Your name on the shame wall of fame.
According to Eric Erikson children between the
ages of 2-3 yrs now begin to struggle with issues of independence or autonomy,
they develop a sense of wanting to do things for themselves. In some small way they begin to make sense of
their environment, they “hold” and “let go,” they stand and fall, show
acceptance or resistance, they bite to express anger, and all that as a way of
adjusting to a “new” environment.
Learning is largely based on trial and error; it can
be a chaotic stage of development if left unmonitored. As Erikson says, “As his
environment encourages him to’ stand on his own feet,’ it must protect him against
meaningless and arbitrary experiences of shame and of early doubt.”
The Kingdom Imperative is a journey of faith;
at first, we depend on the faith of others, but as we grow our own faith must
begin to take shape and form. Like the
crowd in Samaria, we believe, not because we heard others say it, but because
we ourselves have found it to be true, Jn 4:42 They said to the
woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard
for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.”
As we grow in the Kingdom experience, we
develop a sense of our spiritual surrounding.
Even though our spiritual senses are not fully developed, we gradually
begin to understand that there is a world beyond our little world. Our faith is still dependent, but it is
beginning the journey towards independence.
Our spiritual senses open up to other possibilities beyond where we now
stand. We begin to exercise our faith in
an unseen God; we begin to cultivate a sense of the existence of things beyond
what our physical senses can capture.
Child development does not happen in a vacuum, it
needs an environment in which to thrive.
Initially, we need a parent, someone who will facilitate the birth of
new beginnings; and then we need a mentor who will guide growth in the next
levels of development. As they grow,
children learn more through seeing what others do, than what they are taught by
word of mouth. They are therefore likely
to do things as others do them in their immediate surrounding.
Spiritual growth, like its physical counterpart, can
only take place within a favourable setting.
It is God who gives growth, but we must prepare the environment. It’s like walking into a learning centre and preparing
to promote education. Spiritual growth
does not occur adequately in an environment that chokes the harmony of its free
flow.
During this stage, children take on more challenges
built on the previous, and again here the situation calls for patience and
parental and insight. The key word
during this process is guidance not control, and that assumes a presence around
the child of a more informed adult to nurture the experience. If a child is encouraged to explore the
developing “senses,” then he/she is likely to develop a sense of independence,
but if shamed too much he/she becomes dependent and may grow with a sense of
doubting his/her own competence to do things.
Nobody wants to be “caught with his or her pants
down,” and according to Erikson children can only take a limited amount of
shaming, beyond that point it becomes too heavy, especially if done by significant others. Even adults
don’t like to be shamed or exposed in public, if caught you often damn those
who brought you out in the open instead of seeing your mistake. Children don’t take kindly to it either, or
because they can’t fight back, they often find other ways to express their
anger, what Erikson (1980:253) calls “Defiant shamelessness.”
According to Erikson “Too much shaming does not
lead to genuine propriety but to a secret determination to get away with
things.” Children who are shamed too
much wait until the “shamer” is out of the picture, and then do what they were
shamed not to do. A child scolded for
bed-wetting tried very hard to stop, but it just kept happening. Every time it happened, the parent would
shame him and call him names. In the
end, not knowing how to deal with the situation, the child responded angrily,
“I am going to do it again tonight!”
Around these ages’ children learn by “Permission”
and “Prohibition,” they must be judiciously guided into knowing that
some things we do and some things we don’t.
Their quest for independence is right but it must be protected from
becoming a danger to itself by caring and experienced guidance, if you are a
smart parent you start re-arranging the house to avoid accidents, you put
poisons out of reach, you make sure the bathroom basins and tubs are empty and
the swimming pool is covered. 2-3 year
olds don’t have a fully developed capacity to see right from wrong, or danger
from safety; someone else must prepare a safe environment for them without
stalling their development.
Every stage of development is a crisis for the
child; it involves new discoveries, new experiences, and new adjustments, in
Erikson’s “Autonomy Vs. Shame and Doubt” the safety of the child is not
dependent on the child but on the parent.
The parent must ensure that nothing in the immediate surrounding proves
hazardous to the child. Here you
encourage good behaviour by creating an environment conducive to the
development of the child. If a child
around 2-3 yrs old drowns in a pool, we don’t blame the child but the parent
for negligence or downright carelessness.
