It was a glorious weekend. Two days with your best friend from college hanging out with his family, eating good food, playing lots of video games, hiking, driving really fast in a Porsche, sitting in a hot tub with old college buddies and having deep conversation about faith and what we’re giving our lives to.
It had been ten years since Mark and I had hung out like this, catching up. I shared a lot about the journey Christ had led us on over the last ten years, where and why we live in the city, the experience of burning out and how God has redeemed. I talked about the counseling I’ve done, the deep inner healing that Christ has done in me and and how this has led me to develop Loving Freely.
On our way to the airport to be dropped off, we were speaking our final words to each other. I said words of encouragement into his life and then it was his turn to speak into me.
He looked at me and said, “Dan, I just want to let you know that you’re not an idiot.” I said, “What do you mean”? He replied, “There were so many times this past weekend that you talked about your past and your struggles now and would always end with, I was such an idiot."
I had no response. As I have meditated and prayed about this reflection, I realize how deeply entrenched my shame is. I feel like I am a Christian that’s done quite a bit of deep interior work. I’ve memorized huge chunks of scripture about the peace of Christ. I’ve done ten years of counseling. I’ve filled pages and pages in my journals as I’ve wrestled extensively with my false self of shame. I feel like I’ve grown tremendously and past the shame of the false self.
Yet, there it is. That shame and deep self-hatred that's lurking below.
Robert Mulholland writes in The Deeper Journey about the false self, “I began to realize that underneath the thin veneer of my religiosity lived a pervasive and deeply entrenched self-referenced being which was driven by its own agendas, its own desires, its own purposes, and that no amount of superficial tinkering with the religious face made any appreciable difference.”
I am the person that doesn’t need to be corrected, because I am typically in the corner shaming myself. I’ve always been my worst critic. Shame is so powerful in our lives. A friend said to me recently; “Shame is a lie that the enemy uses to keep you thinking you are not good enough or worthy to be wholly loved by God and others.”
This is why I love what Jesus does in the telling of the two lost sons in Luke 15. To fast forward to the main point for the purpose of this blog; the younger son has just lost everything and has become so desperate that he’s now eating the pods that the pigs were eating. He comes to his senses and says these three things, 1) I have sinned against heaven and against earth. 2) I am no longer worthy to be called your son. 3) Make me like one of your servants.
And so the younger son returns home, not to become his Father’s son, (which he always was), but to become a servant, because his shame was so heavy at what he had done and become. He sees the Father as he comes over the hill and the Father runs to his son and embraces him. In the Jewish context for the Father to run to his son and bear his legs is a radical act. The Father shames himself to rescue his son from the shame he was carrying in that moment. Jesus does the same thing on the cross by being fully exposed in shame to take away our shame.
This is where the good part is. The younger son then goes into his already prepared speech of shame, “Father, I have sinned agains heaven and earth.” (part one) “I am no longer worthy to be called your son.” (part two) Then, the next phrase in the text is from vs. 22, “But the Father said to his servants…”
Look at what happens there!
The Father interrupts his son in the midst of his shame and reminds him that he is not a servant, he is the beloved child.
Sith with this. The younger son is deep in his shame of what he has done, but yet the Father sees him not as a servant ready to put to work, but as His beloved child!
I believe that the Father interrupts us all the time when we are in our shame calling us to be kind to ourselves. Andrew Peterson wrote a beautiful song, Be Kind to Yourself. The songs goes like this; “I love just the way that you are. I know it’s hard to hear it, when that anger in your spirit, is pointed like an arrow at your chest. When the voices in your mind, are anything but kind, and you can’t believe your Father knows best. I love you just the way that you are. I love the way he's shaped your heart. You can’t expect to be perfect, it’s a fight you’ve got to forfeit. You belong to me whatever you do.”
This is the gospel! When we are in the midst of our shame at how badly we’ve messed up because of our sin and are ready to work to earn our position back with God, He interrupts us and kindly and gently reminds us that we are His beloved. This is precisely what Jesus does with the woman caught in adultery by the teachers of the law and the Pharisees in John 8. After Jesus calls out their self righteousness he asks her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? “No one, sir,” she said. Then eight do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Living into the ministry of reconciliation is hard and we are going to mess up and make mistakes. It’s what happens when we do make mistakes that is the important thing. Do we heap blame upon ourselves for how badly we messed up? Do we shame ourselves for how bad we are? Can we be as kind and gracious to ourselves as the Father is?
Finally, reflect upon these words from Brother Lawrence in “Practicing the Presence of God”; “
I consider myself as the most wretched of men, full of sores and corruption, and who has committed all sorts of crimes against his King. Touched with a sensible regret, I confess to Him all my wickedness, I ask His forgiveness, I abandon myself in His hands that He may do what He pleases with me. The King, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastising me, embraces me with love, makes me eat at His table, serves me with His own hands, gives me the key of His treasures; He converses and delights Himself with me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways, and treats me in all respects as His favorite. It is thus I consider myself from time to time in His holy presence.”
So, reconcilers, be free today, because Christ loves us freely. We are going to make a whole lot of mistakes in the ministry of reconciliation and justice, but God is a good Father and delights in us! Don’t take yourself so seriously because you're not the savior. Be reminded of these words from Paul in Romans 8;“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”