What would you say to someone so wrecked with shame they couldn’t face themselves? Anyone ever been with someone who’s at that point in their lives? Anybody ever been that person?
Anyone ever wake up hung-over in a motel bed with someone you don’t remember meeting the night before? Anyone ever stolen something from a loved one? You ever been or caused someone to go through an abortion? Anyone ever hit someone you knew couldn’t hit back?
As just one example I’ll share this with you- I had been steadily spiraling downward for months. I had dropped out of college during a 4.0 semester because I just couldn’t get to class sober anymore. I had stopped showing up for work to a federal government job that took me almost a year of applications, interviews, and screenings to get. My girlfriend had moved out taking her two kids with her. My bank account was closed with a negative balance in the hundreds. And my daily life had become little more than a slow burn. Usually by around noon on Monday you could find me tripping drunkenly through the alleys behind dive bars, combing the dirt and busted asphalt for cigarette butts and fallen change.
And it’s not that I had “lost it all”. We sometimes get that romantic image of the handsome Prince Hamlet that’s fallen into an almost gothic melancholy from being unable to cope in an unjust world- but that wasn’t me. In fact I hadn’t lost anything. Not one thing had been unjustly taken away from me. No, I had nothing because in my own shame, I had given up and given it all away.
Because the list from the beginning of this essay would be just the tip of the iceberg for the things I’ve done. And now I was at the point in my own life when I just couldn’t justify them anymore. I was standing face-to-face with my own true identity and I couldn’t bare to open my eyes. I was a drunk, a thief, a liar, an adulterer, an abuser, and in my desperation so much more.
In fact, the last thing I owned in my name was a small collection of pistols. And with each day I was getting closer to justifying using one of them on myself. But in a cowardly act instead, I had begun selling them one-by-one for cash to buy gallon jugs of Jim Beam so I could sit by a back alley fire pit at night burning broken pallets while drinking until I’d pass out.
This was the living image of my shame. This was the point in my own life when I could no longer face myself. I couldn’t find a reason to take a shower, to brush my hair or even eat. My race was over, I had lost.
And sitting comfortably now in my cozy kitchen with a cup of hot tea in my hands while typing this I’d love to turn the whole story over into one magical night when I prayed into a beaming light of spiritual victory and my whole life was saved! But that’d just be another lie.
In fact, it was almost another three whole years of this type of living before my life would stop falling and only because I’d finally hit rock bottom, handcuffed in a county booking cell. But rest assured, this is a story about faith. In fact it’s a story about a faith that sprung up like a seedling through that shame.
In one of my favorite lines in the gospel, when the disciple Peter first recognized Jesus for who he was- he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” Luke 5:8 And I guess I just like that Peter said that to Jesus as though Jesus didn’t already know. Because that’s exactly how I’ve felt for so many years. Alone, night after night from days I had spent doing terrible, sinful things.
And no matter how bad my life was getting I didn’t dare to pick up a bible or to pray or even linger too long thinking about God because I was afraid I might actually draw his attention and then be in serious trouble!
The only thing I ever had to say to God was a shameful, “I’m no good, God. Just leave me here... I’m not worth your time.”
There was another time when Jesus was at this guys house for dinner and a prostitute came bursting in being filled with that same shame just like me and Peter, but she did this- “weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.” Luke 7:38 But the guy who had invited Jesus over for dinner thought to himself- “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” –Luke 7:39
Honestly, I think shame is the devil’s favorite tool. He just loves to pour shame over us. And he also loves getting us to be self-righteously ashamed of others. I hear him all the time when I think about myself and that little voice says, “How could you have done that? You’re a horrible person.” Or on the rare occasion (which does happen) that someone passes by me and quickly turns away knowing, “That’s John, the alcoholic.”
Yeah, shame is the greatest way for the devil to get us to do his work for him. Because if he can get us to feel ashamed of ourselves then, we’ll slowly and systematically destroy our own lives without his help. In fact, Satan will probably never send someone to blow your brains out. He’ll just give you the gun and a list of reasons.
So what happens when we are in our worst shame? What do we tell ourselves? What do we tell our friends?
Lets go back and see what happened with the prostitute- And Jesus said (answering the man), “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.” “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred dollars, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he, who is forgiven little, loves little.” -Luke 7:38-47
So there you go. Bigger the sinner you are, better the savior he is. That’s why people in the midst of successful lives have a hardest time coming to terms with faith while those like us who live with massive guilt or shame can have fairly strong faith.
Think of two people standing in a Wal-Mart parking lot reading a bumper sticker that says- Jesus Saves. As one person climbs into their nearby car they might say, “What do I need saving from?” While the other who looks at his paper bag of booze as he staggers away says, “But can he save me from myself?”
In the deepest, darkest place in my own heart when I doubt everything and begin looking for just enough rope to hang myself with, I’ve pinned this simple scripture to keep me calm and breathing. And there have been times when I’ve had to lay down and repeat this over and over until I’ve fallen asleep but, it does work and I pray that it helps you too- “Be still, and know that I am God.” -Psalm 46:10
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