Day 46
A Crying Shame
I’ve walked the beach on some days hoping to catch a glimpse of the Porpoise. Nope. Not today. No matter how deeply I yearned to see them, it simply was not in the cards for this particular day. I felt like crying.
Jesus had similar experiences during his life here on Earth. When Jesus saw Mary and her friends mourning the death of Lazarus, Jesus wept.[i] It’s incredibly comforting for me to know that Jesus is equipped with all the emotional responses that I am. Who would be interested in a God who couldn’t relate to what you’re feeling? The Bible says we’re created in His image.[ii] It says that our journey is intended to provide us with the opportunity to become more like Christ.[iii] Yet, when you look at the research results about Christians in the U.S., they indicate the following, “We witness a born-again population that is indistinguishable from the rest of the nation – and has very little credibility when it comes to promoting genuine Christianity…At some point, poor products come back to haunt the producer. Welcome to the haunting time.”[iv]
Most Christians don’t like to talk about the quote from the research results above. It makes them uncomfortable, self-conscious and insecure. It’s seems like the current day research results are asking, “Hey Christians, where are you?” We people have been trying to hide from God since shortly after He created us. God asked the same question of Adam in the Garden of Eden, “Where are you?”[v] This was after Adam had eaten the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. After Adam blamed the deed on Eve, God turned to Eve and asked her a different question, “What is this you have done?” [vi] As they say, the rest is history, or is it?
We Christians try our best. Yet, we get it wrong. The problem with Christianity has never been the truth about Jesus. History reveals that the crying shame of it all is located with the people who claim His name as Lord and Savior of their lives. “One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.”[vii] For those who claim the name of Christ and refer to themselves as Christians, one question must be: “What’s wrong with us?” I believe we have to return to the third chapter of the book of Genesis to appreciate how long we humans have been grappling with and attempting to avoid this one. What are we afraid of?
We received a call from a Pastor at our church that asked us to come down to meet a mother and her son. The son had just been released from prison on parole. The mother had no place for him to live as she was imposing on a friend, living temporarily in cramped quarters and had no money to put him up anywhere.
Greg was in his early thirties, about five feet tall and completely embarrassed about standing in the foyer of a church with his mom publicly blubbering on a Pastor’s shoulder, waiting to meet two people from the church his mom happened to attend at the time. As we introduced ourselves, Greg kept cringing and looking around at other passersby, as his mom vomited her despair all over the lobby for everyone to hear. I made eye contact with Greg, pointed to his gear on the floor and motioned with my head toward the door, as his mom continued with her unrelenting emotional hemorrhage.
Greg became a part of our family. We became friends. Honestly, he became a son to me. I learned to love Greg as if he was my son. Greg adored our family and especially our black Lab Seymour. Those two were inseparable. Greg’s diabetes was out of control most of the time. He had liver and kidney problems as well. All this was from years and years of drug and alcohol abuse. His doctor said he only had a few years to live.
Greg, like most people with a lifestyle like his, struggled with getting his feet moving in a new direction. After about six months of going back and forth hanging out with the wrong people and getting into the same fixes he said he wanted to avoid, his behavior started to match up with his intentions. He became honest, dependable, hard working, trustworthy and fun loving. He began to laugh. When Greg laughed, it was contagious. You didn’t care what He was laughing about. The sheer joy expressed in his laugh caused you to spontaneously erupt in a similar outburst.
Greg became ravenously curious about God. We spent countless hours together exploring the Bible, praying and thanking God together. When Greg would pray, it was like listening to a child talk to Jesus for the first time. There wasn’t any apprehension or pretentiousness in Greg’s prayers, just blunt, bold, childlike honesty. Every time Greg prayed, I was refreshed. So was everyone within earshot. He was a blessing.
It was a typical Saturday night in our home. It was around 9:00PM and we were laughing with friends in our living room. The phone rang. Greg was dead. He had been found naked on the floor of an apartment in the area. He died of an overdose.
For the next two years, the lights in my life went out. It was dark, lonely, confusing. I was angry. I was afraid. I was ashamed that Greg had died while in the loving care of my family. I shouldered all the blame. It was awful.
It was during the end of this period in my life when I began to hear God’s voice meekly, gently whispering, “Bill, where are you? What is this you have done?” I started to ask myself the questions, “What’s wrong with me? What am I afraid of?” I began to realize that Greg’s death was about the insidious power of shame. The same shame that Adam and Eve had experienced when they attempted to hide from God in the Garden of Eden. Greg’s return to the use of narcotics had killed him because he could not overcome the shame of returning yet again, from his failure to avoid it. Greg became a fatality of shame.
Today, the voice of God can be heard calling out to you saying “Your name where are you? What is this you have done?” When you hear that voice, what do you really hear? Does it sound like a thundering, condescending, threatening, accusatory voice? If so, it’s not the voice of God. It’s the voice of shame attempting to keep you trapped in the vicious cycle of your own limitations. It’s an ongoing effort by the evil one, the same evil one that deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden, to get you to continue to cover up and attempt to hide from God some more.
One day, I realized that God’s voice asking me, “Bill, where are you? What is this you have done?” had a face. The face of Jesus had tears streaming down his cheeks. The tone of His voice was one of unconditional love, sincere, heartfelt and intimate concern. He wasn’t cursing or accusing me for where I was at in my life. He cares! His question about “What is this you have done?” was really “What are you doing to yourself? Take my hand. Let’s move on.”
One of the unfortunate and avoidable aspects of Christianity and Christians today is that we have a tendency to be deceived back into the shadow of shame. We try to cover it up. We conceal our questions, doubts and confusion. Everybody can see the falsehood in it. As one author writes, “Those of us who follow Christ in this culture will never achieve all that He desires for us until we are willing to open every nook and cranny of our own behavioral house for remodeling and cleaning. Only then will we begin to live the kind of lives that others will find intriguing and distinctive.”[viii]
If you get to heaven, you can find Greg by listening for his laugh. Trust me, it’s unmistakable. Greg would want me to tell you that you don’t have to wait to get to heaven to enjoy laughter like that.
NOTES
[i] John 11:35
[ii] Genesis 1:27
[iii] 2 Corinthians 3:18
[iv] Barna, George The State of the Church: 2002, Published by Issachar Resources, a division of Barna Research Group, Ltd., 5528 Everglades Street Ventura, CA 93003 Copyright © 2002 by George Barna p.128.
[v] Genesis 3:9
[vi] Genesis 3:13
[vii] Merton, Thomas No Man Is An Island, Published by Barnes & Noble, Inc. New York, New York by arrangement with Harcourt, Inc., Copyright © 1955 by The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Copyright renewed 1983 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust, p. xiii.
[viii] Burchett, Dave. When Bad Christians Happen to Good People, WaterBrook Press Colorado Springs, CO Ó Copyright 2002 by Dave Burchett p. 5.
