For much of my adult life, I have wrestled with the power of shame, and its significance in the making and breaking of the self, and of relationships.  I have struggled with its subversive destructiveness all of my life, and as a result thought as a younger man I would take some time one day to thoroughly wrestle with the topic theologically, if not as a counselor (when I had aspirations back in the day to go that route in my life).  Well, I was sidetracked somewhere along the way and never went for that Psy.D., but the power and impact that shame has on lives still makes me pause and ponder- what truly is this beast, and how do we deal with it?

Over the past two decades I have collected a few books on the subject- books I would one day plow through and harvest for those key thoughts that would help me wrestle with the monster.  Time has slid by, and I never fully gave myself to the study.  The books have remained on my bookshelf, unread.  But they’ve called out to me off and on over the years.

Well, maybe it is time.

One of the significant books I have had for a long time finally found its way into my hands last night. “The Depleted Self”, by Donald Capps.  How?

The last few days I have been reflecting on my own faith journey, on a broken friendship, and on the role that shame has had in how I have handled my life.  I have made a number of purely bad decisions in my life, and have probably missed many opportunities for personal growth as well, because I have let shame drive me around.  Shame will do that to you.  Shame really wants to take your life from you, and leave you for dead.

Well, several tweets from Tullian Tchividjian (@PastorTullian) over the last few days led to articles that talked about how change in a person is a product of liberal grace in our lives- God changes us because His love and His grace penetrate into the deepest part of us, and we let Him perform surgery on our hearts.  We can’t effect any changes in ourselves outside of signing the waiver and saying “Yes, God- do Your work in me.”

Reflecting on the radical nature and power of grace in those articles, I fell back thinking about my own heart, my own life- and the lives of others- for whom guilt and redemption from named sins is not the deepest heart issue.  Under the surfacing sins I wrestle with daily is a deeper wound that has no name, and that has festered within for years.  Undoubtedly it is a wound caused not necessarily by a specific sin, but by the fact I live in this fallen world, and I have succumbed to lies received along the way that have suggested although I live, I am without value, without merit, without significance.  I have developed a heart that struggles to trust, which I have shaped that way largely all on my own-  but, if Christian theology has merit, I was aided by some ethereal agents that wouldn’t mind ushering me to my destruction.  And so my heart returned to the question, “What about shame, God?  What about the hearts of those who can never seem to find their feet, who have been bowed by an inability to trust well, to trust deeply, or to lean on the love of others?”

Shame as an experience is uncomfortable.  Shame as a state of living is downright crippling, because shame as a spiritual cancer sucks life out of the soul, and the ability to trust out of the heart.  Shame works to strip the heart of love- both the ability to receive it, and the ability to give it.

I got through two key chapters in Capps’ book last night.  Several observations were significant to me.

For one, in the Western tradition of Christian theology, spiritual formation has been all about Christ’s work of propititation to set people free from guilt.  Guilt has been the focus of Western theological thought related to sin and salvation since the Church Fathers started recording reflections.  And yet, in Genesis when Adam and Eve fell, the violent effects of the fall were manifest in terms of shame.  Capps is one of a handful of recent thinkers who has worked to understand the place of shame in theological thought, and in the care of souls.

Capps also provides a language and a framework for looking at shame-related issues that challenge throwing every manifestation of a spiritual issue as simply the result of behavioral or moral choices.

For Capps, shame is what we experience when ultimately face failure, and at heart, failing ourselves.  These deep personal failures lead to isolation and trust issues, and ultimately, devoid of sustaining relationships, the person becomes the “depleted self.”

I spent a good evening taking notes on the topic, from whatever floated through my head to scriptures that struck me as relevant to the topic, to quotes from Capps book.  I have other books to look at on the subject, and I am looking forward to exploring how God and His grace overthrow this spiritual slumlord.

What the study did affirm to me, though, is this: that we were made to live in grace, and not enslaved in shame.  Shame wasn’t, and isn’t, part of God’s design for bringing our lives into His.