God Attachment Healing
Hi everyone! Welcome to the God Attachment Healing Podcast. I'm your host, Sam Landa. This podcast is dedicated to Christians who want to understand why they relate to God in the way they do. I explore how our early childhood relationship with our parents--specifically with how they met or did not meet our needs--influences how we relate to ourselves, the church, and to God. Because much of the pains and struggles of life are intertwined in these three areas, I discuss with my guests how we can find healing from the pain, confusion, doubt, and anger experienced in these relationships. If you're interested in learning more about your attachment style and how to heal from the pain you’ve experienced in the relationships mentioned above, then this podcast is for you. Welcome to the show! I'm happy you're here!
God Attachment Healing
When Correction Feels Like Rejection: Understanding Biblical Shame
Send Me Questions on Attachment
What if shame isn't always toxic? In this thought-provoking conversation, theological scholar Jason Glenn challenges our modern assumptions about shame by exploring its biblical foundations and purpose in the Christian life.
Beginning with Hebrew linguistic roots, Jason traces shame throughout Scripture, revealing how both Old and New Testaments present shame as a necessary component of spiritual formation. From Ezra's collective shame before God to Paul's direct confrontation of the Corinthian church, we see biblical examples where shame serves as a catalyst for repentance and growth rather than destruction.
The discussion takes a fascinating turn as Jason demonstrates how our supposedly "shame-free" American culture hasn't actually abandoned shame—we've simply redirected it. While removing shame from behaviors Scripture identifies as harmful, we've intensified it in political and ideological spheres. This cultural blindspot leaves Christians confused about how to appropriately practice biblical correction and accountability.
Perhaps most valuable is the distinction between destructive identity-based shaming ("you always ruin everything") and redemptive behavior-focused correction ("what you're doing is harmful"). When applied with compassion and hope, biblical shame becomes a powerful tool for transformation rather than condemnation.
This episode is the first in a three-part series exploring shame from biblical, psychological, and theological perspectives. Whether you've experienced harmful shaming in church contexts or wonder how to practice loving accountability, this conversation offers a balanced, scripture-based framework for understanding this complex aspect of Christian life.
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My mission is to help you understand your attachment style to learn how you can heal from the pain you’ve experienced in your relationship with God, the church and yourself.
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All right, everyone, welcome back to the God Attachment Healing Podcast. This is a series that I'm going to be doing with a friend of mine, mr Jason Glenn, and we are going to be talking about shame in a three-part series, and our first part is going to be biblical shame and its role in the Christian life. Our topic number two will be shame, guilt and conviction, and our third one would be the theological versus trauma-informed view of shame. So I'm really excited. Jason has been working on his dissertation on shame, on the biblical perspective of shame, and, um, he's going to share his expertise with us, uh, this evening. So I'm looking forward to it. Jason, welcome to the show. I'm happy to have you on man oh, happy to be here, sam.
Speaker 1:It was a great pleasure to talk with you on another show and I look forward to doing this one with you yeah, yeah, so jason was on our podcast minded Minded Timbs, psych and Theo, and that was a great conversation that we had.
Speaker 1:And this one, obviously, we're talking about God attachment healing, and I don't know if I shared this with you, jason, but one of the first versions, I guess, of the podcast was called Created to Connect, and then that transitioned into the Genesis of Shame and then, lastly, the last couple of years it's been God attachment healing. So the genesis of shame is kind of where I was referencing back. I was listening to some old episodes. I'm like man, that's wild to just focus on one element of our human experience, which is shame, and it's a very common experience, not just among Christians but also among people in general, and we see it in the mental health field all the time and again, that's one of our topics that we'll get to. But, yeah, well, just so the audience gets to know you a little bit, why don't you introduce yourself, talk a little bit about your background and just anything that you would like the audience to know about you?
