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Lesson 5
Review Lesson 4
God’s gracious, loving treatment of us is the prescription for our treatment of others and is the foundation to a healthy community and a healthy life.
We ALL have character defects, tendencies to do things, feel things, or think things that are negative.
We looked at Colossians 3:1-17 as a guide to what we are looking for in ourselves as evidence of health and to identify areas we need to invite God into to bring healing.
As a exercise we explored what we were taught the characteristics looked like from the people that raised us then took a look at ourselves. Asking the question what does my compassion look like if I compare it to Jesus not what my family taught me or what I consider normal?
The point of the exercise isn’t to make you feel that you don’t measure up. It wasn’t to make you feel inherently bad or wrong. The purpose of this exercise is to give you more information about yourself. To give you another tool to explore why things don’t feel exactly right in your relationships or your mood or even your life. Your character defects give you another alarm that you may need to dig out some weeds. It can give you insight as to why you aren’t operating in your God given design.
Remember it is your choice whether or not you join God by digging deep and opening your eyes. You choose if you want to heal and grow or stay as you are. God will love you just the same
Lesson 5/6
Big ideas: Jesus chose death to stop judgement.
Jesus taught us not to absorb shame.
Shame causes isolation which removes one of the key ingredients to growth and healing, connection.
Going over our flaws is sort of humiliating. When we do the work of recognizing those flaws it’s really uncomfortable, shame is often triggered. Discomfort is ok if it serves to motivate you to do some heart work but judgement & shame shuts us down.
Jesus spends no time judging or shaming us. He loves us, teaches us and encourages us. He build us up and has never been in the business of cutting us down. Can you stop shaming yourself and others?
Dr. Henry Cloud says,“We judge ourselves because of our inability. God embraced our inability so deeply He died for it. What are we doing judging ourselves or anybody else when he died to stop the judgement. He didn’t die to leave us where we are though, he died to begin the process of removing the judgement that kills growth. He brought us grace and truth revealed in Him to begin the a process we call sanctification that will heal what ails us.”
It’s so hard to get our heads around the fact that God already knew we were going to fail. He knew it was going to be part of the human experience. The fall of Adam and Even in Genesis illustrates this inevitable pattern. Instead of seeing it as a tragedy could we see it as a opportunity to recognize how deep and wide the love of God is for us imperfect humans? Is it possible as we come to understand God’s amazing unconditional love the grace we access gives us the power to grow and heal?
Genesis tells us Jesus was in the plan from the beginning, ready to meet humanity and take away the judgement that God knew would ruin us. The judgement that would try to cut us down like the fig tree. God came through Jesus, brought grace with truth packaged with a loving relationship and gave us another way to understand him and another way to understand ourselves. He came and offered us a deeper relationship with God through our brokenness. He came and died to help us spark the process of our growth.
We have to find a place to rest in our failures, to examine and reject shame, knowing God will use our failures to bring us close to Him. The truth is you are very valuable, perfectly imperfect and completely worth loving even on your yuckiest days.
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him
endured the cross, scorning the shame. Hebrews 12:2
When Jesus faced death by crucifixion, we are told that he “endured the cross and scorned the shame”, Jesus endured the pain. That is, Jesus did not avoid the suffering, but instead, he went through the suffering however he did reject the shame. If Jesus refused to let affect him then we should follow his example.
Let’s examine shame.
Shame tells us there is a deep sense of inadequacy inside us, that we are bad or not good enough. It shuts us down, paralyzes us, isolates us. There is no movement when shame enters the picture. No growth.
What is the difference between shame and guilt? Shame is the blanket you wear that says “you are bad”; guilt says “you did something bad, but you are not bad”. Guilt is the nudge to move you to change, to make amends, to do something different than what you did the last time;. Let us take off the smothering blanket of shame, and find how adequate, worthy, and loved we truly are.
Brene Brown is a shame researcher. Her research has shown shames causes of host of problems such as anxiety, depression, anger, addictions, aggression. No wonder Jesus modeled rejecting it.
Brown says that shame needs 3 things to grow in our lives:
1. Secrecy - keeps things in the dark, hidden, and not allowed to come out. Is this happening in your life?
2. Silence - not speaking something out loud. What have you been silent about? Why have you kept silent about it? What have you not given a voice to in your past?
