Shame, Fear, and Hiding
Most relationships operate under the powers of shame, fear, and hiding. We are ashamed of something that we are or something that we have done. Some people are ashamed of how they look because their society has informed them that beauty is measured according to particular standards. Where you fail to measure up, you find shame, embarrassment, apology. Other people are ashamed of what they have done because their behavior has failed to measure up to the expected standards.
Our shame drives us to the fear that we will be rejected by others. We fear being shunned. We fear being forced into isolation and loneliness. For some, this fear is so great that it pushes them into literal hiding. This is a tragic move because our fear itself forces us into the isolation and loneliness we feared of others.
For most, however, the hiding takes place in plain sight. Instead of hiding behind our bedroom walls or our televisions, we hide behind a false projection of ourselves. To cover up our shame, our fear propels us into managing a pretense. What do you get when we all gather together? Pretenders in proximity. It is a horrific interaction of false selves—a grand masquerade where all the masks display “Happy. Nice. Polite. Together. Successful. Confident. Well.” While behind the masks are the suffering gazes of souls enchained by shame and fear.
This is not merely the condition of our culture—it is the condition of so many people in our churches. Why? Perhaps because we have forgotten how to forgive each other. When people forget how to forgive, there is little hope that another vital discipline will find practice: Confession. We are afraid to confess because we have seen what has happened to those who have been brave enough to do so. They are ‘practically excommunicated,’ whether by physical or social rejection. They in some sense become ‘untouchable’—never truly forgiven or embraced as an equal.
The two practices that may be the most helpful for freeing our churches from being ‘pretenders in proximity’ are the two practices that people seem to be least interested in employing. In avoiding confession and forgiveness, our self-deceit and hiding only plunge us deeper into the grips of fear and shame.
But what if it was safe to confess? What if you didn’t have to hide? What if you could see that when other people stepped out from behind their false projections, they were truly forgiven and embraced? What if our churches were truly filled with people who practiced forgiveness? Would you be afraid to share your painful failures?
I believe that the hallmark of the communities of Jesus’ disciples must be love demonstrated primarily in forgiveness. If we are to truly help people find freedom from the shame of their failures and limitations, we must be free of anathema. God has forgiven us, and those who have truly been able to come out from behind the shrubbery and receive the embrace of our Father in the heavens, must stand with open arms to their brothers and sisters who sit camouflaged in the bushes.
We must be a people among whom confession is dangerous only to our captivity to sin. We must be a people who walk transparently with God and before one another—more honest about our failures and limitations, but less ‘hung up’ about them.
But I'm still afraid of confession.
