June 2018
Chris O’Rear, M.Div., M.M.F.T.
“Guilt” has been described as the feeling that we have made a mistake. We feel it when we do something that we believed that we should not do, or we did not do something that we believed we should do. It is an error in judgement, a misstep, or an accident. In comparison, “Shame” is not the feeling that I made a mistake; it is the feeling that I am a mistake. It is not the feeling that I did something wrong, but the feeling that I am somehow flawed. It is the feeling that there is something wrong with me and if people knew this about me, they would not like me. We sometimes talk about the shame we feel about our physical bodies. There are things about most of our bodies that we do not like. I will not name all of those, but almost everyone has them. So, we try to wear flattering clothing or clothing that boosts or hides or covers what we don’t want others to notice. We may dye our hair (or for some, try to grow some hair), we may get injections, have surgery, all designed to cover the things about our bodies that we feel ashamed of.
Genesis 2:25 says that before eating the forbidden fruit, Adam & Eve were naked, and they were not ashamed. They were completely open and vulnerable, and they were not afraid to be seen. They did not fear the reaction of the other. They did not have to hide. I believe we can see this as a relational state for Adam & Eve as well. Many of us can also understand the emotional and relational type of shame. Somewhere in our life, maybe going all the back to childhood, we learned that it was not ok for us to be who we were or feel what we feel. As a young person, a girl may have expressed interest in certain hobbies or sports or she may have behaved in ways that were seen as too rough and she would have been told to “act more like a lady”. It might not have been acceptable for her to like certain things or to behave in certain ways. For a young boy, he may have expressed interest in certain activities that he was told were too “girly” or he may have been scolded for crying being told that “Boys don’t cry”. Whatever the case, we learn from an early age in subtle and not so subtle ways that certain things we like, certain ways we feel, and certain things we do are not acceptable to others. So, if we feel those things or think those things, we feel we have to hide those things.
Others grow up in families where there are certain struggles or difficulties. Some families have someone who struggles with drugs or alcohol use or others grow up where there is abuse of some kind. Others just grow up in deep poverty or with someone who has a severe physical or mental illness. People in these families can start to feel different or unusual. They can start feel like the things that make them different somehow make them flawed and they feel that they cannot let others know everything about them because they fear the judgement or rejection of others and they try to hide. Adam and Eve in their ideal state were naked – completely open – and they were not ashamed or afraid.
Adam & Eve had been told that they could eat from any tree in the garden, except one. One day they each ate from that forbidden tree and immediately, they realized that they were naked. Once they ate from that tree that they were not supposed to eat from, they realized that they were vulnerable. They immediately felt the needed to cover themselves. Not only did they feel the need to hide from each other, they also felt that they had to try to hide from God. When it came time for Adam and Eve to spend time with God, God was there, but Adam & Eve tried to hide. Adam & Eve not only felt guilty for what they had done, but they felt ashamed. They realized that they were vulnerable – vulnerable to injury, vulnerable to rejection, vulnerable to judgement – and so, they tried to hide.
Most of the time when we hear this story referenced, people just mention Adam & Eve’s “rebellion” against God and their blatant disregard for God’s rules and we are to gather that this is why they are now in trouble. Many times we only talk about sin as a desire to do things our own way and that way is seen as being contrary to “God’s way” and so we find ourselves somehow in trouble and in fear of God’s punishment. It does seem that in the grand scheme of things, Adam & Eve were in the same boat as one another because they had each eaten the fruit from the tree that they were not to eat from, but there are some interesting differences in how they got there. Adam & Eve are in the garden and are apparently near the tree that they are not to eat from. Out of nowhere comes the very clever serpent to talk with Eve. The serpent causes Eve to reflect on the rules that were put in place in the garden and immediately pique’s Eve’s interest as to why the fruit of this one tree is forbidden. Why could they not eat of this one tree when they could eat of all the others? Eve just simply notes, that it is forbidden and says, “God said we would die if we ate it.” But the serpent says, “You will not die, but God knows if you eat of this fruit, you will be like God; having wisdom of good and evil.” Eve will later call this a trick (or a deception) depending on your translation, but in Genesis 3:22 God confirms that Adam & Eve, having eaten the fruit are now, indeed, like God, knowing good and evil. As it turns out the serpent did not lie to Eve about that but twists the truth. So, the Bible says that Eve evaluated the statements of the serpent and noted that the fruit of the tree was beautiful, it was good for food, and it was good to make one wise and so, she decided to eat it. In eating this fruit, Eve has decided that she knows better about what is good for her but note that she also strongly desires the wisdom. What she does violates God’s rule for her, but she is seeking a wisdom beyond what she has. Adam, on the other hand, is standing next to Eve, she offers the fruit to Adam and without question, without a hesitation, Adam takes the fruit and eats it.
We do not know why Eve offered Adam the fruit and we could speculate about that, but the two of them seem to represent at least two ways that we find ourselves outside of God’s desire for us. Eve is seeking wisdom, but she engages in an activity that will have dire consequences. She is seeking wisdom but makes her own plan and her own way to find it. She risks what she believes could be death in order to get wisdom. We are reading from the Hebrew bible this morning, but I will note that both the Hebrew & the Greek word for “sin” literally mean to “miss the mark”. The Greek word more can be compared with things like javelin throwing or archery when a person is aiming for one thing but misses the mark. Eve is aiming for wisdom and she believes the fruit of the tree will provide her that wisdom, but she acts without regard to God’s desire and she will have consequences.