Speaker 2:I'm a Southern Baptist preacher's kid kid. That's where I got my start for sure. And, um, I went to texas a&m university to pursue political science and had, uh, I I sowed my wild oats while I was there and and uh was a pretty rebellious person and and it came to a place in my life where I felt a lot of shame and repented and confessed and got right with God, and so that put me on a track to pursue theological education and ended up getting a bachelor's of biblical studies from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And then I got a master of arts and Christianics from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. And then I taught for a time at a couple of institutions. One I taught at a community college and I taught at a Christian liberal arts college in Tennessee for a while. And then I started teaching at Liberty online in ethics and in the middle of that somewhere I started my PhD in ethics and systematic theology at a school in Belgium Louvre in Belgium, called Evangelical Theological Faculty is the English term for it.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, I've been married for almost 26 years to my wife Ashley. We have four daughters, a couple of grabs from Liberty One's, and then the third is currently there working on her degree, and then we've got a 13-year-old. So we will be parents for quite some time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely, brother, that's great for quite some time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, brother, that's great. I um, one of the cool things about having guests on is just knowing how much of their story and their background and, uh, family life kind of influences the work that you do or how it shows you kind of like a different perspective, and I'm sure your view as a husband and as a father on the topic of shame probably comes up pretty, pretty often, I'm thinking, or sure at least in my own mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, for sure I. I remember, uh, the first ethics class I had, uh at southwestern baptist theological seminary, um in 2000 and and, uh, maybe 2001. And I remember you know us going over, you know, ethics, christian ethics and sexuality and pornography came up in dealing with the fact, the shameful fact in my heart, that I had engaged in a lot of pornography, of course, up until my time of repentance in 1998. And certainly there was always a temptation and struggle to work against. And then I had two daughters, like back to back, um, there in the first part of my education at southwestern, and shame sure was like.
Speaker 2:I remember going to the professor and just saying, hey, look, um, in this whole ethics thing and and this whole, um, pornography thing and this whole sexuality thing, I I've, I'm compelled, you know, to not be this guy that has to to answer to the fact that I'm a father of daughters and who are someday gonna be 18 years old and 25 years old. And here I am and have been lusting, you know, over the last several years of my life you know, lusting over these of these women who are like, who should be like my daughter. So, yeah, no, that the whole concept, especially in ethics and just sexuality, of course, is such a huge issue. And you know as well as I do the complexity of pornography among Christian men, let alone all men but Christian. Know as well as I do the complexity of pornography among christian men, let alone all men, but christian men as well absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And even thinking about the level of exposure that happens, it's becoming much more prominent. I mean, I have three boys. I think about it all the time, part of my past history as well. It's just one of those things that just, uh, brings up a lot of concerns, a lot of shame, like is this a penalty? And here's a story that I heard a lot of too, especially with fathers, is is this the penalty for my sin?
Speaker 2:right, kind of looking back right, that's right, and and this.
Speaker 1:Oh, you gave me daughters right, right I mean this speaks so clearly to that aspect of shame, just how the mind remembers and how the body all of these things from our past, oh, yeah and yeah. So I guess that sets up the stage for us kind of to dive in.
Speaker 2:We dove in pretty quick there.
Speaker 1:One of the common questions, I guess, that comes up when we talk about this aspect of shame is well, what does the Bible say about it? Maybe not says about it, but maybe. How does it actually define it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't it uses it.
Speaker 2:It speaks to it, it reveals it to you through relationships and through the use of the terms. So all you can do is really and I'll look at my notes here but even starting the Old Testament, you have the term bush, right, and bush is that term that's found in Genesis where they were naked and they were not booshed, they didn't have boosh, they didn't have shame, right. So, yeah, the Bible again just kind of gives you examples through context and relationships and word usage and that genesis you have that word bush and, um, you know, you get that same term and say ezra, and, and you'll have to, you have to remember and maybe I'm sure you know, but, uh, the hebrew culture was a shame honor culture and what we, what we mean, obviously, is that they are, they as a culture. They had set out standards of conduct and morality and virtue that were supposed to be followed and adhered to. And if you didn't adhere to those rules and virtues and examples, then that was shameful and you were to be shamed, and sometimes that came with a harsh penalty and sometimes it was a lesser penalty. It was just kind of a you know. You know, don't do that anymore and you know we're going to put you outside the camp for a little while, or or whatever, uh. And then, of course, honor. If you did all these things excellently and were praiseworthy, then you would receive a lot of honor. So you see that, all through a good example, ezra is good.
