How Shame Impacts Us and How We Are Encouraged to Respond

We all have heard comments like this before: 

"My dad saw me at a track meet after not seeing each other for a while. After my race, I went to say hi to him, and the first words he said to me were, 'You. Got. Fat.' I was hurt because we hadn't seen each other in months, and those were the first words out of his mouth."

“Hey, Jeff, you sure are fat.” (By the way, that was a comment I heard in 9th grade)

Shaming is a deflecting mechanism; we are take the focus off of ourselves and we place emphasis on others in a negative light, We we shame, we create divisions and do not build bridges to strengthen relationships.  In those moments of shaming, we encourage people to seek revenge and we do not provide solutions to whatever it is they find themselves in. 

Shaming doesn’t work. Yet, we do it all the time. We’ve seen a shift in shaming, as it is now an everyday part of our social media world, but shaming has been going on for a long time. 

I’d like to share with you a passage of Scripture where shaming is an underlying current in the situation that is before us. 

As we prepare to read this passage, we, the reader can see that we have a Samaritan woman who is at the well at noon. She’s there then because not many people are there at that hour. It’s hot. Why is she there then? For one, she is a recipient of feeling and experiencing shame. 

Let’s read. 

John 4:5-9

5 So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)

It’s important to understand the context to this passage of Scripture. When you hear the Samaritan woman asking this question, you have a greater appreciation for this moment, where this Samaritan woman was not shamed for once in her life! 

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.)

The Samaritan woman was responding to the heart of Jesus that crossed barriers. She was absolutely amazed at Jesus' conduct, because she and other Samaritans were used to scorn and shame. That’s all this woman knew. She was thrown under the rug, ignored, made to feel “less than.” 

This was nothing new for her and for the Samaritans. The bitter hatred between the Jews and Samaritans goes way back, ”hundreds of years.” 

In 721 b.c. the Assyrians swept through Israel, the Northern Kingdom, and took the inhabitants off to Assyria. During their years in Assyria, many Jews intermarried with the Assyrians and Cuthites.

In 587 b.c. Babylon took the people of the Southern Kingdom, Judah, captive into Babylon. But in Babylon there was no intermarriage, and when the Jews came back to their homes they were of unadulterated Jewish blood. 

And because of this, they refused to accept their northern neighbors, and both sides developed an ugly hatred for each other, so they would say things to bring shame upon the Samaritans. 

The shaming was so bad that Jewish rabbis would say, "Let no man eat the bread of the Cuthites [the Samaritans], for he who eats their bread is as he who eats swine's flesh." 

And we know that was a “no-no.” 

A popular prayer in those days said, "And Lord, do not remember the Samaritans in the resurrection." So it was truly amazing when Jesus crossed those lines. Think about it. Jesus reached out to the unloved. He didn’t follow suit. He cared for those in his presence. 

So often we don’t realize the power of our words and our actions. The consequences of shaming can impact generations, not just individuals as we see in this passage from John 4. 

We hear this kind of talk and we see this negative behavior over and over again and we begin to say to ourselves, 

“I’m not worthy or I’m not good enough for love or there is no way I belong. I’m unlovable. I’m nothing.”  And this type of feeling can have effects upon our children and our children’s children and our children’s children’s children. 

It’s this kind of language of hearing in our heads “I’m not worthy or I’m not good enough”  that then becomes for us the voice of shame, and it becomes a feeling that we're all scared to even talk about or bring up. You know that the less we speak about it, the more we have and experience it. The more we dismiss it from our lives,the more likely we are to struggle with addiction, trauma, aggression, depression, eating disorders, bullying, and I could go on and on. 

I’m glad to see that Jesus encountered this woman who only knew shame because in her shame, she walked into this conversation with Jesus believing that she was flawed and unworthy of love and belonging. Jesus saw her as a child of God. I’m also grateful for this Samaritan woman, who moved beyond the shame she felt and was willing to even engage Jesus in a conversation. 

So often when we read John 4, we tend to focus on just the fact that this woman was married multiple times and was living with a man. We never really reside in the understanding that this woman, first of all a Samaritan, was a part of a community of people who were shamed for centuries. 

And the sad thing about this is...we still shame whole communities today. All because they are not like us. 

And that’s not how God made us to be, to be shamed or to shame. We are all made in the image of God and in that image We are wired for love and connection. That is what God desired for us to be - loved and connected. In relationship. When we are absent from that, we suffer.

A heart that is filled with love and not shame or hatred towards others is a heart that crosses the normal barriers of life and reaches out without shaming. A heart of Christ is  a heart and a mind that sees divine potential in its relationships. All relationships. A loving heart is a vulnerable heart, just as Christ's was. I must warn you, this is not a safe path, but it is the only way to go, if we truly want to be free of shame. 

As we can see in John 4 and in other passages, Jesus compels us to such a life. I invite you to accept that kind of life a life filled with love and not shame. Christ can fill that void. 

C. S. Lewis once wrote: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up save in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, ”safe, dark, motionless, airless,” it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”