and our shame - all of it - has been crucified and we are set free from its effects eternally and today. 

The author of Hebrews writes, "Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself [Jesus] likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery." (Hebrews 2:14-15, ESV) 

Jesus came in flesh and blood and destroyed sin. Jesus, in destroying the devil and the power that sin had over us, delivered us from lifelong and eternal slavery.

The power that sin had over us, the power to enslave us to our sin and the shame that resulted from our sin, has been destroyed. We can fight against our inclination to make coverings for ourselves and our inclination to hide from God and one another. We can risk being vulnerable because Jesus is the One who will listen to our story and respond with empathy and understanding. He can respond with empathy and understanding because, as the author of Hebrews wrote, He came in flesh and blood and partook of those things. The author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is our great High Priest and that he knows our struggles as humans because He, in His great love for us, became human and, therefore, can sympathize with our frailties and insecurities. He faced them and endured them and overcame them.

Jesus overcame sin and its effects. Jesus overcame sin and its effects and ramifications past, present, and future. Jesus has given us the ability to fight our inclination to make coverings and hide ourselves from Him and other people. Jesus has freed us from the effects of shame. We can live free because He has delivered us into freedom.  

May that we live into this spiritual and physical reality that Jesus achieved, in His great love for us, on our behalf. May we reject shame and live free from its effects. May we take hold of the freedom that Jesus has won for us and may we never allow ourselves, by the power of Jesus, to be slaves to anyone or anything again.