The Lamp of Shame

 

When I was growing up, my mom kept a number of oil lamps around the house. As we used the lamps the glass that shielded the flame would slowly get covered with soot from the smoke. As the soot built up the light from the lamp would gradually grow dim. If that glass were not cleaned then eventually the glass would grow grey or even black and the lamp would give little, if any, light.

Many times, the only reason you could see the soot on the glass is by lighting the lamp. If the lamp was never lit, you might never even know it was dirty. It is the light that shows the lamp is dirty. It is the light that reveals the darkness.

When Adam and Eve ate of the Forbidden Fruit, they became aware of their nakedness for the first time, and then attempted to sew aprons of fig leaves to cover themselves. God came looking for them in the cool of the day, but they had hidden themselves. "And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou?” And he said, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself." (Genesis 3:9-10)

Adam's fear was the first manifestation of shame in human history. Shame is always a byproduct of sin. Wherever sin corrupts, we will find shame as well. The greater the sin, the greater the shame.

Part of the reason that Adam sensed his sin and felt shame was because he was created in the image of God. He was basically, essentially good, but his sin contradicted his inherent goodness. The disconnection between Adam's God-like nature and his bad behavior he felt as shame.

Adam could sense the dirtiness of his sin because God had placed his light within his heart.

One of the reasons we feel shame is due to the fact that we are created in the image of God. God has stamped his likeness in our heart, and anything that is contrary to that likeness we sense as shame.

Shame is that feeling of being unworthy or worthless, but ultimately, we feel that shame because we are worthy. We are made in God's image, and that image cries out when it is hurt, insulted or damaged.

God's light and life dwells within us, and it is the light that exposes the darkness and the dirt in our lives. It is that contradiction in our souls that leads us to feel shame.

We feel dirty because underneath we are clean.

We feel disgraced because inside we are full of grace.

Sin corrupts the image of God in us, but only on the surface, in our bodies and minds. Sin cannot touch the invincible Spirit that God has placed within us.

Shame indicates a dissonance between the song his Spirit is singing within us, and the song of sin our flesh is playing on the surface.

Guilt and shame are ultimately good things, they are the soul's call to action, it means our work is not done yet. It shows us those areas that we still need to work on, those areas in our lives that are still incomplete. It is tempting when we feel shame to simply look at the darkness and dirt and turn away from the light in despair. To wallow in our failure. But we must fight the shame and despair caused by sin. We do this by turning to the Light, Jesus Christ, and letting him cleanse our souls so that we can shine God's light more effectively.

We can tell when a piano is out of tune because we have heard what an in-tune piano is supposed to sound like. If we are listening to a song and hear a dissonant note, the reason we can identify the bad note is because we know what the song is supposed to sound like. We know what a good piano and good song sounds like. That goodness is written in our hearts and minds and allows us to differentiate the good from the bad.

God has written his laws in our hearts. (See Romans 2:14-15) There are certain things that we cannot not know. We know right from wrong and good from evil.

Guilt and shame fill our hearts and tell us that we are not worthy of the love of God. They drive us to hide and disguise ourselves from God and others, and this is the trap. The deeper we go into the shame, the further we are driven from God. And the farther we are from God, the deeper we plunge into shame.

But that shame was meant to be a good thing, a warning alarm, a signal or signpost to let us know when we have strayed from the path that leads us to the presence of God. Shame warns us when we are breaking God's laws and are jeopardizing our relationship with him.

We can focus on the darkness and that will only lead to more darkness, or we can turn to the light, clean the soot and dirt from our life, and let our light shine for the Lord.

Shame is a signal that our inner moral sense is working correctly, that our moral compass is pointing in the right direction. The closer we get to God, the more sensitive it will become, the more we walk in the light, the more sensitive we will become to the dark.

Shame will whisper to us that we are not worthy, but the very reason that we feel shame is because we are worthy. We are valuable because God has made us in his image and his light shines within us.

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