3. Lastly, judgment - It adds gasoline to the fire of shame.
Brown also found 4 ways to climb out of the shame hole:
Recognize shame and understand it’s triggers. Pay attention to how your body feels, what your emotions are, what your thoughts become. (Your chest becomes tight, you want to run, you become embarrassed or anxious)
Practice awareness and reality check the messages and expectations that are driving your shame. (You tell yourself you don’t deserve to be loved, is that true. Bring in truth, we all have flaws, we love flawed people, Jesus died for sinners not saints)
Share what is shaming us with a trusted friend who is willing to love us despite our vulnerability. (Tell a friend, I believe I am not worth loving and allow them to speak truth into your life).
Talk COMPASSIONATELY to yourself as you would someone you love who you are building up. Remember we operate best while displaying the fruit of compassion.
Brown’s research confirmed what God taught us in James 5:16. He taught we are to speak our “junk” out loud to another believer, that “confession” gives us healing. When shame is spoken out loud and met with empathy, it can bind you and imprison you no longer. These are the chain Jesus came to break. These are the chains the enemy uses to keep you from being the person you were meant to be.
Example of how shame is triggered.
My personality type 8 is called a “challenger”, when healthy I take up the cause of the oppressed or hurting, I create teams of people working in their gifts. But my personality also bends towards being critical and intolerant of things not being done in the best way. I hate that about myself, I don’t want to be that way. If someone says to me, you are being critical or harsh, I almost feel a little nauseous. The shame train pulls up and I get on. I start saying things like, you are just a jerk, what is wrong with you, who do you think you are.
However on the outside, I might begin to defend my case or gaslight and say I am not being critical. I might shut down completely and become angry. Shames closes off my ability to stop in the moment and use the criticism to increase insight into my emotions and behaviors and to connect to the other person in a deeper way.
If I waved the shame train on, it would like different. I could ask the other person what felt critical about what I am sayings. I could say I am sorry or I know I can be critical please forgive me. I may need to learn I need to ask permission to offer my advice. I may also need to learn people don’t need to be corrected they just might need my ear. There is so much rich information in the interaction but I have to be willing to accept that I have flaws and not shame myself.
Some common triggers for shame: Our flaws, Church expectations, Body image, Parenting, Mental health, Physical health, Money and work to name a few.
TO THE TABLE: Reminder to not counsel or save each other.
Do you have or have you had something in your life that causes shame, a secret you have not shared?
Do you shame yourself or other people?
Lesson 5/6 Part 2
Big Idea: God has emotions and God gave us emotions.
Emotions drive our behaviors, positive and negative.
We use the words “I feel” all the time… “What do you want to eat?” “I feel like donuts!” Is “donuts” a feeling? Or how about this one “I feel like you should _______”. Is “you should” an emotion? There are plenty of other ones: “I feel fine”, “I feel good”, “I feel bad”. What are we actually trying to communicate when we say these things?
It seems our feelings, wants, and needs have become so intermingled and distorted that we have lost touch with what an actual emotions is?
Emotions are feelings that help us “move”. Where are your emotions moving you in your life? Are they moving you toward healthy behaviors or destructive behaviors? Are your emotions moving toward connection or isolation?
It’s tempting to judge our emotions as good or bad. When we assign a value to our emotions (i.e. its good to feel happy for someone else’s success and bad to feel jealousy) we are creating a direct pathway to shame. Rather than assigning value to emotions, Jesus gives us the example in the gospels of allowing them to be present without squashing them down, without letting them trigger a shame spiral. He felt deep grief when Lazarus died, and in the garden. He experienced joy when he was partying with his friends. He experienced frustration with the pharisees. He never faked how he felt.
So should we judge our emotions or allow our emotions to be part of our story, the emotion of jealousy may sound like this: My friend got a promotion, and I didn’t. I am experiencing the emotion of jealousy. Instead of focusing on jealousy being bad we can focus on what jealousy is here to teach me?
From there we can do the work of learning what jealousy has to teach us.
Even shame has some value in our life. Remember that even shame, and the reaction following shame can serve to keep us safe during seasons where we weren’t equipped to process our trauma and harmful life circumstances. We just didn’t know any better during that season. So for example, when shame triggers anger, anger can act like a little barrier keeping us safe from a very scary world. Even shame has a place and deserves our thanks. We honor our story by allowing whatever shows up to exist in our lives as a teacher, and by being a faithful student. By doing better, when we know better, and by forgiving ourselves when we didn’t.