Speaker 2:In Ezra 8.22, you know, you've got Ezra, who's dealing with, of course, the people that are seeking to come back to Jerusalem and seeking to rebuild Jerusalem, and you have Ezra dealing with the people that had intermarried and had married a bunch of pagan people with pagan gods. And he, in a repentant moment he felt. It says that he felt ashamed before God, and it uses the word shame, humiliation, you know. So it's covering a lot of bases here, but he was ashamed because of the sin of his people. So there's a collective sense of shame.
Speaker 2:So that's one sense that you see all over the Old Testament the sense of I'm not meeting up to the standard. We've broken the standard collectively. You know, I am ashamed before you, god. He says I can't lift my eyes up to you, god, because I'm so ashamed. Um. And then there's the other way it's. It's used uh is in terms of on. It is directly related to honor in the sense that Ezra says to the king when they're leading the people out of Babylonia to Jerusalem, to Israel, he's ashamed to ask the king for help, because he's already told the king that his God would take care of him. And so he says I'm ashamed to ask for help. Therefore I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to trust in God, because I told him that God would handle it and so because I told him that God would handle it, and so if he then went and asked the king for help, it would dishonor God, it would dishonor the people of God because they would be saying that their God was inadequate for the job. And that's something to really take into consideration because that actually transcends all the way through the New Testament from the Old Testament. Yeah, because again, when you look at terms in the New Testament, you have iskuno and you have what's the other one, you have what's the other one, intrope. You have these terms and one of the terms deals with the fact that Jesus is saying and John is saying that you're not going to be ashamed. You should not be ashamed of your God. He's not going to leave you, he's not going to forsake youul talks about it, peter talks about don't. There's no reason to be ashamed of god. He's not going to give you any reason to be ashamed of him. He's trusting in jesus and the gospel is not going to let you down. But but they use the term you will not be shamed in relying on your God, your Savior.
Speaker 2:So that is a line of consistency in a shame-honor culture system in the Old Testament and the New Testament among Christians. And that's where you get some pushback and we can get to that later on. You get some pushback from Christians at times that say, yeah, the shame-honored culture might be cool in the Old Testament, but no, that's not really the way God works in the New Testament. And if you read the Bible thoroughly, if you read the New Testament thoroughly, you find that nope, nope, that shame is right there, it's involved. It's a part of the conversation. Honor, the honor of God, is a part of the conversation. So you can't just say, oh, that's an Old Testament way of looking at things.
Speaker 1:So would it be fair to say that honor and shame is kind of the they always go hand in hand, because you do see a lot of the honor, the Lord, your God, right? So if you're not honoring, would that also mean? Would that then mean that maybe you're living in a shameful way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, we do see glimpses of that. You have Paul in Corinthians, right talking to the church in Corinth, and you have him saying I say this to your shame, you should have people among you that can judge between the disputes, but you don't, and I say that to your shame. And then he talks about, then he's rebuking them later on in the book, in the letter, and he says you need to stop sinning, you are ignorant of God, and that is to your shame. So you have Paul saying look, you're right, the fact that you don't have the knowledge that you should have of God and maturity that you should have, you don't have the obedience level among your character as a group and as individuals, that's to your shame. So yeah, to that point you know, sure, the honor, honor is rarely used in the New Testament, that word, and so that's where you would see a little difference. But shame certainly is used and you certainly see it.
Speaker 2:And if you know, if you read enough in the Old Testament about God protecting his honor by defending his people, by even in his disciplining of his people, even when he shames them.
