In my prior article on Our Sinful Nature, I hammered on the fact of sin.
And I mean – a fact.
It isn’t debatable that humans are born with a knowledge of good and evil, and also a propensity to do the evil – which is an absurd and darkly comic condition to be in.
But that doesn’t mean that we don’t resist this truth with our entire souls:
“The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact.”
Malcolm Muggeridge
A friend of mine who read my sinful-nature post told me that it didn’t exactly ring true for her – specifically the idea that shame overwhelms us.
After thinking on it – I realized she was right.
Those shame moments in the shower – and elsewhere – are usually over small-potato incidents in the past, for example when I:
- Impatiently snapped at my son for repeatedly failing to do his chores
- Delivered bad feedback to one of my employees in a cowardly way
- Blurted out an inappropriately tasteless joke at a party
These are the types of things that – as comedian Bill Burr acted out – cause those involuntary shouts in the shower. Little mini howls of shame at past peccadilloes or failures.
But what about the really nasty stuff we’ve done?
What about the deep harm we caused someone – or ourselves – or God?
Those little shame-shouts at past embarrassments are really just that – more about our self-image. Of course, failing to maintain patience at all times, being cowardly to ones’ employees etc are all wrong. But they really only rank among the lesser, venial sins – if even that.
When I reflected on what my friend said – and applied it to my own shower-shame incidents – I realized that the truly depraved, awful, mortal sins I’ve committed never hit me. And believe me – there are plenty of these that are so monstrous that I shudder and hide from them, even in the privacy of my own mind.
This is truly remarkable.
Perhaps its a sign that my process of sanctification – as we call it in the church – has barely gotten started. I’m only a year into my journey with Christ, so perhaps these grave sins are simply waiting in the wings until I’ve grown strong enough in The Lord to withstand the guilt that will come.
But I am sure of one thing – the little sins that usually hit an unregenerate sinner like Bill Burr – or a regenerate sinner like Ben Sommer – are all about us and our embarrassment. In other words – we are howling in the shower not as much over failing, but over our pride and expectation that we are good and smart and capable – that we should’ve acted uprightly, and its just embarrassing that we didn’t. These shower-shouts then are really a proud mask. Its that old 7th-level sin rearing its head again, and in a perversely ironic way. The greatest sin (pride) is committed in the very act of contrition over a lesser sin.
The classic 12 step recovery program exhorts people to examine their sins all the way down. Dig deep, find the truly dirty laundry, then clean it and air it out. And don’t stop until its done.
In the same way, don’t stop at embarrassment, and don’t stop in the shower. Lean into shame, kneel down, weep and pray for the awful stuff to come out and be cleaned.
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