Where Shame Goes to Die

When God said, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Gen. 2:18), He was expressing His desire that His children would live in harmonious connection, reflecting the “one flesh” union characterized by spiritual, intellectual, and emotional intimacy. This wholistic bond is further emphasized by the description of Adam and Eve as “naked” and “not ashamed” (verse 25), signifying a relationship of openness, authenticity, and freedom.

That dynamic was shattered when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, causing a drastic shift in how they saw themselves as individuals and how they viewed God. Their choice to violate their covenant with God and one another unleashed a host of emotions that God never intended them to experience, including shame. Mark the contrast! Before sin, “naked” and “not ashamed”; after sin, they were acutely aware of their nakedness and were consumed with guilt and shame. Peace was replaced by fear, freedom by guilt, harmony by hiding, and intimacy by enmity. The result of their sin was immediate and tragic. Adam and Eve, who had walked with God in the cool of the day, now hid from Him among the trees, sewing fig leaves together to cover their humiliation.

Shame researcher Brené Brown defines shame as “the fear of disconnection, the belief that something we have done, or failed to do, makes us unworthy of love and belonging.”[1] With great subtlety the serpent managed to convince Eve that even in her perfection she was not enough as she was, that God was somehow withholding from her. In his book The Soul of Shame[2] Curt Thompson makes the striking observation that shame was already at work here, before the fruit was eaten, because Eve bought into the lie that who she was and what she had was insufficient. She felt shame.

Important Distinctions

In considering the healing of shame, a couple of distinctions are warranted: the difference between guilt and shame as well as that between healthy shame and toxic shame. Guilt is the appropriate discomfort we feel when we have violated a standard we hold. It is designed to move us toward repentance and change—no guilt, no repentance; no repentance, no restoration.

Healthy shame is a close ally of guilt. While guilt acknowledges wrongdoing, healthy shame is the awareness that it is wrong in the first place. It is a sign of a conscience that is sensitive to the “still small voice.” Healthy shame teaches us our limits and serves as a strong defense against license and degeneracy. Jeremiah condemned Judah’s moral collapse, posing the question “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? No! They were not at all ashamed; nor did they know how to blush” (Jer. 6:15). Paul’s counsel to Timothy, that women should adorn themselves “with shamefacedness and sobriety” (1 Tim. 2:9, KJV), also reflects the healthy sense of modesty and appropriate limits.

Shame cannot survive in the presence of unconditional love.

Toxic shame is the deeply internalized conviction of worthlessness and self-recrimination that leads to hiding from God, from others, and even from ourselves. While guilt points to an action, shame points to our identity. Danger ensues when shame stops being a temporary feeling we move through and becomes an ingrained identity, making it almost impossible to believe that change can occur. This toxic shame causes people to don masks that hide their true hearts from the people who might otherwise know and love them. So healthy shame says, “What I am tempted to do is bad.” Guilt says, “I did something bad.” Toxic shame says, “I am bad.”

When Adam and Eve heard the sound of God walking in the Garden, it was toxic shame that drove them into hiding in fear, which is where shame does its most destructive work because it thrives in secrecy. The Lord’s purpose in confronting the guilty pair with a series of questions for which He already knew the answer was to provide them with the opportunity to take responsibility for their actions by confessing.

Their restoration required God to bring their sin into the light that, in repentance, they might receive the promise of the Savior to come. Clothing them with coats of skins established the sacrificial system with the inherent truth that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin (Heb. 9:22). God’s answer to Adam and Eve’s shame was to take the initiative to heal the separation that their sin had wrought by assuring them of His continual presence. What God established in the sacrificial system, He would reiterate in His desire for intimate connection in His instruction to Moses: “Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them” (Ex. 25:8). By situating the tabernacle in the midst of the 12 tribes, God was making a clear statement that their shortcomings did not exclude them from His presence.

Shame seeks to isolate us, first from God and then from each other, driving us to hide the parts of ourselves we believe would jeopardize our acceptance. But shame cannot survive in the presence of unconditional love. We can face our innermost fears and engage, heart to heart, with the God who accepts us for who we are and gives us the power to become whom He wants us to be.