Speaker 2:So God shames his people by taking away their protection and allowing their enemies to come in and decimate them, that is him shaming them because of their disobedience. So, even in that, he still wants to maintain his honor, and so he says even though I've done this to you, I'm not going to completely destroy you because for my name's sake and my honor and my glory, I'm going to raise you up again, I'm going to bring you back to health. So, yes, you see, if you study the Old Testament, you see that theme over and over and over again, and in the New Testament that is so attached to jesus and and his work, um, and the fact that he, he, jesus, is allowed to take on our shame and our, our, our sin, and and he doesn't despise it, meaning he doesn't reject it, he receives it and then he, like the nation of Israel, is allowed in a figurative manner to be destroyed and yet brought back to newness of life in order to give him all the honor and glory that is due him.
Speaker 2:So it's if you see the themes in the old testament and you're reading the new testament and you're looking at jesus, um yeah, you see a lot of same shame, honor concepts that you see in the old testament yeah, you know, as you're sharing that, j.
Speaker 1:One of the things that stood out to me most was how the shame-honor culture is a big part of that, and I think this is an important part of the conversation, because, living in the US, we don't have a shame-honor type of culture. So do you see a difference in how we're reading or interpreting the scriptures compared to maybe other collectivistic cultures? Because in a collectivistic culture, everything that you're saying makes sense. I mean, I have a Latino background. This idea of shame and honor is part of it, maybe not as strong as other cultures, but it's there, and I don't see that as much in our American culture. So I'm curious how does one with that lens, how would they view this? What's a good way to kind of present this? Not that we're going to sugarcoat it in any way, but how do we help someone maybe understand that the shame honor culture is in some ways a part of the Christian life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, first of all would I would simply help them to understand and see that it's not gone, that it actually is resident in our culture. Um, and and has been, and we don't. We don't talk about it as such per se. It's not a ling. When I was a kid, we used it more often. I think the shame. I'm 49, almost 50, so it was. I'm a bit older, but, um, I don't want to get in the weeds of politics, but it's really relevant.
Speaker 2:I've got friends on both sides of the Trump situation and if you say a certain thing about Trump on both sides of the aisle, you are shamed. Yeah, if you're hanging out with your moderate friends who didn't vote for Trump, and some actually think he's the Antichrist and an authoritarian monster, and you say, yeah, man, I really appreciate what the Republican Party's doing right now, they will go. What are you talking about? Who are you? I thought you were sane, jason. And if, on the other end, you're talking to your MAGA buddy and you say, man, I don't know what he's doing with these tariffs, and I think it could be a dangerous thing I've had people go what? He knows exactly what he's doing with these tariffs and I think it could be a dangerous thing. I've I've had people go what he knows exactly what he's doing. Man, uh, and there, everything is under control. You just are, you're being a hater, don't do that right. And so there is shaming.
Speaker 2:Is is resident, um, and we used to have a stronger shame culture in relationship to abortion, to pornography, and you know, you and I remember a day, no doubt, when you had to go into a bookstore and if you wanted to walk out of there with it, you had to go through the shame of taking it up to a counter and buying it, you know, and a person had to, you had to look the teller, I to a counter and buying it, you know, and a person had to, had to, you had to look the teller in the. I mean I, I never did it, I straight up, never did it. Because, why? Because I didn't want to, I didn't want to have that public shame, and so you know their um fornication. You know we used to be a taboo. What we mean by taboo is a shameful thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and uh, we just our culture has changed, uh, and so it's not. It's not necessarily about the same exact things as it was 40, 50, 60 years ago, but there are still taboos culturally, that if you say or do the wrong thing, it's not just that you are guilty of a slip up, it's that you are. You are associating yourself, your identity, with a horrible thing, or if you want to be honored among the culture, you praise these things online at the right time and the right manner, and you say the right things and you are now a virtuous person and trustworthy. So, man, if that's not honor-shame culture, culture I'm not quite sure what is yeah, no, that's a great point.