For the child development is experiential, it comes
in small progressive instalments building up to a larger experience. There are some things that the adult
understands, which the child does not grasp at all. In the meantime, children thrive under the
watchful and protective eye of a thoughtful and vigilant parent.
Shame is when you bring disgrace upon yourself, or
when others bring it upon you.
Deservedly or not, shame in whatever shape has weakening consequences on
the shamed. In an unforgiving world,
shaming others is big business; we all know of the Paparazzi that go chasing
famous people around the world, just to find some shame to pin on them. People who shame others don’t do it because
they hold the moral high ground, they just have not been exposed yet.
In the Kingdom Imperative, every step of the
way will have those who scrutinise how you make your move, and if you worry
about people too much, you could miss your step. Shamers are not interested in your progress,
they are after your failures; that’s what makes the media popular, it sells
more on human weakness than on human strength.
For some, shaming others is a political game; it provides the platform
where they can promote their fame; the same fame that may become their shame.
Erikson
is right, when your environment shames you too much; you begin to doubt your
own potential to deliver. People and
circumstances inject your thoughts with toxic guilt and other trappings of your
past; and in covert and overt ways everything says to you, “A leopard can
never change its spots.” That may be
true in the natural, but the Kingdom Imperative is a spiritual journey
where a person is born again, not a cosmetic dressing of the outside.
One of
the things we learn in the journey is to be patient with ourselves. This may come as a surprise, but God knows
that we are human. God knows that we
will constantly be challenged by temptations common to humanity; and when
others choose to condemn where God forgives, we must stay with God. Most biblical personalities were not perfect;
only Christ measured up to the required moral standard; as for the rest of us, he
saved by his grace.
We possess the land one acre at a time.
John the apostle is particularly fond of using the
phrase “children of God.” In the
Mat 6: 33 imperatives, we travel the road of a child, and naturally, it is
dark, scary, and full of unanswered questions about tomorrow, like its physical
counterpart spiritual birth can best be understood in developmental
stages. The “Kingdom Imperative”
is more than an event or a destination, it is an unfolding life, and we grow in and
into it as we travel along. It opens up
before us as physical life opens up before a child, one stage at a time. The Kingdom of God is ours, but we can
only possess it one acre at a time, Jesus said, Lk 12:32 “Don’t
be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the Kingdom.”
When Israel was called out of Egypt, no one knew
what the demands of the journey would be, not even Moses. They left Egypt jubilant, happy, and
trusting, but all of that was to change when the challenges of the desert began
to set in. It was a journey in stages
and each stage would have its own crises and experiences.
All Moses knew was that God was calling, victory was
assured but it would come in installments, Ex 23:29-30 “But I will
not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and
the wild animals too numerous for you.
Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have
increased enough to take possession of the land.”
God knew it would not be easy passage, but God was
ready to guide them through it all, and God proved faithful. Ex 13:21 “By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of
cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them
light, so that they could travel by day or night.”
Growth is a journey of faith.
Mat 6: 33 is an invitation on a spiritual journey of
trust, and as the journey unfolds we too learn through “Prohibition” and
“Permission,” some things we are allowed to do or to have, some things
not, and others may be postponed for a later stage of spiritual
development. Our faith in God is
nurtured by God’s nature and not what heredity, environment, and experience
dictate.
Psychologists are very strong on heredity and
environment and how they ultimately influence personality. The “Kingdom Imperative” is an
invitation to develop a robust spiritual personality and to participate in the Divine
nature of God. 2Pe 1:4
“Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that
through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption
in the world caused by evil desires.”
Whenever Israel reduced the pilgrimage to the level of the natural,
their trust was severely tried and tested.
In the early stages of spiritual development we need
guidance, we may not know or understand why some things don’t work out our way
at the time we want them to, but later we begin to understand why, and perhaps
even see the hazard the situation might have been had it happened when and how
we wanted it to.
Moses was right, Ex 15:13 “In your unfailing love you will lead the
people you have redeemed. In your
strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.” Any journey into the unknown needs a guide,
especially if you have not been that way before. Only a fool would take off on a journey
without some form of guidance or leadership, the psalmist prayed, Ps 61:2
“From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead
me to the rock that is higher than I.”
One size fits all is a misfit.
