Social Issues Today: The Destructive Effects of Toxic Shame

So much about this subject I want to share, but will have to wait till later. Briefly, from a biblical perspective, shame is the very first psychological neurosis to present after the sin of Adam and Eve.

It is almost always connected with a negative moral judgment upon the self and is also connected to a fear of judgment from God or others in positions of authority. In other words, The self, I, me, carnal mind etc, is judging himself as morally deficient, defective, unworthy, and at times unredeemable. Because a person judges themselves as unworthy they will project those thoughts and feelings and wrongly assume that others think and feel the same way about them. Their judgment of the self may have begun in childhood while developing in an environment of criticism, verbal and psychological abuse.

In some cases, as with Adam and Eve, it is connected with our sexuality or who we are as a sexual being. This is not a shame that is connected with the act of sex but with who we are as a sexual being. The underlying question/judgment is “Am I good enough for someone else”? I am leaning toward a hypothesis that this quest for an affirmative answer to this question is the driving force behind sexual addictions. Sadly for some, no amount of reassurance from their mate is sufficient to dispel the sense of unworthiness and inadequacy as a sexual being. Until their Toxic shame is met by Gods love and healed, they will rarely be content.

Adam and Eve felt no shame before their fall, but immediately after their choice to be independent from God, they knew they were naked and hid themselves in shame. There was no difference in their physical appearance from the day before when they felt no shame. What caused their psychological shift?

Having the knowledge of good and evil now made them moral judges of who they were as humans and sexual beings. They judged themselves defective and unworthy. Gods Love for them had not changed, but their perception of Gods love for them changed and they projected onto the Lord the shame they felt in themselves. In other words, they believed that God was feeling the same shame towards them as they felt about themselves.

That is what shame does at it's essence, it creates a fear of judgment from others, creates a harsh self judgment with condemnation, and ultimately causes a person to hide their personality and gifts from other people, and from God, for fear of judgment.
A shame based ministry will cause leaders to exalt themselves to the position of moral judges and lead them to feel ashamed of a congregants behavior and then shame that congregant into submission or obedience.

To say shame is toxic and destructive is quite an understatement.

It will also cause one to deflect responsibility and blame another person, or God, for personal shortcomings. Those are just some highlights from a biblical perspective, perhaps I'll share more later.

(Refer to Gen. 2:23 through 3:13, ERV)