Unashamed: Eyes Opened

As I sat next to her with my hand on the small of her back, the words fell from her mouth like a tumbling boulder of deep pain that I didn’t know how to catch. Her tears felt equally heavy.

She stumbled through the tears, “I know God forgives me, but the shame is too much. The things I’ve done still torment me, and my soul can’t handle it.”

I have had more conversations like this than I can count. The reality is, the grace of Jesus is often grasped intellectually but has yet to be known throughout the body and soul. It is not an emotional reality for most of us. Psychologist and professor Dr. Richard Beck says, “The grace and love of God are often understood in our neocortex, but rarely felt in our limbic system. We don’t experience the Gospel somatically.”

In layman’s terms, we can believe the Gospel with our minds but still feel the impact of shame in our bodies.

This is precisely evil’s desire, to shame us in a way that either paralyzes, renders us hopeless, or is so painful we are driven to silence or numb it. Shame is the enemy's weapon, and emphasizing and moralizing sin without understanding the purpose behind its existence can actually aid in the paralyzation, hopelessness, and numbing that many of us experience.

After Adam and Eve were formed and connected through their likeness and image-bearing differences, they lived without shame. Nakedness was the mark of the unashamed human, and freedom was the air they breathed. This freedom, joy, connectedness, and vulnerability was the prime target for God’s enemy because it bore his image so beautifully in the world. Satan wasn’t thinking, “Let me just have them become immoral and engage in bad behavior.” His mode of operation was to get them to doubt God’s goodness and suggest they navigate the garden without the Gardener, and the result would be shame. And once shame comes on the scene, it’s a game, set, match.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:1-5

The serpent was attractive, smooth, and incredibly inviting. It wasn’t an apocalyptic demon snake but an irresistible presence. “Did God really say?” ought to be translated to “Did you hear him correctly?”, “Is God really good?, or ” Isn’t God withholding something from you’?” The alluring serpent didn’t say, “It’s ok to kill,” or “Go ahead and lie,” or even “It would be better to follow me.” His hiss was simply, “Don’t you want to know the things God knows because he is holding out on you.”

Don’t we all want to know? Don’t we regularly feel like we are missing out?

But the problem is, God never intended for us to move about the garden and this life with the knowledge that is too much for us to carry and discern. Adam and Eve weren't meant to know their nakedness as a lack or source of shame but of beauty and God’s creativity. The knowledge of good and evil was never meant for us image-bearers, so the result was catastrophic. The half-truth of Satan (because he will always offer the lie in the veneer of truth) was that Adam and Eve would not instantly die. Instead, they would be exposed to what the woman who I was trying to comfort had experienced: a slow torment of shame. And that torment would give birth to the infliction of pain on others and self. Satan knew that if we could experience deep shame, death would follow because shame would drive us to kill as a means to stop the spiritual torment of exile. God knew we couldn’t live in that condition forever, so he had to number our days.

You probably wonder when I will head in a more hopeful direction—enough about shame and torment. But I can’t move through this too quickly, so writing on this is taking me weeks. I sit with dozens of men, women, young adults, and teens whose driving emotion behind addiction, infidelity, abuse, anxiety, self-harm, and struggles with identity is shame. All they can see is their nakedness. Their eyes are open, and they are trying with all their might to shut them.

If you are watching the current political upheaval of our nation and world, watching CNN or FoxNews, you have a front-row seat to shame-driven behavior that is echoing that serpent’s voice: “Don’t you want to be in control?” Anyone who needs to tear down another, incite fear, and invite you to follow them for the hope of your future is deeply entrenched in hidden shame.

But there is hope. I believe that Jesus's hope as the grand reversal of exile is this desire for everyone to hear that in their nakedness, the Lover of our soul comes looking for us in our hiding and says, not, “What have you done?! " but instead, “Who told you that you were naked?” In that question, he is declaring, “I made you to be free, and a liar told you that was something to be ashamed of.”

One of the most palpable and real-life examples of opened eyes and the torment of shame is what happens when a young person is introduced to pornography. Recent statistics report that 51% of men and 32% of women were first exposed to pornography before they were teenagers, with the average age being 12 years.

This means while these children’s brains were developing and forming attachments in primary relationships, their eyes saw things they were never intended to see, forever changing their lives. Sex, which is absolutely good, was looked upon in a distorted form, tapping into longings, curiosity, and need for connection (veneer of truth) with the hidden core of a harmful alternative (harm and shame). Research goes on to report that over half of teenagers are consuming pornography at least once a month. The sobering reality is children are given smartphones at the average age of 11 years, and these devices are the primary way they are introduced to pornography.

The devil’s schemes: open their eyes and let the shame do its work.

The Good Creator said, “I made your eyes to see the things that were safe for your soul, and a thief stole your eyesight.” But friends, then a man came who reported to open the eyes of the blind and set the captives free. In his three-year ministry, Jesus restored eyesight to the literal blind as a symbol of the complete restoration of our distorted vision.

Beloved, the ending is so deeply good. The curse is temporary, and there will be a return to the garden. For now, may you know that in our nakedness and hiding under the scratchy fig leaves of approval, power, and escape, our Creator God is coming for you. He is whispering, “Where are you?”. He is not offended by your naked condition; he wants to silence the voice of shame and cover you in his unconditional love and grace.

May you know these words somatically in your limbic system as well as your heart and mind:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39