Speaker 1:It's almost like we are shaming the wrong things. They're removing shame from the things that are actually doing more damage to us yeah, in some cases most definitely so.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and some you're exactly right and and I'm not saying there wasn't good reason or there wasn't understandable reasons and I think this plays into your, of course, counseling and psychology vocation is that we want compassion to have its day Right. We want to give room for compassion, and we got to a place where compassion and shame were not allowed to live in the same space. I think and to your point or question earlier about how do we help people understand things in our current culture, being a parent is always a good example. It's a good example of how shame and compassion can actually live in at least the same relationship and even in the same context. I've most certainly shamed my children for being a particular way towards their sibling, or being a particular way out in public or relating to me in a particular way that was not honoring to me as a parent, and I was trying to teach them, and so I shamed them, but I did so then with compassion.
Speaker 1:And to that point, jason, I think one of the things that stood out to me was also when we're correcting our children, it feels shameful on their end, right? I wonder if, when you're saying I shame them, I'm trying to see if we have the same language for people who are listening, because I could see it as I corrected my child and they felt ashamed because of what they did. Would you say that correcting and shaming are the same thing, or is there a difference to make?
Speaker 2:No, there's certainly. You could certainly make some differentials.
Speaker 1:Okay, because even in the context, of how you were using it. In scripture there was this aspect of you know, the Lord shamed them, correct. It seems more like correction to me, but I don't know if there's a difference to make.
Speaker 2:Yeah, see and this is kind of where it's problematic and we'll get into it later on with the discussion with guilt and conviction, there is a way for me to say what you're doing is wrong or what you did was wrong. I want you know, come here, let's talk about this, and I don't. You know, maybe I'm speaking from my own experience and some people me, in terms of their conduct, because I wanted them to understand who they were being. You cannot be like that to your sister. You have wronged her, you are being horrible to her, you are not being thoughtful towards her and you are abusing her. Now there's again.
Speaker 2:Sure, some might say well, that's rebuke, that's correction. But the, the line between uh, you know how you define those things, it gets really blurry and, quite honestly, but the the point is is that there are, there are moments of hey, let's talk. I I'd like to you know, are you aware that you're doing this and that you did this? And those are instructive moments. But there are other moments where I want them to feel the exposure of being someone that they should not be, and I've done that as a parent and that looks. I think that looks different way different times. It looks different ways, um, but, and and I'm not saying that's like that should be your modus operandi, uh, you know it's not like the go-to tool in the tool chest.
Speaker 2:But all that to say, even in those moments, compassion is waiting at the very least in the wings, if not informing what length I go to in that process. It's good, yeah, and the the? Of course the difference is and I equate this to the difference between discipline and punishment Punishment is you are just making them pay. Discipline is I have a goal for them to grow. I have a positive goal. So, even in my shaming of my child, my intention, my compassionate intention, is that they grow and that they become spiritually healthy, relationally healthy, you know, psychologically healthy. It's just in our day and time, psychology has made such a bad word out of shame that the only end result of shame is some sort of psychosis, is some some sort of horrible outcome?
Speaker 1:that and and that's simply not true yeah, yeah, no, and I would agree with you on that I think we talked about even on the episode that we recorded with Psych and Theo was that it has its use, and that's part of what we're discussing today, right? So we know that. We see it in scripture. We know that the culture shames certain things and not other things. So in scripture do we always see that whenever God brought shame onto his people, or when we see it in the New Testament that the people repented, that it brought them back to repentance or did it cause more rebellion?
Speaker 1:Because I think that's what we're going to see a lot, especially, you know, dealing a lot with church culture is that a lot of people have decided to leave. I remember when there was this whole deconstruction era where people were leaving their churches because they were feeling convicted and we'll talk about this later but they were leaving their churches because they felt that the pastor was teaching against the lifestyle that they were having. So in some cases it seems that the shame pushed people away and maybe it speaks to them not being saved or them just having a rebellious heart, either one. But yeah, is the role of shame to bring people to repentance or are there other multiple reasons for it?
