Shoo Shoo Shame

Listening to a podcast titled “Empty Out the Negative” by Joel Olsteen this morning has my process stirred. Of course, that stirring began before today. A few days ago, as the sorting, purging, packing and staging continued here on Lincoln Avenue, I found the following penciled-in note in the back of my first NIV bible. A bible gifted to me by my friend Rick, who has since died of AIDS.

My precious notes are barely legible but an internet search attributed a significant quotation to Dr. Ray Anderson, published in Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of the Atonement, page 147, by Mark D. Baker:

Shame is the perceived loss of our place with others. Those who have the power to create our history have the power to make us feel worthy or unworthy at the core of our being. Since our being is dependent upon how others view us, we feel shame as loss of being. It is this deep sense of shame, which seems to deprive us of our very right to exist, that drives many over the edge of guilt to suicide.

Shame is a sense I have been all too familiar with in this life. Many of you know the story of my conception and birth and teenage pregnancy (Loved and Wanted: Listen to Your Mother Southwest Michigan 2016). The idea of our need to empty out the negative in order to enjoy the positive is what I appreciated most in Olseen’s podcast.

If your life is filled with frustration, anger, sadness, resentment, guilt or any other unpleasant emotional states, little space is left for life to fill in all the good stuff. Olsteen offered the metaphor of a catheter draining the body of toxins to our need to release stored toxic emotions through forgiveness.

I agreed wholeheartedly with Olsteen that forgiveness is something you do for yourself, not for the one thought to have done you wrong. However, him saying we don’t have to seek vindication because God is the judge drew my heart back to a line at the bottom of the page of penciled notes: “Remember Christ died for my sins, not because of them.”

While releasing toxic emotions, best to let go of any stubborn toxic theology, too.