Experimentation is a big part of the Kingdom
journey, like little children we develop an initial sense of independence, as
we grow, we begin to touch and release, stand and fall, and a host of other
things that children do as they begin to explore their surroundings. With time we learn that change is more than
adapting to one’s environment, it means changing it. Religion wants you to “fit in,” a robust
spirituality like new wine will always break through old wineskins.
In the unfolding process of the journey, the focus
is not on who we are but on who we are becoming. God is not preoccupied with our little acts
of ignorance, but with how the behaviour can be turned into a learning experience
in our spiritual development. Religion
tends to condemn behaviour without any consideration of a person’s level of
spiritual development. Teachers of rules
and regulations put up a list against the wall for observance, and everyone
else is condemned or applauded based on how well or not they are doing relative
to that list.
Our problem from the onset is that any checklist for
behaviour is as flawed as the people who draw it, because there are no
guarantees that they themselves will not be condemned by the set of rules they
prescribe for others. That was often the
master’s challenge to the Pharisees.
Rules and regulations usually don’t correct behaviour; they punish
movement away from what is prescribed.
Religion encourages uniformity (one size fits all),
and the “Kingdom Imperative” promotes synergy within spiritual
diversity. When we encourage everybody
to do the same thing or even put on the same piece of clothing (Seaparo), as is
the case in many African churches in South Africa, we succeed only in changing the person from
outside, and the point is to change people and to be changed from the
inside-out (born-again).
This “outside” religious thing is not uniquely
African; religion in many eastern and western countries is identified more in
religious garb than a genuine spirituality born from within. Religion prescribes perfection and
spirituality facilitates transformation.
Religion is stagnant waters, which is why people at one time, or another
hit the ceiling; true spirituality flows from within, Jesus taught, Jn
7:38 “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of
living water will flow from within him.”
Naturally, living waters flow, and flowing waters live. Legend has it that the Jordan River is
rolling with life only to die in the stagnant waters of the Dead Sea.
Unity in spiritual diversity
The ultimate objective of the “Kingdom Imperative”
is the development of a healthy spiritual personality. The point is not to adhere to a set of some
human designed systems and rituals but to facilitate growth and development in
the context of responsible spiritual independence. Just as people grow to have different
personalities, the expression of one person’s spiritual personality will be
different from another. The challenge of
differing personalities is not to clash but to exploit their diversity for a
common good.
As we seek the Kingdom of God, we are allowed
to be different because each one of us is called for a different purpose. We will burn our fingers as we travel along,
but that is characteristic of initiative and exploration, we learn hands-on as
the journey unfolds. Even the best
engineers learn from accidents, companies call back their products all the time
because human ingenuity will always be flawed at one level or another. It is painful burning one’s fingers, but it
is also a powerful learning curve. I may
burn my finger in a fire, but the same fire can be used in cooking a delicious
meal.
Shame exposes where guidance proposes, usually when
people expose others they don’t offer alternatives except a push back into the
monotonous rut of business-as-usual, guidance proposes alternatives and
demonstrates their superiority as opposed to what is commonly held to be
true. Shame says, “My way or the
highway,” and guidance responds, “The highway is not necessarily your
way.” It would be a dull and monotonous
world if we all did things in the same way.
Focusing on the tip of an iceberg
Only John records the story of a woman caught in
adultery (7:53-8:11), those who threw her at the feet of Jesus wanted not only
to test the Master but to “shame” her in public. In his usual deep spiritual perception Jesus
said, Jn 8:7 “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the
first to throw a stone at her.” No
one dared the challenge; they one-by-one silently left the scene, condemned
where they sought to condemn another.
They were ready to “shame” her in public, but they
did not want to be shamed. No one wants
to be shamed, whether in public or in private.
Human nature thrives on that; we want to expose others for precisely the
same things we don’t want to be known for, it runs in the animal instinct of
“eat or be eaten.”
Exposure makes you feel naked and want to hide from
the full glare of those watching you.
Some of those who aim to stone you may have participated in the very
wrong they want to stone you for, because in the end human behaviour is
influenced by its environment.
Jesus did not overlook the woman’s recklessness but
he damned the crowd’s manner of correcting her behaviour. They reacted to the tip of an iceberg, and
Jesus spoke to a deeper and more hidden problem, Jn 8:11 “Go now
and leave your life of sin.” The crowd sought to stop her behaviour
once and for all, they would have killed her but that would not guarantee
correction in behaviour, in fact it probably would be more punitive than
corrective. For Jesus the problem was
not human behaviour but human nature, that is where the axe would have to
strike the deep roots of the tree, otherwise the seed would sprout again.
