Shame, the good, the bad and the ugly (April 5, 2023)

I normally do not watch the Super Bowl Halftime show, but this year I decided to watch it as I will be honest, I did not know who Rihanna was or what to expect and was curious from a culture perspective of what would be shown. After the Superbowl I saw on Facebook a lot of people commenting that said it was a great show and how much they love Rihanna, etc. Some people were critical of the show, but many pushed back saying they could not see why anyone would not think it was a great performance. I have since learned that Rihanna’s net worth is an astounding $1.4 billion so obviously, she has had remarkable success financially and has a large number of people who follow her and love her music.

For me personally, setting aside her lyrics, on stage at the Super Bowl with kids watching, etc. her actions were disturbing to me. She rubbed her hands over her crotch, then sniffed them, she turned around and made sexually explicit gestures, she had like one hundred guys dressed in white on the ground simulating having sex, etc. I am sure there are many people out there who wish their daughter was as “successful” as our culture would describe her, but all I could think of was if either of my daughters Faith or Mercy did any of the things Rihanna did publicly on that stage, I would not care one bit that they were worth $1.4 Billion, I would be ashamed of their actions. Now, let me be clear, would I still love my daughters if they did this? Yes, I would still love them, and nothing will change that. I believe however we need to start to disconnect loving a person, from acknowledging the actions they are doing are shameful.

Now, I am not writing this from a position of moral superiority. I have done shameful things in my life as well and one of the reasons I have a passion to encourage people to repent, change their mind and see things the way God does is out of love for them knowing their sin will bring them pain even as my own sin has done so to me. It is like they are swimming in the ocean, and I see a shark coming up behind them and as I love them and do not want to see them harmed, I plead with them to get out of the water and come to the land where it is safe.

When I turned twenty, I drifted away from God. I stopped going to Church, stopped reading my bible, stopped praying. I started to view porn. I knew this was wrong deep down, but as described in the book of Romans in the bible I suppressed the truth that my sin brought pain, sorrow, and Death. I did not initially agree with God this was a big deal and I needed to stop. It took several years for me to finally come to agreement with God this was indeed harmful and turn away from this sin once and for all.

So, some lessens I take out of that time in my life and apply to others struggling with sin.

A) After stopping to attend church at age 20, I appreciated being able to come back and attend church at age 26 despite my still struggling with watching porn. Church is a hospital for the sick and I needed to be around other believers that loved me, but I also needed to be around preaching and Gods word that challenged me to repent of my sin. My God loved me dearly, and because he loved me, He would not abandon me to my sin as He knew it was bringing pain, sorrow, loss of intimacy, unreal expectations with my wife, etc. and was harming me and was harming Colleen even though she did not understand the source of that harm until I confessed to her.

B) Shame/conviction is a good thing that God uses when you are struggling with sin. I should have felt shame for what I was doing, and the Lord used that shame to get my attention.

C) Shame /Conviction from God is designed to turn us away from our sinful actions that are harmful to us and others and to instead turn to His path that leads to life. God’s conviction and shame however is not designed to destroy us. My God was patient with me to work through my sin and once worked through, He was satisfied. God forgives us and then it is a done deal with God.

D) I have at times experienced other thoughts that I also felt in my spirit were not from me, but also not from God. A yappy, accusing voice that brings up sin I am no longer involved in, and that God forgave me of long ago. I have learned to tell those thoughts from my enemy to shut up and stand on the promise of God that if I confessed my sin and repented, that He has been faithful and just to forgive me of my sinand clean me up from all my unrighteousness. My identity is not as someone that viewed Porn in my twenties, my Identity is I am a forgiven, adopted child of God, loved beyond measure by my Heavenly Father.

I try to apply these same lessons to others I see struggling with various sins like Pride, Unforgiveness, bitterness, Sexual Immorality, Slander, Gossip, Greed, selfishness, lying, failing to love our enemies and those who disagree with us, etc. We are all a work in process and while we all may not struggle with the same sin; we all struggle with some form of sin.

That being said, while we all need Grace as we struggle with sin, and I need to love people that do not believe the same things I believe, and as a Christian, even to love people who hate me, I also need to stand for truth. If we truly love people, should we not love them enough to tell them the truth and warn them about sin that brings pain, sorrow and death. We should reject shame for things repented of but embrace a healthy shame for actions we or people we love are involved in that are bringing us or them harm. We certainly should not become cheerleaders for sin.