Speaker 2:reasons for it. Yeah, in terms of the Christian life and this gets into the field of ethics, right, you have plenty of Christians that are running around being utilitarians. The people that voted for Donald Trump, for instance, did so because they said the ends justify the means. My goal of getting these changes, of getting abortion made illegal, of getting the Supreme Court changed that requires me voting for Donald Trump, and so I've got to do what I believe is the best option to get the end results that I want to get. That's utilitarianism, um, and it's pragmatism. Utilitarianism and, uh, we do a lot of modern psychology does the with all actions, with all behaviors, and it says if you want to have this behavior, it's necessary for you to do this. If you want to have a healthy person with these behaviors, then it's necessary that you don't do this and that you do that. And so there is this consequentialist, pragmatic approach that psychology takes, in my opinion, in my study, to do the thing that they think will get the results the best. And that's not the way God works, works with um, with his.
Speaker 2:Did israel ever? Did israel ever fully come back to him? Well, it kind of depends on how you define israel, right, um, did the nation end up, uh, flourishing well for a little while, and then what happened? They went down the toilet. And they did that every stinking time, even though god disciplined them, shamed them and then brought them back. And brought them back. His finality, of course, was in christ jesus. Right, we can get it.
Speaker 2:That's, you know, as a whole theological conversation, um, but we, we don't. We don't discipline our children based on the 100% assurance that our discipline is going to work. Great, we discipline them because we know it's, uh, what a good father does, and we also see, uh, and it doesn't always work. First of all, because they're their own human being and we can't guarantee that they're going to respond a particular way. Obviously, I mean, you know that as well as I do. Um, we think it's, we think it's the most caring way to go about it, because we're considering the longevity of their character and not just momentary feelings. And that's where, in our current culture, it's so fixated on temporal feelings, right, that if it doesn't make a person feel good in the moment or in the next two hours or that day, and feel good in the moment or in the next two hours or that day, then it's just not something that we should do and we should change our philosophy and our tactics and God's discipline and our discipline as parents and our discipline as a church to get to your is not the same.
Speaker 2:So there's a whole shaming mechanism set up in church discipline. You go to your brother once. You say brother, what are you doing? You're in sin, you're unrepentant, please repent. I don't want to Take a friend, a brother in Christ, and two of you. He still doesn't repent. Take a third and they still doesn't repent. And then, and they still does repent. And then what do you do, sam? Bring him before the church. You bring him before the church and the church screams that person, that unrepentant person, by the. The text says by kicking them out of the door and giving them over to Satan. That's what the text says about church discipline.
Speaker 1:Which would be seen as extreme in today's modern culture.
Speaker 2:Oh, but here's the point how many people that have you ever known that have got to that place in church discipline? It's true, it's true. Do you see pastors?
Speaker 1:avoiding it more nowadays. Have you ever known that I've got to that place in church discipline? That's true. That's true. Do you see pastors avoiding it more nowadays?
Speaker 2:Well, one of two things right, the churches are not willing to take those steps and the person leaves on the first rebuke, yeah, or the second rebuke at most. Right, they're out to see you these days. You get a divorce. The person stops coming immediately. Yeah, they go find a different church that doesn't know about their situation. Why? Because they don't want to feel shame. But the fact of the matter is, if they want to pursue and continue in unrighteousness, the church is going to shame them. That's just the reality of the text. And if we were talking about Sam, if we were talking about pedophilia, nobody in listening to this conversation would have a problem.
Speaker 1:They wouldn't have a problem Right.
Speaker 2:It just has to do with what we're talking about and how frequent and how accepted and how culturally norm it is. You know that's what we're talking about here. Yeah, no, that's a good point. When you think about Jesus, this is just. This is an easy slam dunk. Low, low hanging fruit example. The Pharisees are always easy to beat up in. The Pharisees are the pedophiles of the day. Right. Jesus calls them whitewashed tombs with nothing good on the inside. Right and he calls them children of the devil. Well, that's not very winsome. As a matter of fact, that has nothing to do with making them feel guilty. It has everything to do with shaming them for their identity. So Jesus is shaming the Pharisees often in the New Testament.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:So Jesus is shaming the Pharisees often in the New Testament and I think, as I'm processing that specific part about the shaming, I think where people in the church have a problem is and this could go back, I think you made this point in the last conversation that we had is this aspect of pride, maybe thinking that we're better than we actually are, because the ones who are having a problem with this are, I think everyone in general understands, like if you do something really bad, right, if it's murder, adultery, abuse, whatever the case is like people in general Christians in general feel like, okay, yeah, that's a bad thing, but other things that are maybe not as bad.
