Shame

[newnature]

Far too many believers are feeling dirty, worthless and ashamed of themselves; shame is a silent, but deadly disease that pollutes the lifeblood of many believers faith. As a result, we feel unclean and therefore unworthy to approach God and have the living and intimate relationship that he wants to have with us. Shame prevents us from intimacy with God because it makes us feel unworthy and distant from him. God’s standard is nothing less than perfection and none of us measure up, if we did or we ever could measure up sufficiently righteous for heaven through our performance, we would not have needed a savior at all. For it is God’s grace, not our striving, that makes us accepted and acceptable. It is God’s performance through Jesus Christ, not our trying hard to perform, that eradicates our shame. Some of us spend most of our life giving up. We are tired, burned out, disillusioned, depressed, addicted to something. People around us feel frustrated by the huge disparity between our capabilities and our performance. They either pep talk us concerning our value, or shame us for not performing. No one can have a close relationship with us; we push people away physically and emotionally, and push God away. We are the ones in families, churches, and society that people take care of-for a while, until we are given up on because of our lack of response. For all the performance-based people around us, we are simply bad for public relations. Once in a while we find ourselves in an environment that shames us for being so defective, then we start trying harder, but it does not last for long, we are simply out of gas to start with, we merely survive.

God’s Reconciliation of Man, read more about it at http://godsreconciliation.blogspot.com/

[Divine Insight]

There is a grave problem with the scenario you put forth here.

It may well be a true scenario. In fact, I believe that it most likely is a true scenario, there are people out there who are feeling totally unworthy of God and ashamed of themselves.

But do you see the problem with this truth?

If this is true (and it probably is true), then what becomes of these people who are feeling so ashamed of themselves and so undeserving of God's love? Are they cast into a state of eternal damnation after they die?

What kind of a God would condemn people who are feeling unworthy of him?

As you say, these people feel shame, rejection and depression, and for this a God is going to condemn them to eternal damnation?

So there's already something dramatically wrong with this whole religious paradigm.

You can't have decent honest people sitting around feeling ashamed of themselves and rejected by God, only to have God condemning them for feeling this way. That's absurd.

So if this is the situation, then there's clearly something dramatically wrong with this God's "Master Plan" as well as his system of justice.

Or, far more likely, the religion is just a false delusion to begin with.

[puddleglum]

[Replying to post 2 by Divine Insight]

You can't have decent honest people sitting around feeling ashamed of themselves and rejected by God, only to have God condemning them for feeling this way. That's absurd.

God doesn't condemn people for feeling ashamed of themselves; people often feel ashamed because they see their true spiritual condition and realize that they deserve condemnation because of the way they have lived. This feeling can be the first step to salvation if it causes them to turn to God for forgiveness.

[Overcomer]

When we recognize that we are sinners, we feel shame which should rightly lead to confession and repentance. When we accept Christ and are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are given right-standing with God. When he looks at us, he sees us as righteous. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Rom. 8:1). This should not lead to arrogance, but to humility, and we must walk that fine line between being too cocky because of God's love for us while still recognizing that we could slip up and fail him at any time.

[help3434]

[Replying to post 3 by theophilus40]

Who is responsible for our "true spiritual condition"? Humans did not create their own human nature and neither did tigers create their own tiger nature. If a tiger attacks someone because it was following its tiger nature, does it deserve to go to hell? If there is a creator isn't the consequence of the creator of creating tiger nature in the first place? Same concept for human nature.

[help3434]

Whoops, sorry I didn't realize that this was the Bible Study subforum when I posted. This is not the place for debate. I will start a thread on this subject in the main apologetics forum.