In working through the above, I had some additional thoughts here on shame.

1) Jesus calls His followers to be salt and light in the world. His first sermon to people was to repent and the first sermon he sent his disciples out with was to call people to repent, to turn away from sin, change your mind and see sin as God does, that it is bringing pain, sorrow and death into your life and He is pleading with you to turn to His path that leads to life. As such, we should never apologize as Christians for loving people enough to warn them of the painful consequences of their sin as long as it is done in a spirit of love and not of self-righteous pride.

2) It seems to me that our society, and indeed many churches are blind and are suppressing the truth God has placed on all of our hearts that sin leads to sorrow, pain, and death. In our U.S. culture, and increasingly in many churches, we especially suppress that truth in the area of sex (Just as I was doing in my twenties). Not only is there no shame here, as noted from the Superbowl halftime performance, but sexual sin is celebrated in our culture and sadly in some of our churches in the name of compassion.

3) I see a lot of well-meaning Christians who are guided by God’s mercy side say things like “As long as it is between two consenting adults, we should just let them be and its all good. Who cares who you are having sex with?”

So just to clarify, are you saying regardless of the choices made by two consenting adults regarding sexual activity they both chose to be involved in, we should never say those choices and actions are sinful and lead to pain, sorrow and death and to do so is unloving and unkind?

Well, if that is your stance, ok. I want you to know I do not agree with you, but I have no requirement that we agree here to love you and please know that I am glad that God brought you into my life.

I just want to give two examples here where I believe that even the most compassion and grace filled people would, if they would reflect, agree these actions would not be appropriate and it would actually be ok to admit these actions are wrong and not support them:

A) When a Man and Woman have been married for twenty years, and the Man goes out to have sexual relations with another woman. The man may say he and this second woman are consenting adults who “love each other” and that “love is love” but true love is sacrificial commitment and not self-serving feeling based like this. Saying “love is love” will not change the knife he is plunging into his wife’s soul by this betrayal. I personally am very comfortable to denounce these actions as shameful and that this is sinful and wrong for this man to selfishly bring so much pain to his wife.

B) If you are sitting in a McDonalds with a friend, and suddenly a couple next to you starts to strip and have sex with each other right there in the middle of McDonalds with everyone looking on, I think most people would agree this is not appropriate and this would be a shameful act. In fact, unlike the prior case of adultery, in this case it is not only immoral, but this is also illegal, and the couple would be arrested. It does not matter if this couple says they “love one another” and “love is love,” this choice to have sex in this manner is shameful.

I could go on and on here with other examples, but you get the point. I hope we can agree then that despite two consenting adults claiming they “love each other,” that there are times where if I say it is wrong and sinful to choose to have sexual activity with another consenting adult, that is not some vile hatred and bigoted thing to say. It is simply decency that God has programmed into all of us including the most devout Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc. While the bible would make this point clear, honestly even if you have not read the bible, God expects you to understand this as He has written His moral laws into your heart. Should you choose to deliberately suppress this truth as discussed in the bible in the book of Romans, it is shameful, and this sin will lead to pain, suffering and Death.

This means placing moral boundaries around sexual activity between two consenting adults is not hateful as our US culture often tells us but is designed to protect us and is loving and kind.

Coming back to the Bible, Jesus has clearly confirmed that God’s design for Sexual activity is between one adult male, I.E., one Man, and one adult female, I.E., one woman, in the confines of a committed marriage union of a single Husband to a single wife.

Matthew 19:4 (Jesus said) “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

So, first, Jesus is clearly saying here we were all created and born as either male or female and nothing we do can change that. I could have for example cosmetic surgery as a man to try to outwardly appear as a woman, but I will never have the ability to give birth, I will in every cell of my body have XY chromosomes instead of XX, etc. I will in fact always remain a male, even as my daughters will always remain female regardless of any future cosmetic choices they could make, and they will never have the ability to impregnate someone and every cell in their body will remain as XX and not be XY.

This statement is biblically true, but also it is scientifically provable. Not all will agree with this clearly demonstratable truth and that is ok, and I love anyone that disagrees with me, but I personally believe to deny this truth will bring pain and suffering.

