It's a Crying Shame

I spend a lot of time thinking about the church in general.  This is partly because I am planting a church, have been a leader in churches and that I am committed to Christ and his church.  With this time observing and reflecting, I have had the opportunity to see some of the best from those who are faithfully trying to live out what it means to follow the way of Christ.  I see world missions with people living large portions of their lives in strange and foreign lands.  Living in mud huts, building homes and installing wells for villages that no longer have to travel half of a day to get clean drinking water.  I see Catholic charities that do work in difficult neighborhoods and difficult parts of the world, all to show the love of Christ.  Along with all of these signs of hope I often see mixed in, a cancer that is threatening to do serious damage to the mission of God and His church. The name of that growing disease is, shame. 

“We live in a world where most people still subscribe to the belief that shame is a good tool for keeping people in line. Not only is this wrong, but it’s dangerous. Shame is highly correlated with addiction, violence, aggression, depression, eating disorders, and bullying.”

 -Brene Brown

Brene Brown has focused much of her work exploring shame and vulnerability and she has a great working definition for shame.  She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.”  What’s interesting about that definition is that on the one hand you can see that what Christ has accomplished on the cross has destroyed any shame.  His act of self sacrifice says that you are worthy of love.  That you are infinitely loved and that there is a community of misfits that we all can belong to.  So I hear that, the love of Christ, speaking against shame.  But for so many people who for many different reasons feel like they do not belong, the church can be a birthplace for shame.

I hope the beginning of shame in the church was completely on accident.  I’ll believe the best of our institutions, though history makes that difficult at times.  What churches eventually were left with was a problem.  Any church that is growing quickly may see the problem of change, we seem to have evidence of it even within the New Testament.  There were regions where many people were being baptized, believing the way of Jesus and they had some interesting ways of living out their faith.  Entire letters were written to some of these regions addressing many problems that these new communities were having. People had different beliefs about the way that you should eat, the way that you should worship or just the way that you should live in your current culture.  People who were of one belief would often challenge the authenticity of the faith of people from other regions with differing beliefs. Sadly, we are faced with many of the same issues today.  If you are in a growing congregation, people will walk through your door that have different answers to all of those same questions that believers have wrestled with.  Different beliefs about some of these topics can lead to heated debate and if you see debate as a potentially negative thing then you are going to put an end to it. 

So, how do you put an end to debate?  Let’s make this real for a moment.  Let’s talk about women’s roles in the church.  Within one church congregation you will likely have people who feel that women have the same right to preach, pray, and lead, and you will also have people who feel that a woman’s role in the church should be limited.  You may have the lead pastor or elders who are coming to believe that a woman’s role in the church should be no different than a man’s but for the sake of “peace” they decide to do nothing to change their “public” stance on the issue.  Now, what was it that helped solve the issue?  Maybe it was picking and choosing the right scripture, maybe it was an open and honest debate, but I would say it is more likely that it was shame.  Brene Brown would say that shame needs three things to grow.

1)Shame needs secrecy to grow, and we all know that far too often decisions in the church happen in secrecy.

2)Shame needs silence to grow and we also know that far too often even those who know that change is the right thing to do, are encouraged to keep silent, especially if they are female.

3)Shame needs judgment to grow and unfortunately the church can be a breeding ground for judgment.

Remember what the quote was from the beginning of this post.  Shame isn’t just naturally growing out of disagreement or a general insecurity, it is being used as a tool to keep people in line.  The dangerous part is that it will continue because people are afraid that they themselves will be caught up in the shame cycle.  That was one example of an issue that can grow shame in a church but I fear that the list is growing longer and longer.  Women in the church, political beliefs, beliefs on homosexuality, issues of sex in general, current or former drug and alcohol abuse, etc… There are so many people who are living in secrecy for the fear of judgment from those who God sent into the world to proclaim peace.  There is something wrong with this picture.

Well, I don’t think there is a simple answer to the problem besides maybe first admitting that there is a problem.  I am more and more convinced, every day, that many within the church believe more in the power of shame to control a people than in the power of the gospel to forever change them.  We have some work to do, both internally and within our churches, to be more aware of what narrative the life of our church is sharing.  Brene Brown gives us two tools that we can begin using today to see shame defeated in our churches and communities. We must first understand that shame can not survive being spoken.  Because shame is so reliant on silence and secrecy, speaking that shame has a way of setting us free.  The first key to putting an end to shame must also be tied to the second, which is empathy.  Once we speak that thing that we are ashamed of and have broken the chains of silence and secrecy, we mustn’t let judgment come in and destroy the healing process.  The power of someone speaking their secret pain and the power of a return phrase of “me too” is a supernatural work of the Spirit.  I think we have to create safe space in our worship gatherings or in our small groups for people to share the inner depths of their hearts, minds and soul.  We need a place where people can share their hopes and their fears, a place to wrestle with scripture and with God, a place to speak those things that stretch our understanding of the creator and of each other.  If it is true that where two or more are gathered that there Jesus is, in the midst of them, then I have hope that we will also hear a whispered “me too” from the one for whom the words couldn’t ring more true.