Without Shame or Fear

A. Robert Hirschfeld

Description

Shame severs our relationship from God. It is so powerful that it often results in denial, apathy, and even a self-defensive wrath toward neighbor. At the same time, shame may drive us to discover the true source of our dignity beyond our isolated and broken self. The arc of the biblical narrative takes us from the fig leaves of Adam and Eve, who desire to hide from God and each other, to the liberation from self-consciousness that Jesus displays at the Last Supper, which can be seen as “undoing” the shame of Adam and Eve. Shame is the experience that can bring us close to the experience of the Cross, the place of simultaneous condemnation and liberation. By examining the biblical stories of shame and some personal and public stories of shame and of being shamed, Hirschfeld delves into this emotional and spiritual phenomenon to mine what shame has to teach. Shame cannot be erased, but God does not want us to be stuck in it. Working through our shame can lead us to a deeper sense of joy and freedom so we can, as the Proper Preface for Advent says, “without shame or fear rejoice to behold [Christ’s] appearing?”

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Christian Theology
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Church Publishing Incorporated
• Date de parution: 01 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780819233356
• Langue: English

Extrait

Without Shame or Fear
Without Shame or Fear
From Adam to Christ
A. Robert Hirschfeld
Copyright © 2017 by A. Robert Hirschfeld
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Church Publishing
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Cover image: Masaccio (Maso di San Giovanni) (1401–1428), Expulsion from Paradise.
1425–1428. Brancacci Chapel. Photo credit: Eric Lessing / Art Resource, NY.
Cover design by Jennifer Kopec, 2Pug Design
Typeset by Perfectype
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hirschfeld, A. Robert, author.
Title: Without shame or fear : from Adam to Christ / A. Robert Hirschfeld.
Description: New York : Church Publishing, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016040240 (print) | LCCN 2016046108 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819233349 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780819233356 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Shame--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Shame--Biblical teaching.
Classification: LCC BT714 .H57 2017 (print) | LCC BT714 (ebook) | DDC 248.8/6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040240
Printed in the United States of America
In Memoriam
Rowan A. Greer III
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE Christmas Trees and Fig Leaves
CHAPTER TWO The Nakedness of Noah
CHAPTER THREE Sarah’s Laugh
CHAPTER FOUR Create in Me a Clean Heart
CHAPTER FIVE Yet More Wonderfully Restored
CHAPTER SIX What Appearances to Save
CONCLUSION Back to the Garden
INTRODUCTION
Y ou are a child of God. Created by a God whose love cannot be contained, you are a sign of the overflowing and creative goodness of the universe. The world is enhanced by your being in it and will be diminished by your absence. The aim of religion, true religion, is to help you see your unbreakable connection to the God who was, is, and will always be love. This is the mission of Jesus, the Word-made-flesh, who has come into the world, displaying the life that enlightens all people.
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (John 1:3–5)
What a fine and wondrous thing it would be if that’s all we needed to know about the world, about God, and about our relationship to God. But even in those first few exalted and exalting verses of John’s Gospel, there is mention of another truth, foreboding and portentous. Darkness competes with the light: in fact, darkness seems to be the primordial condition out of which the light shines and from which the wonder of creation, including our own life and being, emerges.
I am a Christian who needs to rediscover and to be redirected to the Light of Christ that rescues, frees, and saves me from a place where darkness would otherwise overwhelm me. Others may begin the day certain and immediately grateful for the abundant blessings of existence. I need to be reminded, constantly, that I am being created, redeemed, and sustained by God; otherwise, my soul feels disoriented, adrift, forlorn. When I forget God’s presence in my life, my soul—the name we might give to that sense of unique identity and self— plummets toward either one of two gravitational abysses: shame or fear.
Shame tells me not only that I have made mistakes that draw me from God’s purposes. Shame tells me that I am a mistake. The consequence of shame is that one is no longer at home in one’s own skin and seeks to hide. In fact, skin and hide are two words whose uses are determined by shame. When free from shame, I am at ease in my own skin—skin is a word that derives from an Old Norse word that means “to shine.” Think of what you do with that “little light of yours” when you’re feeling no shame. In contrast, hide is the name we give to the tissue that covers certain animals and what our primeval parents are provided after their expulsion from Paradise. After the Fall from grace, finding themselves ashamed for their nakedness, Adam and Eve both hide and manufacture hides out of what’s available to them. Rarely do we refer to our skin as our hide, though some may sadly remember being threatened with having our hides “tanned” for having incurred the anger of a parent or guardian.