Speaker 1:Or it's a person who goes to church every Sunday but they don't live like a Christian the rest of the week and they feel a sense of shame with a message or a brother or sister confronts them. It's those people who are saying, well, I'm not as bad as all these other people who are doing these other things. So they take shame and they kind of change the definition of it and say, well, I was shamed and therefore I don't want to be in that type of church, cause it's not loving.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you get, and you get a. You get a, a sympathetic Christian who says, wow, well, that was horrible the way you treated you. They should have disagreed with you in love and still invited you to stay and listen and let God work on your heart. They should have done, and let God work on your heart. They should have done. But that's not what it says in the text. When it comes to unrepentant sin, it's not what it says in the text. It doesn't say just be cool with them and let them participate, take them off the search committee or whatever the case is. They can't be on the beacon board anymore.
Speaker 1:That's not what the text says that's clear, clear.
Speaker 2:The unrepentant sin is important. There they're totally important, totally important. Yeah, that's correct. And because there are, there certainly are preferences, opinions that are are not inherently sinful, right, uh, and there are one-time sins and sins. You're struggling with that, you're trying to stop and you're going for. You own it and you're going for help.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a completely different scenario and that's life of the Christian is to bring them to a place of repentance and, acknowledging sin, repenting of it, to be back to the ship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the purpose, that's the ideological foundation and framework for doing it. It's just not, you're just not assured it's going to work Right. And that's on God, that's God's business, if you will. And prayer, you know that's what God calls us to pray for those people.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, and I think this will be a good way to lead into our second topic. But before going there, is there a way in which so we're talking about biblical shame is there a way in which you would tell someone here's how it is used, appropriate? And that's where I'm having a hard time, maybe because it's correction, but the correction brings on this biblical sense of shame. So if someone were to implement this I'm guessing you know, kind of doing the whole mat, whole Matthew 18 procedure of anytime someone is an unrepentant sin, that the way to address it is to go through this Matthew 18 process, and it's obviously going to bring shame to the person. Or if you go to Corinthians and you know you've addressed it multiple times now you have to bring them to in front of the church and turn them over to Satan, all these things. So is there like a process that you've seen it done in the church, that it's a biblical way to do it? Is it just following those passages or what do people get wrong about that process?
Speaker 2:before we jump into the next topic, I've just so rarely seen it all the way through, that's fair. I've seen it maybe three times in my life, um, where it actually got all the way through, and it normally is because, uh, the person has such a strong attachment to the community but has such a strong attachment to the community but has such a strong conviction that they're not wrong and that they're okay in doing what they're doing, or it's not a tier one issue, like we just talked about, and so that's when it gets all the way, you know, or it's a pastor that has to go before the church anyway and doesn't want to lose his credibility for the rest of his life, and so he goes all the way through the process in order to save face down the road and maybe get it and maybe get another shot at having some credibility in the community down the road, right, and in some ways you're like, okay, well, that's kind of how it's supposed to work. You know, you're supposed to go all the way through this. You're supposed to respond the first time, obviously, and not go all the way through and then finally have the church say you're done, but it's so hard and this is a completely different niche conversation but the pastors.
Speaker 2:It really is a thing. They're stuck in a vocation, they get paid to do their job. They don't want to lose their position. It's disruptive to their family and lots of times ends in divorce, and so they go all the way through this process and I've seen some that saved their marriage by going all the way to the end, you know, and then finally you know kind of repenting after going through that final step. But I think here's one more note before we move on about that process. The process again is not meant to have immediate gratification.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point it's.