Let’s take a look at some emotions through feeling words. There are 5, some say 6 core emotions listed in most areas of research: happy, afraid, sad, angry, disgusted. It is helpful to be able to identify or name our feelings. We have to know we are having a feeling to use that feeling to guide us and to understand ourselves better. Emotions can move us to a place of insight, where we learn more about ourselves and what is actually going on inside. It can move us to a place of connection and intimacy with others. Emotions can warn us of danger. They are part of the fullness of life.
There are varying intensities and combinations of each emotion. Refining a core emotion gives us even more information and insight and a better way to communicate with others how we feel. Let’s refine the feeling of sadness, it can be described in many ways such as, hopeless, disappointed, depressed, sorrowful, forlorn, distressed, hurt, displeased.
Anger is one emotion that many call a secondary emotion or an emotion covering up more vulnerable feelings.
Anger as a second emotion is described by an article by Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. He states, “A good deal of our anger is motivated by a desire not to experience guilt—and beyond this, the distressing emotions of hurt and fear. It’s by now generally agreed upon that anger is almost never a primary emotion. Underlying it (as PT blogger Steven Stosny pointed out) are such core hurts as feeling disregarded, unimportant, accused, guilty, untrustworthy, devalued, rejected, powerless, and unlovable. And these feelings are capable of engendering considerable emotional pain. It’s therefore understandable that so many of us might go to great lengths to find ways of distancing ourselves from them.
In fact, those of us who routinely use anger as a “cover-up” to keep our more vulnerable feelings at bay, generally become so adept at doing so that we have little to no awareness of the dynamic driving our behavior. Anger is the emotion of invulnerability. Even though the self-empowerment (adrenaline rush) it immediately offers is bogus, it can yet be extremely tempting to get “attached” or even “addicted” to it if we frequently experience another as threatening the way we need to see ourselves (as important, trustworthy, lovable).
After all, this is how psychological defenses work. Simply put, they allow us to escape upsetting, shameful, or anxiety-laden feelings we may not have developed the emotional resources—or ego strength—to successfully cope with.
For example, say your partner expresses something that leads you to feel demeaned. Rather than, assertively, sharing your hurt feelings, and risk making yourself more vulnerable to them, you may react instead by finding something to attack them for. It could be as petty as their forgetting to put something away, or not having gotten back to you on scheduling an event, or a past mistake that compromised the family budget—in short, anything!
In such instances, what you’re basically doing is endeavoring to make them feel demeaned, to hurt their feelings—hurt them back. It’s an undeclared, largely unrecognized, game of tit for tat. And while you’re engaged in such retaliatory pursuits, guess what? Presto! You’re no longer feeling demeaned—at least not at the moment. Which, sadly, reinforces this essentially childish behavior. (“You’re the bad one!”)
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And what about the recipient of your fit of temper? Now they bear the burden you’ve just managed to shake off. Whatever feelings of hurt you were experiencing have been passed on, or transferred, to them. And their initial reaction may be one not simply of hurt but fear as well. At the most primitive, instinctual level, by experiencing themselves as the object of your anger, they unconsciously grasp that you harbor the hostile impulse to harm them. So if they step back from you, it’s not because they want to provide you with more space to vent your venom. It’s that they’re feeling an urgent need to distance themselves from it.
In any case, though, their own defensive reaction is likely in counter retaliation—blaming you right back. This can escalate the conflict between the two of you with lightning speed. It’s not a physical “eye for an eye” but a verbal “blow for blow."
Other possible reactions are for the now-distressed recipient of your (vengeful) criticism to archly defend themselves. Or to leave the scene altogether. And, of course, none of these self-protective reactions helps the respondent of your attack to understand just what triggered your anger buttons in the first place. This is another reason that anger rarely resolves anything.
To fundamentally change what can be a neverending vicious cycle, it’s crucial to comprehend not only the cause(s) of our anger but also its detrimental effects. Ultimately, feeling hurt—and consequently acting out a compulsion to retaliate in kind—is “kid stuff.” Can we learn how to hold onto our most rational adult self and “process” what’s happening inside our head? And to do this before we alleviate our feelings of guilt, hurt, or fear by turning them into anger? Can we begin to break a pattern that may well be hazardous to the relational closeness, harmony, and trust that we—like the rest of humanity—deeply crave?
Now that’s a question worth contemplating.”