Shame has been described as a “master emotion,” a psychological state that undergirds other emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, and depression. 1 In that way, shame seems so internalized, such a part of our inner landscape that we don’t even notice that it’s there and that it is churning other responses and reactions to events. Unconscious of shame’s capacity to distort our sense of self, we are more vulnerable to messages that confirm that we are lacking. Clearly, we are not immune to the power of idealized images of the human body that seem ideal. Attempts to exploit shame can be seen in the checkout line at the grocery store: magazines with photo-brushed images of men and women present flawless skin and physiques that have the effect of reminding us of our own blemishes, paunches, and wrinkles. Other periodicals work on our sense of lacking by displaying how cluttered and out of date our kitchens and bathrooms are. Some magazines, which tout the value of tidying, simplicity, or even mindfulness, can even work on our shame by telling us how out of sync we are with even our highest values and aspirations.
Why do those yoga practitioners always seem so clear complexioned, blissful, and surrounded by such beautiful potted plants on patios overlooking such crystalline babbling brooks? I will be lucky if I get to my rusty and smelly gym locker in between meetings in which I sit too long, eat too much, and drink too much coffee. If I’m feeling less than happy about my condition in life, even less than grateful for being able to purchase sufficient, healthy, and safe food to feed my family, if I’m feeling instead a little blue about my life—I’ve come to see that my shame, covert and persistent, has been quietly stirred. In this way it works as a “master emotion,” a source of emotional power that drives other emotions, even if it doesn’t show itself so openly.
Every Advent we hear these words as we approach the altar at the Holy Eucharist:
It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth: Because you sent your beloved Son to redeem us from sin and death, and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life; that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may without shame or fear rejoice to behold his appearing. (Proper Preface for Advent, Book of Common Prayer, 361, 378)
For years I have prayed that prayer, wondering if this would be the Advent when I would be free of shame and fear so that I could really and truly celebrate a glorious Christmas. The prayer says that, because Jesus has already come, has already redeemed us from sin and death and made us fellow heirs of everlasting life, we can fully expect that our shame and fear have already been released and dissolved. We no longer have to cower in a defensive crouch when our judge comes. We’ve had our dignity and worth restored. Already. We don’t have to be anxious or fearful or depressed at the approach of the Light that is coming into the world. Shame is not a Christian habit of mind—it is not a virtue to be cultivated or instilled or inflicted on either ourselves or others. We can be free of it. We can rejoice to behold the coming of Jesus and to see his skin radiate with love for us.
But, there it is. That gap, that lack, that coming up short, that missing the mark, that makes me want to hide. There are two truths about the prayers: the first is that the reality they describe has already been accomplished. Sin and death have been defeated in Jesus so that shame and fear may no longer be our “master” emotions. And the second truth is that we find ourselves praying these words again, once more, as though for the first time. As a friend once told me about the need to be converted to the life of grace: this is not a one-walk dog. Shame seems to need to be taken out for a walk a few times a day to do its business. The good news is that grace, God’s contradictory love, God’s unreasonable and illogical and infinitely resilient acceptance of us, comes along for the walk as well. Always.
This book is a series of meditations on scenes in Scripture through the particular lens of shame. The purpose is to look directly at shame so that we can see it for what it is—a clinging effect of sin. Shame is the lingering evidence of our having bought the lie that we are unworthy of God’s loving regard. As I looked at certain Bible passages where shame seems to figure prominently, almost as a character itself in the stories, I found myself also wondering if there was a positive function to shame. I began to wonder if its persistence in my inner life drives me deeper into a reliance on God’s mercy. Adam, Eve, Noah, Ham and Canaan, Sarah, David, the unnamed man blind from birth, and ultimately Jesus himself—all know shame. Jesus shows us how we can be released from shame, so that we can live, love, and serve with a kind of reckless abandon and with dignity, shame’s enemy and opposite.
The six chapters that follow focus on passages in the Bible. They contain examples of shame in more contemporary contexts, from my own life, and from the experiences of others. They are not the only passages or verses in the Bibl