The Masks We Wear
The Bible is truly the most amazing book on the planet. One of the reasons the stories in the Bible have been so resilient throughout the ages is because they contain themes and ideas that touch on timeless truths that all of us feel and experience. Nowhere in the Bible is this more apparent than in the first few chapters of Genesis.
When Adam and Eve fell into sin, eating the forbidden fruit,
something tragic, but interesting, happens.
They felt shame for the first time.
Genesis 3:7 says, "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they
knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made
themselves aprons." For the first
time they knew that they were naked. A
few verses back we read that they were naked and unashamed (2:25), now they
were naked and ashamed. Their eyes were opened,
and they knew. They knew something had
gone wrong, that they had done something wrong.
Their innocence was lost.
Critics of this passage and of Christianity in general
dismiss this story because Adam and Eve were guilty of eating of the tree of
knowledge. They say that knowledge is
always a good thing, "knowledge is power." To be punished for pursuing knowledge is a
form a wickedness, like the Fascists burning books, so the thinking goes. Of course, they leave off the part where it
says, "the knowledge of good and evil" it was not knowledge in
general that was denied the first humans, it was the knowledge of good and
evil. Not all knowledge is equal. Some things are not worth knowing. I think we would all have been better off if
we had never known the reality of slavery, for example.
As the knowledge of their sin rested on their conscience,
shame squeezed in our great grandparents.
Held in shame's icy fist, their first instinct was to hide, to cover
up. They could not bear the presence of
God. The light of His holiness seared
their sin-consciousness and intensified the shame they already felt. They sensed the need to cover up and to hide,
so they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. Not very effective disguises by any measure.
Adam and Eve moved from glory, from being naked and
unashamed, nothing to hide, to shame, to hiding from themselves and from God
behind flimsy costumes that could never conceal them from the all-seeing eyes
of God.
Shame is a terrible, tragic thing, but it is not always a
bad thing. I like to talk about two
types of shame, healthy shame and toxic shame, and much of the difference
between the two is what we do in response to it. The shame Adam and Eve felt was good, but it
led them to create disguises and hide from God, that was toxic.
Shame is like a pain receptor for our soul, it lets us know
that we are stepping into dangerous, spirit-damaging territory. When we feel it, we should correct course, if
we do not, that shame can grow and become toxic.
Healthy shame tells us that we have broken a rule, we have
crossed a boundary. We have injured our
soul in some way, or we have injured someone else. It tells us we have done wrong, and we should
change our attitudes, beliefs, and behavior in order to restore healthy
relations with ourselves, other people, and God.
Toxic shame is different, it sends the message not just that
you did something bad, but that you are something bad. The message in our heads is not, "I did
something bad." it becomes, "I am a bad person." Toxic shame tells us that we are unworthy, inadequate,
and unlovable. Healthy shame tells,
"I made a mistake, I should fix it."
Toxic shame says, "I made a mistake. I am such an idiot. I never do anything right." It attacks us at the level of our worth and
identity and alienates us from ourselves, other people, and God.
Our society has a phobia of shame in all its colors. We are told we should feel bright and happy
all the time, no matter what. We should
never be made to feel bad for how we look, act, think or believe.
Recently I read about a billboard that appeared in Times
Square in the heart of New York. It
featured an overweight woman with her head in her hands and the caption read,
"Feeling fat and lazy?" This
caused no end of consternation for many.
The primary concern was this idea of body shaming, using the words
"fat" and "lazy" with the image of the overweight woman
would cause people to feel shame about their weight or figure.
The billboard was sponsored by a "wellness
motivator" Deborah Capaccio. In
defense of the ad, she says that she wants people to address the "negative
self-talk" that keeps them trapped in unhealthy patterns. "We identified as fat and lazy, and
those thoughts were sabotaging our efforts to feel good about ourselves and get
healthy," Capaccio said.
I am not sure if that billboard was the best way to get her
message out, but I think Capaccio is on to something. Her ad has struck a nerve. She is bringing into the light a massive
problem across our culture. Our heads
are filled with those messages of toxic shame that drive us into unhealthy
eating and drinking, to greed, fornication, pornography, and all manner of
other vices that we use to quiet those voices and sooth the pain in our souls.
Like Adam and Eve, each and every one of us has sinned. Not only that, but we were also born into a
sinful world filled with sinful people.
Our parents, teachers and spiritual leaders were all sinners and
inevitably they have sinned, and in that sin, they have wounded us. Our own sins and the sins of others against
us leave us with a ruptured soul. Our
hearts are broken. Into that brokenness
and rupture shame pours in, like poison into a wound.
This anguish in our soul drives us into hiding. We hide from God, from ourselves and from
those we love. Toxic shame compels us to
make our own little, fig-leaf disguises.
Not in any literal sense, but in our attitudes and beliefs. We put on mental and emotional disguises,
masks, or personas to hide the shame, and rupture in our soul. We pretend to be what we really are not.
These personas are often formed when we are very young, and
the more chaotic the home, the more dramatic the persona we may form. Some become the rebel, always acting out to
get attention. Others become control
enthusiasts, making sure everything is clean, organized, and on schedule. Some are peacemakers, anytime there is a
disagreement they insert themselves to create peace and maintain some
superficial level of harmony in the home.
These are masks, false identities that we use to hide the
pain and shame that fills our souls. We
hide our true and authentic selves for fear of rejection and abandonment, we
protect ourselves with fig leaf disguises.
It is not uncommon in therapy and in recovery circles to
talk about the "wounded inner child."
This is a metaphor of sorts used to describe the trauma we have
experienced, usually when we are children, but sometimes as adults. It is possible to be wounded as an adult, the
broken men and women who return from war with PTSD are testament to this. Most of us have some wounds we carry from the
time we were children, and these wounds are the soil in which toxic shame has grown
and are the reason why we have had to build a persona, in order to protect that
wounded child from further harm.
God's desire is to fill us with His Spirit and give us peace
and joy, but He can only do that if we are willing to open our hearts and let
Him in. If we are going to find healing
and wholeness in Christ, we must let down our guard, let Him into that most
tender and vulnerable space and let Him heal us. This is what we are going to look at across
the next couple of posts.
Many people in the Bible had ruptured souls and built-up personas around them to protect themselves. Next time we will look at a dramatic example of this.
Comments
Post a Comment