Adam, on the other hand, simply takes the fruit from Eve and eats it. He doesn’t ask questions. He doesn’t examine the fruit or reflect on the potential consequences. He just takes it and eats it. In this regard, Adam’s sin is not like Eve’s. He does not “miss the mark”, he does not even seem to be paying attention to the fact that there was a mark. Adam seems to represent a kind of self-absorbed, non-reflective, selfishness that thinks only for itself and acts only with short-term thoughts of what it wants now. He shows no regard for how his actions will affect him or the future. He doesn’t consider how others will be affected, he just takes the fruit and eats it. And he too will have consequences.
Whether it was out of a misguided attempt to achieve something or whether it was a selfish, short-sighted act, Adam & Eve have both done what God told them not to and now they are trying to hide. Adam & Eve rely on a fairly common way of trying to hide the truth; they blame someone else. Adam says, “This is not my fault, that woman you gave me made me do this!”. Eve says, “It is not my fault, the serpent tricked me”. In our shame, we often try to hide by switching and blaming. Have you ever been in an argument and you say, “Why did you do such and such?” and the response is, “Well, you did thus and so…” It is a quick way to shift the attention off me and get it on to something else. One of the ways we try to hide ourselves is to believe that whatever has happened is someone else’s fault. We love to blame others for our struggles, but it really just keeps us from looking at the things that we are responsible for. Yes, for Adam & Eve, the serpent played a role. Yes, for Adam, Eve played a role, but in the end, they will all have consequences.
Interestingly, however, the consequence is not death. While God had said that if Adam & Eve ate this fruit they would die, when they actually ate the fruit, they did not die. God seems to have demonstrated mercy in that moment. However, I have long reflected on the fact that God could not undo what Adam & Eve had done. God could not take back the knowledge they had gained. God could not restore them to the state of being vulnerable and naked without shame, but instead God just makes for them better clothes. This seems to me to be the nature of our sin. Many times, when we have done things we wished we had not done, there can be forgiveness. There can be healing, but lives are forever changed – both ours and often the lives of others. God demonstrates great mercy towards Adam & Eve in that he protects them from death, but he cannot protect them from the challenges of life that they will now face. They will live with the consequences of their actions their entire lives.
Several years ago, one of my daughters had been caught skipping school. You may say, well that’s not so bad. Lots of kids have skipped school at one time or another. Well, we caught her skipping school because while skipping, she crashed her car into a brick mailbox and totaled the car. She had to call to tell us all that had happened. There was no hiding that. That led us to discover other things going on in her life and we sought out appropriate help for her and our family. One day I was driving her to a counseling appointment and she said, “I am sorry, dad. I guess I am just going to have to learn some things the hard way.” I said, “I am sorry. That is going to be tough for you, but there is nothing you can do that will change the fact that you are my daughter and I love you. We will figure out how to get through this.” I added, “I am sure that God feels this way about me pretty much every day of my life because I, too, have had to learn some things the hard way.”
Some of us can look at mistakes made by others and learn lessons from those. We may have avoided the difficulties that others have had to face, but most of us, at one time or another, have had to learn some lesson the hard way. We have made a decision to do something we should not have done or said something we wish we had not said. Sometimes like a blind person trying to find their way through an unfamiliar room, we can stumble around trying to find our way and wind up hurting ourselves or others. Sometimes, we get so wrapped up in our own desires that we lose sight of bigger issues. There are times when we are all tempted to act out of selfish desire that only thinks about what we want or what we think we need. In those moments we can also hurt ourselves and hurt other people. When we realize what we have done, we often want to hide. We try to minimize what we have done by saying, “oh, it’s not so bad” or “Look, I am not like those other people.”. We may try to blame others for difficulty. “If they had not done this, then I would not have done that.” All those things are really just attempts to hide what we feel is broken in us. We do not want to be found out.
When playing hide and seek as a child, part of the fun is finding a great hiding place. We loved to find a place that no one would think to look, but as minutes tick by and we sit crouched alone in our hiding place, we begin to realize that we may not be found. That does not make the game fun because deep down inside, we really want to be found. All of us have found ways to try to hide ourselves from others at one time or another and trying to keep things hidden or hiding part of our selves for a long time can feel like a huge burden or weight, but the longer we keep things hidden, the more we feel that we cannot be found out. We can begin to feel lonely and isolated because we know that we don’t have a genuine connection with anyone. We have an innate desire for that genuine connection where we do not have to hide. When most people are finally found or found out, one of the first things they say is, “I am so glad I don’t have to carry that burden any longer.” It is not God’s desire for us to hide from one another. The ideal was that we could be completely open with one another and not fear judgement and not fear rejection. This the basis of genuine connection and authentic relating. However, for many other reasons, we have not done a good job of loving each other when we are vulnerable. In fact, we have often been hurtful to those who are hurting. So, I feel obligated today to say that not everyone needs to know everything about you. We still have to be careful about who we can share with, but …there ought to be some people in your life who truly know you. We ought to have someone in our lives that we don’t have to hide from. And, of course, we have to know that we cannot hide from God. For some that is a frightening thought; that God will surely find us out. We have painted God into a place of being rejecting just like others we have known in our lives, but in the story of Adam & Eve, God comes looking for them. While we are trying to hide from God, God is looking for us and like a child playing hide and seek, in our heart of hearts, we want to be found. We do not want to be found by the punitive and punishing God, but by the God who offers us grace to survive the consequences of our sins. We want to be found by the God who can protect us from the worst we could do to ourselves and provides us another way. Yes, we will probably still have to deal with the consequences of the things we have done, but we have a God that says, “There is nothing you can do that will cause me to stop loving you. You are my child and I will always love you.”
There is love and peace, community and connection with ourselves, God and others when we don’t have to hide any part of ourselves any longer. There is authentic relating when we can be vulnerable with one another without shame. This is God’s desire for us.