Speaker 2:you know, and this gets to the point where, well, Jason, you know, if you shame somebody and your question earlier have you ever seen somebody respond, you know, to shame and repentance?
Speaker 2:And I heard a sermon recently where that exact point was brought up Shame. The exact words were essentially shame never leads to repentance. And, first of all, that's completely false, and I can point to countless situations where the spirit of God uses the shame response in many people to eventually lead them to contrition and repentance. Um, however, most of the time it doesn't happen right there, yeah, and it doesn't happen necessarily in the relationship with the person that that either shamed you intentionally or sought to rebuke you or correct you or admonish you in the best way. They knew how and you felt you were being shamed and you felt ashamed and you didn't want to have anything to do with them. So you killed the friendship, you walked away from the church, you walked away from the friend group and you said I'm done with you. And then, a year later, six months later, two years later, god's been working on your heart and on your mind yeah, and you go and what?
Speaker 2:who was I? What have I done? And I've seen that many times, yeah no delayed, the delayed fire where you know the person you know goes, ah yeah, and they'll come back in. I've had friends in my own life that I rebuked for sexual immorality and they came back. One came back a year later. One came back six years later and asked and said Jason, I've repented. Please forgive me for the way I treated you. I've repented to the Lord and turned around. Thank you for saying what you did in the moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I agree with that brother. I think I would say this about this point is that anytime sin is addressed or there is this shame component involved, it should never be this harsh approach to it. Right? We want to be truthful, we want to be honest with our brothers and sisters. I mean it's exactly that, whether it be a child, brother, sister, like I have said truths to my siblings, to my friends, with that compassion and you kind of tied those two things together, right, the compassion means that the compassion means to suffer with. Right, there's a Latin word for compassion to suffer with. And I think, when we're talking about this aspect of shame is that, when we are addressing these things in our brothers and sisters, is that you feel the suffering that they're going through Again for people who want to repent. But you should never do so in a harsh manner. We want to be firm, we want to be direct but not harsh, and I have seen pastors be harsh in the way that they shame people, like I mean just degrading them using this very horrible language.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've seen it and so I would say that it the Lord can still work with that but you as a person don't want to approach things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct, you're exactly right. As a father and I think you can. You know, any father can relate your temper gets out of control at times and and you, you say things in a way that you don't want to say it. Yeah, um, and in sometimes that ends that's in the process of shaming, um, but at the same time, personalities are always in play, yep, and people's tempers are slightly different, and in terms of tone is not always something you know, and so I try to allow the scripture to work on me.
Speaker 2:And that's why I've memorized Colossians 4, 5, and 6. Walk in wisdom toward them that are without redeeming the time. Let your speech be always with grace, seasons with salt, so that you might know how to answer every man. I've been out letting that verse work on me for the last 20 years. So, yes, I can try to be intentional, but it's not like there's a standard of perfection when it comes to approach. And so, as long as you understand and people understand that, give yourself a little bit of grace for how you approach that shaming conversation. But yeah, no, I completely agree with you. You're not.
Speaker 2:The example I heard in the sermon that I just heard was this guy overheard a mom at a restaurant telling her her son or daughter uh, after they broke a cup of coffee, you did it again. You always destroy everything, so that's a shaming, but it is completely void of compassion and hope and it is saying to that person this is who you are and that's it. Sorry, you're a destroyer, yeah, so yeah, sometimes, even if you say it all nice-'t, you're still saying this wretched, horrible thing, it's true. So there's a difference between that language and saying you are being an ungodly person. Right now, you are treating your sister in a horrible way. You are speaking to your mother in a way that's incredibly harmful. Yeah, I assure you that those are shaming things to say to a child and they're going to feel shame lots of times, yeah, and when you say those things. But I would see those things as still appropriate things to say from time to time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's corrective, definitely corrective.
Speaker 2:That's good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is perfect. Perfect to moving into our next topic on shame, guilt and conviction. So yeah great conversation brother.