Shame go away

I was recently reading an interview from a Christian who had an abortion before she was saved. After she had been a Christian for a few years, one day in her church service, the Pastor said a prayer for all those babies who had been aborted. The Pastor then asked a few individuals to come also and pray for the mothers who had an abortion and the fathers who played a hand in them. The service then broke, she said, into a few quiet moments of healing and love being shared by members as they rallied around those in their church who had been connected to abortions. After she shared this story she had this to say, "the blood of Christ took my guilt away but today the body of Christ took my shame away". This line struck me.

Webster's defines shame as, "the painful sense of having done something wrong". My dog feels shame when I see that it pooped in the house. My children feel shame when I catch them doing something bad. I feel shame when I am caught in a lie. The reality is, we all feel shame when someone else finds out or sees us doing something sinful. But this all points to the truth that shame only comes when it is noticed by someone else. We personally feel conviction and guilt when we do something wrong, but the feeling of shame comes from another set of eyes on us. We would never feel shame if no one would see. The dog would never feel shame if I never saw the poop. My children would never feel shame if I never caught them. We only ever feel shame becasue we are found or seen by someone else.

Which means shame, and the feeling of it, is always connected to others. Which also means that only shame, as this woman explained in her story, can be taken away by others. When we look at others through our self-righteous, hypocritical, arrogant attitude, we bring shame on them. But if we look at others, realizing that we are sinners just like them and look at them with love and joy, we will remove the shameful feelings and bring them peace.

Which means the feeling of others shame, falls on us. We, in our actions and attitudes, will affect others feelings of shame. If someone else around us is feeling shameful because of a past sin or mistake, then the responsibility is on us to help them remove that shame. And that is a huge reason why the church is commanded to be loving and forgiving to one another. As the woman explained in her story, her feeling of shame was removed by her church body. That is a huge factor in the love that Jesus commands His church to have. So when was the last time we helped remove the feeling of shame from others around us?