More Than Clay

SHAME TRAVELS THROUGH ALL ERAS

Every day, humanity becomes victimized by shame and disgrace. The casualties are everywhere: our friends, family members, coworkers, strangers—and dare I say—us.

Right now, take some time and think about this past week.

How often did you walk the busy halls or walkways, feeling the stabbing ache of complete loneliness or rejection? When you last stepped into a church, was there any part of you that felt fake, worthless, or inadequate? At your latest meal with friends, did you question yourself about whether you measured up to the guys or girls—the men or women—around you? Or were there moments when bitterness and envy surfaced at the most inappropriate times?

An interesting study has found that under the thick layers of all of these feelings and emotions resides the heaviness of shame. In short, shame is what consistently explains why we feel alone, fake, worthless, inadequate, envious, inferior, or bitter.

“Because I deserve this, I am not good enough,” it whispers.

Author Lewis Smedes defines shame in this way:

“The feeling of shame is about our very selves—not about some bad thing we did or said but about what we are. It tells us that we are unworthy.”

It is this deep feeling of unworthiness or “missing the mark” that relates us to the lepers written about in scripture. They were, to sum it up, scum in their society.

According to Jewish law, when a person began showing signs of leprosy, the city was to literally dispose of him or her. In fact, surrounding most big cities of the day were leper colonies, groups of suffering people forced to live a life of seclusion and shame.

And no one fought for the justice and health of a leper.

Why? Because leprosy was nasty. Not only was it completely contagious, but it was also undoubtedly deadly. Imagine sores, boils, and flaky white scales forming all over your body. And as the disease progressed, it would begin deteriorating both your muscles and your bones. As you can imagine, this was a slow, painful, and brutally embarrassing process.

Often the pain would become so unbearable that lepers would seek other means toward death. And if that doesn’t sound bad enough, then understand this: Society regarded this disease as a plague from God, punishing certain people for their certainly terrible sins. To everyone else, leprosy was God’s outward showing of his hate for the leper.

Naturally, this brought lepers a few steps down on the totem pole of “who’s who” in Jewish culture. It didn’t matter who you once were, the name you once had, or the reputation you once bore—because all of it vanished the second the sores began to form. So not only did they feel the constant pain of leprosy, but also the deep ache of being different and hated by their people and their God.

In order for “healthy and righteous” citizens to avoid a run-in with a leper, the infected were instructed to always make known that they were close by. Instead of being commanded to call out something as simple as leprosy or sick, they were instructed to scream aloud the word “unclean.”

In fact, lepers were forbidden to step foot in a public place without yelling it over and over and over, making sure that people had enough time to dodge any contact with them. This simple yet degrading law made a leper’s vocabulary quite limited.

Imagine the brokenness of having to constantly make known your deepest pain. Without a doubt, this law allowed their full identity to be shaped around this overly spoken word. And with it came shame, disgrace, isolation, and hopelessness.

This new “name” led them to the belief that they were all alone and deserved it. Like every victim of shame, they soon lost their ability to separate their present condition from the overall view they had of themselves. Regardless of what they once were—a son, daughter, loved, or beautiful—they were now indoctrinated with the title of being impure, polluted, tainted, and filthy.

Unlike an adulterous woman or petty thief in their day, everyone knew exactly where a leper was and exactly who they were; unclean.

BRINGING IT HOME

So where is the comparison? you may ask. Like many truths, it is hidden deep beneath the painful layers of both you and the leper. No, we do not have painful sores that deteriorate much of our bodies. And no, we do not have to walk around screaming aloud the very word that we fear defines us—thankfully so.

But regardless of what society saw of them or what punishment seemed to be placed in their lives, at their core, all lepers had a human heart broken by shame-filled lies. Like many of us, the humanness of these lepers felt every bit of scorn thrown at them by the world. They were men and women, made in God’s image, who slowly bought into the lie that they were unlovable.

Is this not true for us as well? We, too, are God’s beautiful creation. And we, too, have hearts that are deeply hurt by the world around us.

It is seen and felt daily.

It is in the eyes of those who pass us by, on the billboards that flaunt everything we do not have, and in the mirror as we stare at what we do not like. Our minds are constantly saturated with negative thoughts and ideas that are not our own.

They are lies formed specifically for us from our enemy. Even though they may seem harmless, they both directly and indirectly war against the truth of who we are in God’s sight.

Starting at birth, these lies erupt in our hearts and become our norm. They impact the actions that we choose to make, only resulting in more shame. And the saddest thing of all is how deep and true they have become to us. Personally, I am amazed at how natural it is for me to dismiss truth by filling my head with an orchestra of negative thoughts.

And every maturing believer knows the pain of these lies.

They creep up at the most inopportune time, telling us that we are not good enough. They overwhelm us during the night, making it nearly impossible to fall back asleep. They come into our prayer lives, distracting us from ever forming a real prayer. They cloud our experience of joy, peace, and comfort, and they keep us from being completely honest with the body of believers that surrounds us.