Growing up in a Christian home, there were only two cardinal
sins: drinking and having sex. It was
what separated the good kids from the bad kids.
I don’t think I was the only one who saw the world this way, because it
seemed that sex and alcohol were the lines in the sand when I attended my
Christian college as well. From what I
saw, once my friends started drinking, they drifted; drifted to different
friends and a different kind of party. The
Faithful were betrayed by the rebellious
majority and new communities surfaced, without me. My friends partied because they found loopholes
in their guilt complexes and were celebrating their new liberation, free from
their Christian guilt and throwing it in my face. And of course, I didn’t drink and fornicate
because I was still being true to who I was.
Faithful. Loyal. Righteous.
At least that’s how I interpreted this whole thing.
The first time I got drunk I was 20. It was at my friend’s wedding. At the beginning of the wedding, one of my
best friends from high school bluntly asked me, ‘do you want to get hammered
with me tonight?’ By that point I had
been fighting the so-called good fight for several years now
and I was growing weary, tired of being left out and beginning to feel
lonely. Without much hesitance, I decided
to join him. We drink and drink and drink
and I made a complete ass of myself that night.
The next morning I woke up, feeling like I had ruined something. I felt ashamed. The worst part of my shame that next morning wasn’t
focused on who I had hurt or that I took advantage of my friend’s family’s
hospitality. No, I felt bad because I may
have changed people’s perception, my reputation, and my identity. I honestly didn’t know who I was on this side
of the sin. For so long my identity was
wrapped up in being well behaved; so who was I now?
I continued to make mistakes, hurt people, and myself over
the next couple of years; most of the time it was lubricated with alcohol. I could have learned from that night,
realized drinking too much brought with it trouble and been more
responsible. But the pendulum swung and
I was no longer in the league of the morally upstanding, I was one of them and they behaved like this. I
became careless. My shame had won.
The power of shame is not in the gut. It is in the mind. Granted, the guilt that comes with shame
smolders in the gut like a tire fire but it’s the voice of shame that truly
destroys. It’s a voice telling me that I
am not a person who made a mistake, but instead I am a mistake. I can never go back to being blameless, pure,
innocent or whole.
In the beginning God gave Adam and Eve simple instructions,
to take care of the garden (Genesis 2:15). Very suddenly, however, a small
piece from the creation, a garden snake, got out of line and began confusing
the narrative: God isn’t trying to
protect you, God is oppressing you, God is keeping you from great joy. A confusing conversation between a woman and
a snake led to a bad decision, which led to the realization of nakedness, which
led to hiding, which led to a separation between people, God and the
creation.
Shame.
The most common misinterpretation of this story is that evil
entered the world the moment Eve tasted the forbidden fruit. It says in the story that the fruit from the
tree was pleasing to the eye and good for food.
Which leads me to wonder: why would God create in us a desire for something
we shouldn’t have? Are my own desires
evil? Or are the choices I make the
problem? Furthermore, what’s so bad
about acquiring the knowledge of good and evil? Maybe, God just wanted them to acquire the
knowledge a different way?
Perhaps, what we desire and the experimentations that ensue
from trying to quench our thirst, and the mental gymnastics we go through to
justify our actions, although they bring with them great consequences, isn’t
the thing this story is warning against.
Perhaps, the most important take away from this story is ‘they saw that
they were naked and hid.’
I don’t believe the point of this story is to tell us to obey
God or bad things will happen. The consequences
of our sins are part of the natural order of things. When we act selfishly we hurt people. When we lie, we are mistrusted. When we drink too much we do foolish and
sometimes violent things. When we make
sex a casual encounter, hearts get broken.
For the majority of us, our conscious, and God-given desire for justice,
encourages us to make right what we have done wrong and discourages us from
doing it again. So isn’t the message,
‘do the right thing,’ obvious?
In the narrative that is your life, you will make a
mistake. Your good, God given desires
for love, intimacy, connection, and acceptance will be twisted and perverted
and you will make a bad choice or find yourself in a bad situation. The television will say you need to buy
something you can’t afford. A family
member will let you down and you’ll act out.
That magazine cover will tell you aren’t beautiful. Or (in my case) your friends will start
hanging out with other people and you’ll become deeply insecure. These are the disordered and chaotic broken
pieces of this creation that whisper lies and twisted truths about the way the
world is and what you have to do or become to be apart of it.
The question at the end of all of this is: when you find
yourself naked and alone will you look for God or will you hide? Will you believe the voice that whispers ‘if
anyone found out about this, no one would understand you, forgive you, or accept
you’? Will you let shame win?
This Lent, embrace your nakedness, push back on your
shame. When you feel exposed, when the
dust settles and you see the wrong you’ve done, the most important thing is your
next decision. Confess you sins. See what happens. Step into a community, a support group,
and/or a friend who will receive you, listen to you and love you simply because
you are God’s creation. What you decide
to do in the midst of your shame is what turns a curse into a blessing;
distance into intimacy; brokenness into wholeness; death into life.
When we refuse to give power to shame, there is space to
give power to grace. Grace restores us
to sanity. Being sane means knowing the
truth. And the truth is: no matter what I’ve
done, I am fully capable of being loved.
May you receive grace and have the courage to stand firm in your shame. Because grace my friends is all God’s been
trying to give since he’s been looking for a naked couple hiding in a garden.
Shalom.
(Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7)
