Shame and Rejection, Interrupted (Ed Welch)

My reading this year has included several Kindle deals, including two in the Christian counseling category, titles from author Ed Welch.  The latter of these, Shame Interrupted:  How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection, is quite interesting and helpful, a book I wish would have been available in my early Christian years.

The term shame includes many different types, and it turns out (not surprisingly) that scripture has a lot to say about this subject, beyond the surface level of the word appearing in various scripture verses.  Welch’s presentation starts in the Old Testament, going in chronological sequence from Genesis 3 through the rest of the Old Testament, the gospels and the New Testament epistles.  As with the first book I read from Welch (Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest), each chapter includes a modern day example of a person and their emotions and situation, along with a look at a particular Bible narrative story.  The first eleven books progress through the Old Testament, followed by several chapters that look at the gospel accounts and then the epistles.  The application/teaching regarding  shame — from the book of Leviticus (the holiness code) and the priestly garments used in the Tabernacle service – I found especially interesting.  The tedious sections in Leviticus convey great truths here, regarding shame and guilt, and the fact that shame is sometimes related to our sin and guilt, but often relates to things done to us and where no sin on our part is involved.  Leviticus presents three types of shame, of being considered “unpresentable”:

• Unpresentable before God and others
• Unpresentable because of what we’ve done
• Unpresentable because of our allegiances and associations

Shame comes in many forms, and is illustrated through God’s dealings with real people in real difficulties, such as the account of God visiting Hagar the outcast (Genesis 16).  A later chapter also looks at the Old Testament concepts of clean and unclean, holy and common.  As Welch observes, clean and unclean were distinguished by anything related to death, idol worship and unclean animals, or violations of God’s order such as sexual sins or skin diseases.

It seems unfair that both perpetrators and victims should be placed in the same category, but God is making a point.  Both our actions and our associations make us unclean … That doesn’t mean the unclean are unwelcome, but it means God must do something for them before they can enter His presence. …. Unclean is not the same as sin.  It can come from our own sin but also from contact with something sinful.  The unclean might be guilty; they always experience shame.

Amidst all the details of the Mosaic cultural context and what made the people of Israel “unclean,” is the general precept with its hard-hitting application; all of this does relate to us and how we feel in our dealings with others in society:  If you are unclean, something is wrong with you.  You don’t fit in. You aren’t like other people.  You just aren’t normal.  You stick out and you are kicked out.

The title is “Shame Interrupted,” and the interrupted part is key – the good news of what God has done for us, the gospel.  God provides the means to bring His banished home, and He makes us holy:

But since holiness is so not-human, it always has an element of the unexpected. You never expected that God himself would, by his representatives, come close to unclean people and touch them.

The Holy One is not human.

The triune God is not human.

Don’t limit God’s character by your expectations of what a decent human king might do.

You expect God to reject; he accepts.

You expect Him to turn away; He turns toward.

The book includes many helpful diagrams, including one that branches ‘shame’ out into two categories:  1) From the sins of others and from our own weaknesses, and 2) From our own sin.  Each of these headings branches out into two sub-categories:  Before God, and Before the world.  Much of the content is focused on the first heading, the sins of others and our own weaknesses.  Here again is the important reminder, what it means to be saved from human opinion, to put our trust and confidence in the Lord, not in what we do or what others think of us.  From the chapter that considers the apostle Paul and his words in Philippians, and the category of shame from our own weaknesses:

Most failure is simply a consequence of being a creature and not the Creator.  We are limited and finite.  We make mistakes.  We can’t even do things as well as our friends and neighbors.  The fact that we don’t compare well to other people is not a sin.  It is a result of limitations we all experience.”

and

Accomplishments are just something else to trust in. If you trust in your accomplishments and the opinions of the world, you might as well trust in excrement.  Even worse, trust in your accomplishments and you become like the thing that holds your trust.  That truly is disgusting.  Human beings were never intended to find their reputations in their accomplishments.

I have enjoyed reading both of the Ed Welch books, especially this one, Shame Interrupted – helpful teaching and great Bible application to an important issue.