Do you ever feel uncomfortable being a Christian where you live, work, or play? I’ve just finished Ian Morgan Cron’s book, Chasing Francis.* In it, the main character observes: “Once you’ve been outed as a conservative Christian, [people] assume you’re a right-wing, self-satisfied fundamentalist with all the mental acuity of a houseplant.” I’ve felt this way sometimes. It tempts me to hide. 1...
Ashamed and Shameless
Without a sense of how to become free from shame, we’re living in a culture settling for shamelessness instead. It’s a poor substitute. To be shame-free means shame no longer has any hold on you—it doesn’t interfere with how you hear others, doesn’t muddy your relationships, doesn’t challenge the decisions you need to make, doesn’t shape the way you perceive yourself, and doesn’t influence how...
Shhhhhhhame
Shame hurts. And when you’ve done something wrong, that’s a good thing. Like all pain, it’s meant to tell you something’s amiss and needs attention. When a splinter enters a person’s hand, pain sensors alert the person that there’s a problem by making the hand hurt. When the splinter’s removed, the wound is cleaned, and the cells regenerate, the hand no longer hurts. Likewise, when shame is...
More than a Lovely Fraction
Two of our most basic, human needs are this: to be known and to be loved. But something’s got many of us convinced you can’t have both. So we expend lots of energy hiding those parts of ourselves that are unlovely. And we work really hard to succeed (at business, parenting, athleticism, ministry, Bible study, you name it) because we think it will make us lovely and so, worthy of love. The sad...
