In Choose and Choose Again, J. Kevin Butcher makes a very good distinction re: something a lot of depressive Christians particularly struggle with.
“Guilt is about what I do. Shame is about who I am. The antidote for guilt is forgiveness. Shame calls me to cease to exist…. knowing that we are forgiven but still feeling dirty is pathological shame.
….Shame doesn’t force us to do anything, but the psychic pain of feeling worthless can be so intense that we’ll do anything to make it stop.
…..Shame keeps us from personalizing and taking into our hearts anything about God that gives us value and allows us to know, to feel, and to be secured in his love.
Don’t forget: Our enemy isn’t playing. He’s trying to kill us, and shame is his poison – a slow, lethal drip that gets into our emotional and spiritual cells and vacuums our God-given humanity and love of life right out of us.”
Of course the antidote to all this is to accept ourselves as accepted by God, and more than accepted — beloved.
In The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, Tim Keller writes:
“You believe the gospel; maybe you have done so for years.
But….and it is a big ‘but’…every day you find yourself being sucked back into the courtroom.
You do not feel you are living like Paul says. You are getting sucked back in.
All I can tell you is that we have to relive the gospel every time we pray…..we have to relive the gospel on the spot and ask ourselves what we are doing in the courtroom. We should not be there. The court is adjourned.
….Like Paul, we can say, ‘I don’t care what you think. I don’t even care what I think. I only care about what the Lord thinks.’
And he has said, ‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,’ and ‘You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.’
Live out of that.”