Safety in His Presence

Every item of the sanctuary taught the believer valuable lessons about healing and restoration. The laver assures us that we can find cleansing in God’s presence and that if we come before Him with a contrite heart, our past does not preclude us from serving Him.

At the altar of sacrifice, confession on the head of the lamb was necessary because opening our hearts to God breaks the silence and secrecy in which shame thrives, replacing concealment with honesty before Him. The healing of shame requires its exposure in the context of loving presence and acceptance, rooted in grace that looks beyond transgression. God exposes our shame to wrap His loving purpose around it. He gave the people a mechanism that provided the assurance of forgiveness for past transgressions, grace for the present, and hope for the future.

While shame tries to convince us that we have no place with God, the table of showbread reminds us that He is ever-present for us to supply our needs. The altar of incense taught the believers about immediate access to God’s healing grace through prayer. Ellen White said, “We must enter by faith into the sanctuary with Him. We must commence the work in the sanctuary of our souls.”[3] The mercy seat and the ark of the covenant marry God’s justice and His forgiving grace. It is here that “mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed” (Ps. 85:10). It is in the very presence of God that shame goes to die.

Shame’s whole purpose is to isolate us from the very relationships we need to heal.

On the Day of Atonement the people were required to “afflict [their] souls” (Lev. 16:29, 30; 23:27-29). This act of self-examination was in stark contrast to the self-despising judgment of shame. It was an invitation to humble oneself before God in honest repentance, confession, and faith. Shame keeps the focus on self. True repentance turns the attention to God as the solution. On the very day the people were to afflict their souls, God promised to cleanse them “from all your sins before the Lord” (Lev. 16:30). The purpose of afflicting the soul, therefore, was not to perpetuate shame but to prepare the heart to receive God’s gracious verdict of forgiveness, cleansing, and restored fellowship.

Because we are born in sin and shaped in iniquity (see Ps. 51:5), we may never be totally free from the temptation to run and hide in the face of shame. But we can learn to become resilient to the urge to live our lives in the shadow of our past. We must recognize that shame is a visitor, not a resident, as we learn to process it in healthy ways without allowing it to define our identity or distort our worth. Jesus’ ministry provides continual provision to address our shame because He “always lives to make intercession” for us (Heb. 7:25). We are not left exposed and alone because our High Priest stands as our advocate, presenting His own righteousness in place of our shame.

A vital truth in healing from shame is that it is not something we fix in the privacy of our own minds. We are wounded in relationships and healed in relationships. Shame’s whole purpose is to isolate us from the very relationships we need to heal. The solution to shame, ironically, lies in doing the very thing that shame convinces us is most dangerous: bringing it into the light in a context of safety.

Thompson asserts that the healing of shame begins and ends in the experience of being known—a biblical notion rooted in the heart of God. Paul captures this idea in 1 Corinthians 8:3: “If anyone loves God, this one is known by Him.” To be known by God means feeling forgiven, understood, and accepted. It is to feel safe enough to let our shame and guilt be exposed so that they can finally be healed, knowing that despite every shameful thing we have ever done, we remain His beloved child, in whom He is well pleased.

The most courageous thing we can do is give God full access to the inner sanctum of our hearts, as David did when he prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23, 24), trusting that He will never cast us out. The enemy will always try to use our deepest shame to discourage us and destroy our calling. He tried it with Jesus at the cross, publicly shaming Him to derail the plan of salvation. But Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus, “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

To despise shame, we first have to recognize how it is operating in our lives. Herein lies our confidence: If the God who knows every lie we’ve told, every promise we’ve broken, every shameful thing we’ve ever done, can look beyond our shame, then so can we. We can declare with the apostle Paul: “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13, 14, KJV).

[1] Brené Brown, Daring Greatly (New York: Avery, 2015), pp. 68, 69.

[2] Curt Thompson, The Soul of Shame: Retelling the Stories We Believe About Ourselves (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2015).

[3] Ellen G. White manuscript 8, 1888.