Dealing with the sense of shame I have battled with all my life

I can’t remember how and when I came across today’s passage, but I do know that it is the passage from all of these lesser-known books of the minor prophets at the end of the old Testament that I have kept coming back to again and again and again over the years. I find it incredibly moving. It taps into something within me.

VISION#4: clean garments for the high priest

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. The Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?’

Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. The angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Take off his filthy clothes.’

Then he said to Joshua, ‘See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.’

Then I said, ‘Put a clean turban on his head.’ So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him, while the angel of the Lord stood by.

The angel of the Lord gave this charge to Joshua: ‘This is what the Lord Almighty says: “If you will walk in obedience to me and keep my requirements, then you will govern my house and have charge of my courts, and I will give you a place among these standing here.’  Zechariah 3:1-7

Joshua is a good person. A respectable person with an important role to play in society. A role model of how to live in relationship with God.

But he’s not perfect. He’s as human as the rest of us. As flawed. And Satan is on his shoulder ready to whisper in his ear all the ways in which he has fallen short, all the ways in which he is not good enough to be standing in the presence of the divine.

But God has other ideas.

‘Take off his filthy clothes.’

He replaces them with fine garments and puts a clean turban on his head.

He then gives him a role, a position in society, a responsibility and reminds him of the importance of trusting God and doing it God’s way.

This vision is all about shame: the shame each one of us can carry with us on a daily basis. This sense of shame I have lived with and battled with all my life.

As  a child, I grew up ashamed to be me. I felt that I was a constant disappointment to my parents. That I was not good enough. That I would never be good enough. That nothing I did would ever be enough. I could always have tried harder, done more, been more like my cousin who was a year younger than me and but in every way, more perfect than I was.

In church, I listened week in week out to sermons about how we were all unworthy, all flawed, all sinners. My Christian upbringing was all based on this verse –

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…Romans 3:23

And we never made it as far as the next verse –

and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Romans 3:24

There was a definite full stop after the end of that first phrase. I didn’t discover the existence of the second half of the verse until I was in my thirties. – and am still working out the reality of it in my life to this day.

By the time I became a teenager, I had such a negative view of myself that however hard I tried, I felt like a constant failure. I despised who I was, because it wasn’t what anyone wanted it to be. Of course, I didn’t show this to anyone. That wasn’t the done thing. I presented as cheerful and hard-working, but under the surface, I felt dirty and shameful. I wrote a poem about a beautiful pond with a dragonfly skimming across the surface and yet just below the surface, everything was murky and stinky and disgusting.

I yearned to serve God and yet felt so unworthy. I remember seeing the film ‘Gandhi’ at the cinema when I was about 15 and longing to become a missionary for God somewhere in the world, but knowing that if I presented myself before any panel, I would be rejected for not being good enough.

If you really knew me, you wouldn’t like me at all.

That’s what I carried into every friendship, every friendship. I could never feel completely accepted for who I was.

Shame is different from guilt. Shame is a feeling; guilt is a fact. Guilt is an appropriate response to doing something wrong; guilt requires action to put it right; guilt is grounded in reality. Shame is harder to put your finger on. It’s a pervasive, overwhelming feeling. You feel unclean all the time without really knowing why. It clouds your worldview.

Shame: A Concealed, Contagious, and Dangerous Emotion
Shame informs you of an internal state of inadequacy, dishonour, or regret.  Psychology Today

And so you can imagine how this passage makes me feel. I can entirely relate to the idea of standing in dirty clothes before the divine and how it would feel to have those clothes removed and to be dressed in clean garments. This symbolism works well for me. I have entered – and am entering on a continual basis day by day – into a relationship with God where I can stand before Him without shame. It’s in His presence where I can feel most ‘me’: accepted and loved and treasured for who I am. It’s other people I still have huge issues with!

And it’s only when I’m reminded of that image of a me without shame, that best version of myself that is free to be me, that I can be released into the role that God has for me. The unique role that only I can play in this world. I have to keep coming back to the source every single day – to sit with myself in the presence of the divine ‘justified freely by his grace’ to keep my role, my purpose, my intent firmly grounded in my desire to serve the one true God, a desire born out of gratitude and love.

This is all that matters. What other people think is irrelevant. What I believe other people think is probably not even true!

In royal robes I don’t deserve, I live to serve His majesty.   King of Kings, Majesty