We all have to come to our own conclusions here, but for me personally as I process, when we have teenagers understandably struggling to fit in, who feel like their body is weird, etc. I just do not believe the loving approach is to say “Your right, you are weird. In order to be accepted you need to take puberty blockers that will ensure you will be sterile and never be able to have children of your own in the future, and you need to go through sexual mutilation surgery that will ensure you will never be able to fully enjoy sex within a marriage in the future in the way that God designed it.

Your telling me that is a more loving and compassionate message to these teenage kids than telling this struggling teen that it is normal as a teenager to feel disconnected and an outsider, to feel weird about your body, etc. but to encourage them they are wonderfully designed in the very image of God and while kids may at times be cruel, they have a Heavenly Father who loves them beyond measure and as such they can rest in that and that Gods love for them is not dependent on worldly accomplishments or success, He simply loves them.

If you think my encouraging a teen like this would be hateful, again, we will have to agree to disagree, but personally I think the term “Gender affirming health care” when applied to children that leads to puberty blockers and sexual mutilation operations is shameful to encourage as they are not old enough to fully understand the consequences of these actions. Anyone that went through with that I believe is loved by God and he offers Grace and forgiveness to all. However, remaining in a place where truth is denied will simply lead to more pain in my opinion. We see this as many who transition express this pain openly, and some commit suicide after transitioning as this is not the solution.

Second, Jesus is saying that choosing to engage in sexual activity is beautiful when it occurs in a committed marriage relationship between one man and one woman. God has designed sex to work this way to protect the individuals from being ripped apart from emotional breakups after bonding to one another via sex and to provide a safe spot for children to grow up with both a mother and a father.

I heard a great analogy for this. If you build a fire in your fireplace at your home, you can enjoy the warmth of this fire in safety, but should you choose to build the fire not in the fireplace where it was designed, but directly on the carpet in your living room, the fire will burn up your home and bring great harm. In the same way, sex within a committed marriage of one man and one woman is designed to be enjoyable by God, but God warns that taking sex outside that safe environment is sin and while it may seem pleasurable, it actually will in the end bring pain, sorrow, and death.

As such, for me personally I can only encourage people to chose to have sexual activity within the safety of a committed marriage of one man to one woman. This is how I have encouraged my own daughters to live, and this is how I live. (I am a widower, so this means currently as a follower of Jesus I abstain from all sexual activity. No need to pity me. While I loved being married, my life as a single adult is very full and Gods guidance to me in this area is a blessing, not a curse. In the end, Jesus is enough). I will love those who disagree, but out of love for them, I will never encourage sexual activity outside this safe boundary.

Conclusions:I understand being involved in shameful acts. I have had to repent myself and change my mind to agree with God often in the past. I have found that God is not being unreasonable in telling me I am on the wrong path and calling me to change, but rather He always without fail has called me to repentance out of a great and abiding love He has for me. He hates to see my sin bring me pain, and He knows His path for me will in the end be better for me and for those around me. My God is for me and not against me and He is for you as well.

So, my advice, If God is showing you areas in your life where your choices are shameful, then embrace that shame and change your mind on that sin to see things as God does and change your path to the one God is calling you to, a path of a better and more abundant life. Once you have done this and repented, then my advice is to accept the Grace and forgiveness of God. We have all done things in our past we wish we could go back and change. This is not possible, but this is not where God calls you. He calls you to today and the future. The only thing from the past he expects is to learn from it, in the present, receive the amazing grace He has for you.

In addition, we always should love the sinner with humility and compassion since we all struggle with sin, but as part of that Love, let us love them in truth and not support or affirm actions that will bring them pain in the end.

P.S. If you are struggling with sin (any type, not just sexual immorality), the good news is if you will submit to the Lordship of Jesus, repent and confess your sin to your Heavenly Father to whom you are beyond precious, He is Faithful and just to forgive you of your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness and to take your shame and exchange it for Jesus righteousness and Honor.

We celebrate this weekend that Jesus died on the cross to pay the eternal price for our sins, and He has risen from the dead and because He has, He has freed us of the curse of sin and death, and in Jesus we have an eternal Hope that we can cling to. Happy Easter to you and your families.