Shame found its origin Biblically in Satan. Being an archangel thrown down from heaven, he's the one who infected the first human beings due to his own pride-filled state. And this shame moves fluidly, seamlessly, expertly between each of us because we're all sinners - doomed for rejection due to our fallen nature, and therefore we sinners understand shame intrinsically.
So where does shame typically first make its lasting impression?
The infection most easily takes root during childhood. At least for me it did.
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The following story is one I truly hate to relay, but it needs to be shared here as it demonstrates just how infectous and deadly shame truly is.
I wrote previously about a close neighborhood friend's father. He was distinct due to how atypical he behaved / engaged with us boys compared to the other men within our lives. Plus, he was just crusty. Really crusty. I can't come up with a better word for him.
This neighborhood friend was an only child like I was, and we really enjoyed / respected each other's company for many years during elementary school until we reached 6th grade. For it was then that I embraced what little popularity I'd managed to muster, and in turn chose to shun my old friend.
Eventually, this shunning hit a crescendo when I chose to be the shaming bully as I followed him home from school. A pitiful altercation ensued and from there, my (now former) friend bolted the remainder of the way home, sobbing all the way.
Upon my return to the schoolyard, I was cornered by both he and his now escort, his crusty old man. What ensued then was the result of just how much disappointment and frustration had built up between us over the course of the year, and from there, the friendship imploded completely - right before my 12 year old eyeballs.
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Everyone recognizes their propensity to sin; it's just that few care to admit to it. At various stages of life overlaid with seasons / moods, even times of day, we're bent towards sin. And the greatest of these is pride which is the notion that we're elevated / superior to everyone / everything else, but especially if we gain a prevailing sense that our identity / internal confirmation of our own self can be bolstered as such. We've all been guilty of prideful thoughts / attitudes / actions, but mostly when we're privy to the weaknesses of our fellow man as perhaps a reminder of our own. For pride feeds on critical thinking and critical thinking feeds on narrative. And, of course, everyone else's narrative is fodder to be exploited by our sinful nature as we cannot help but see ourselves within everyone else.
Unless, of course, we're not like everyone else (a little foreshadowing here).
To take into account the event I described above, I chose to forcibly reject my previous friend based on the knowledge and story that I'd been privileged to take part in before as it compared to where I'd chosen to be afterwards. It's as simple as that and man, did it FEEL GOOD.
Why?
Because by doing so, it enabled / corroborated / satisfied my desire to be initiated into my very first "in crowd".
But oh, how I regretted that day, for I had infected my dear friend with something he'd not soon forget.
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What I'm going to say next may seem a bit unorthodox, but it's the honest truth relative to my learning how to face my own shame. Perhaps it's unorthodox to me due to my evangelical upbringing alone. An upbringing where Jesus - in concept - seemed to be the answer to everything.
A sinner's Old Testament Bible knowledge is a godsend for facing one's shame. Starting in Genesis, you'll see men's stories who were no less sin-laden than we are. And these stories are brutally honest as to not only their failings but so often to how contradictory their lives played out - in detail - despite God's continued favor / influence. Many failed miserably on occasion after occasion. And often repeating the same mistakes multiple times over.
And what's tempting for us to do is gloss over this portion of the Bible thinking it's irrelevant for any of us today.
But, if you look back on those Old Testament characters and what they endured, you'll see the most established tales of plagues, famines, deceit, plunder, and to use the apostle Paul's analogy - thorns.
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And then there's Samson. One of the many judges appointed by God to watch over and adjudicate the Israelites. Samson was unique as a judge due to his being preordained by an angelic being to his parents. The point of all this was to let them know he'd be a Nazarite, therefore both his mother during her pregnancy and Samson himself would need to abide by some unorthodox lifestyle rules that would most definitely set him apart both behaviorally and culturally.
You'll recall that Samson demanded of his parents that he be given a sexy Philistine woman which he'd previously identified, to marry. This woman was an outsider to the Israelites, and this upset both his father Manoah and his mother. Most every commentator makes Samson, at this point in the story, out to be a shallow male chauvinist who's mind is on just one thing and one thing only.
But in reading and re-reading the narrative of Samson, I'm beginning to suspect otherwise.
Samson was forbidden to cut his hair, drink alcohol or touch / spend time with corpses, and during this time during Israel's history, this would have absolutely set him apart. And not necessarily in a good way. For Israel as a whole was debased and ignorant through and through to who they truly were and how God expected them to behave.
The story goes that Samson had an encounter with a young lion whilst en route to becoming his hot bride's suitor, and that event had to have changed everything relative to how he viewed himself. The Bible says he ripped the lion apart in defense as if it were a much smaller and more frail animal due to God's power working in and through him superphysically.
Have you ever wondered if Samson reacted to his newfound killing strength in a negative light? In other words, not necessarily as an asset in regards to how he took stock of his own self? By further distancing himself from normalcy, his killing strength may have served to "pollute / dilute via conviction" in a way that marked him internally (how he saw himself) as much more indispensable (to God's sovereign work) than he ever wished to be.
Samson seemed to long for normalcy and a life that existed within the background of his fellow Israelites, etc. I believe it's what may have driven him to make so many choices that contradicted his appointment by God. Choices which almost seemed lackadaisical and flippant to those around him.
But Samson was no doubt intelligent and therefore cunning as evidenced by the riddle he invoked on his wedding party, and by how winsomely he bartered with his ultimate seductress, Delilah, towards the end of his life.
Throughout Samson's story, God showed favor both pragmatically and metaphorically as he provided supernatural water to quench the killer's thirst (after a massive slaughter) and sweet, savory honeycombs situated within the long decayed remains of the aforementioned aggressive feline. To me, regarding the latter, it was as if God was saying that in spite of his undeniable uniqueness, no amount of violence by his hand would not be rewarded multiple times over. And Samson did seem to recognize this by sharing the sweet treat with his mom and dad. But, I wonder still, if he continued to wrestle an awful lot with his killing strength. It seems to me that Samson may have only found further frustration with his role and how intrinsic it was to his God-given identity as a man even as they munched down on that sticky, gooey, gold.
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Eventually, Samson relinquished this identity, which set him apart altogether, by indirectly breaking the Nazarite vow related to his long hair. We all know the story of him choosing torment and ultimately death over his killing strength by revealing the physical source of his power so very clumsily / anti-climatically. Perhaps by allowing Delilah to know how to neuter him physically, he believed she might accept, respect, and move forward with this knowledge of his exceptionalism and not see him as everyone else did - as quite the freak. It was like he was saying all along, "Let me into your group, and I trust you'll not mess with my mane."
But that's not what happened.
In closing, I want to point out one verse in particular during the Samson account, and that's Judges 14:4. Samson's desire to fit in (perhaps to overcome shame) was being used by God, for all intents and purposes, on behalf of the Israelites, in an act of vengeance. Therefore, this Nazarite's shame benefited God's people as a whole as it served to motivate Samson towards God's sovereign will.
Do you see that?
And this is so hard to fathom. That something so toxic, infectous, and negative can be redeemable due to God's ability to orchestrate by any means whom he so chooses. But this is how excellent and wise our God truly is. All things work together for his good.
See what I mean by awesome Old Testament stories? I challenge you to dig in and find your own self in and through these Bible characters. Sure, Jesus was interesting, but don't discount men like Samson, Gideon, and Jephthah (all chronicled within the book of Judges). Each of which seemed to wrestle with their own internal shame-laced provoke. It's good stuff.
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