For Jesus the problem was deeper, it was not on the
surface as everybody else observed, it was rooted in the woman’s sinful
nature. She struggled with the same
issues that everybody else was struggling with, perhaps in different ways but
struggling anyhow. They walked away
because they were just as bad as the woman, shaming her was essentially a
defense mechanism, they sought to hide their own evil in projecting and
magnifying hers, and in one plainspoken statement the Master exposed them
inside out and they dismissed themselves.
Seeing beyond the fault and identifying the need.
The Christ of the four gospels had an amazing
ability to see beyond the average, he participated in human experience yet he
stood above human experience. The “Kingdom
Imperative” is an invitation to transcend human experience even though we
stand within it, to participate in its exigencies and emergencies, and yet
develop an attitude that stands above the crises of human existence. A robust spirituality is not removed from
life experiences; the experiences are the context in which it expresses itself
vigorously.
When the crowd wanted to stone the harlot, they were
doing the obvious thing, the usual way of dealing with the problem. When Christ entered the scene, doing the
obvious thing was not the solution, he introduced a new and living way, the
woman walked away delivered not condemned.
This is the spiritual insight we develop in the Kingdom
journey; we see beyond the symptom and identify the cause. The natural tendency to deal with the surface
of issues is flawed because it does not address the real underlying
problem. It focuses on the immediate,
only to be caught up in another part of an unfolding process. Those who caused the problem don’t want to be
identified with it, and usually they are not in the welcoming team when those
chickens come home to roost (Senge).
A child who deals with the consequences of constant
and unbearable shaming usually has to confront his/her struggles long after
those who caused them are gone. This is
a common phenomenon not only in child development, but also in almost every
other sphere of life. Every tyrant of
history usually leaves his chaos for others to clean up.
God loves you; you should love you too!
No one must remain condemned by the negative seeds
others have sown in one’s childhood.
Some seeds grow to be as strong as the African Baobab tree, with roots
growing robust and deep into the ground, but the damage can still be
undone. Psychologists tell us that
behaviour is learned, and therefore most behaviour can be unlearned, the
process may be long, difficult, and tedious, but it is possible.
The first thing to do is to begin a process of
cleaning up your subconscious, identify negative images, and replace them with
positive ones. The thing with negative
pictures of shame is that they operate on an unconscious level much like a
submarine under water. The only way to
attack a submarine is to use “underwater” arsenals; if you use surface
artillery, the attack will not be effective, because the enemy will surface
elsewhere.
The scriptures are full of positive images, and this
is where you begin your “born again” experience. People are afraid to be exposed, but if we
put our trust in God, we can begin to peel off our childhood experiences one
layer at a time. Like a child, it is
okay to be naked in the presence of God, totally exposed and with nothing to hide.
Painful experiences have a way of “drying up” in us,
but if we let go and allow the Divine Spirit of God to gradually wet our
parched ground, we will gradually discover a new and living way. Images of biblical scripture are empowering
in many ways, and they help you develop a sense of how God sees you.
This is where “fire and brimstone” Christianity can
reverse its traditional “shaming” role, we could begin with helping people
understand the nature of God, especially God’s love for us, like the psalmist
we could help people sing, Ps 117:2 “For great is his love toward
us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures
forever.”
Love in the scriptures is not a noun but a verb; it is mercy and grace
reaching out to the undeserving. If
“Jesus is the answer,” we need to know the questions, not by creating more
questions but by providing the answers to life’s most unbearable circumstances.
It is now widely accepted that Love is
humanity’s greatest need, the world has many variations of it, and many times,
it leaves people with gaping emotional wounds.
What we need is not love as we understand it, but Love as God has
given it to us, Jn 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world that he
gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but
have eternal life. For God did not send
his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through
him.”
The best way to undo the effects of “shame” is to
feel genuinely loved and totally accepted for who you are, not what others want
you to be. Sometimes our environment
fails to be a loving surrounding; even then, we can draw on God’s unfailing
love for our own spiritual sustenance.
Where the natural environment says, give it up! Remember God believes in you, that is why
Jesus died.
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