Original shame: Do not exchange the story of who you are for the serpent's

Who told you you should be ashamed of who you are? Because it certainly isn’t the one who created you. We were not made for shame.

When I was 22 and had just graduated from college, at the bitter end of the lease on my off-campus apartment on the day we moved out, my four best friends and I gathered for one last beer. We reminisced about our fleeting, transformative time together at UMass Amherst. We were both excited for and terrified of the future. Life seemed so long and full of possibilities. We were young and alive. I have no idea why, but my four best friends soberly decided that what they wanted to do that day was to run down the main street of Amherst completely naked in full sunlight.

“Why?” I said, horrified.

“Because we are young and alive and we will never live here again,” was their only answer. And so they hatched a plan. They kept trying to get me to join them. I didn’t even consider it for a moment (maybe I had some inclination of what my future career might be). I couldn’t imagine why they thought this was a good idea. It was illegal! Weren’t they ashamed of their bodies? It is lunchtime! The patios would be full of people dining. Why were young people so impulsive? Didn’t they have any SHAME?

It was decided that I would drive the get-away car, and take the photo from one of those old fashioned cameras that you had to go to CVS to develop the film with. Some college student would have to develop the photos of my naked friends!

Anyway, they did it! They ran down the street naked in broad daylight, not a stitch of clothing on, screaming and yelping the whole way. I picked them up on the next corner and promptly got pulled over by the police while my friends put their clothes back on. I was the one who got the warning. “But, officer, I was just driving the getaway car!” I said. I think he was trying not to laugh.

Anyway, it took me years to wrap my head around the shamelessness of my friends.

These days, I admire it. To celebrate life with such freedom and abandon … what a way to start out in the world. I’m not really in touch with any of the four of those college friends anymore. But I often wonder, did they harness the spirit of that utter freedom throughout their adulthoods or did life beat them down? I hope they still remember with fondness that moment when they ran down the street naked.

In the book of Genesis chapter 1 it says that God creates the world and everything in it and calls it “good.” In fact, God calls it good six times, and to emphasize the point God calls it “very good.”

And then, that story is traded for this one in the book of Genesis, chapter 3:

Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, live in paradise. They hang out all day together, reclining in a verdant garden filled with sweet smelling flowers and delicious fruit to pick off of the trees and eat. God tells them that they can do anything they want and have anything they want … as long as they don’t eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If they do, they will die. A serpent comes along and tempts them to do so anyway.

“Come on, Eve! Have some fruit. You will not die. Your eyes will be opened,” the serpent says. “Just one bite of one apple,” the serpent says, “and you will be like God. You will know what God knows.”

They want to be made wise. So Eve eats first, and then Adam.

As soon as they eat, they realize what had been true all along: they are naked.

After listening to the serpent, they no longer love who they were born to be, and so they hastily start sewing leaves together to cover themselves up.

Just then, God walks in. God’s just strolling along enjoying the evening breeze, admiring all God has created. Adam and Eve, who are just a part of all that beauty, jump behind a bush, for fear God will see them.

“Where are you, Adam?” God calls out.

Adam says, “we had to hide from you because we are naked.”

God says, “Who told you you were naked?”

God doesn’t ask, “Why did you sin? Why did you break my rules?”

He asks instead:

“Who’s story of you have you exchanged my story of you with?”

The first humans had forgotten they were made good, blessed to be God’s beloved children. Instead they believed the serpent’s story of who they were — sinful and wrong. They exchanged the story of grace for a story of shame.

Shame is a dangerous liar. Shame starts from the baseline assumption that we are bad. Shame says, “You are stupid, you are worthless, you are ugly, you are mean, you will never get it right, there is something wrong with you.”

If our Gospel says that “God is love, creation is good, and you were born in the image of God,” then shame is a work of evil that attempts to undermine the Gospel. Shame tells us we are unworthy of love and connection. Shame says “God is wrong; God made a mistake when God made you.”

If our primary longing as human beings is connection and belonging, shame causes extreme disconnection. We become hard and intractable when shame is used to tell us who we are. We can rise to do and be better when we see own worthiness and value reflected back to us.

It is no wonder to me that shame causes addiction, mood, anxiety and eating disorders.

It is no wonder shame is a major contributor to all manner of social ills from emotional abuse to gun violence to the opioid epidemic.

It is no wonder that shame is a tool of abusers to keep their victims powerless.

It is no wonder that shame is used as a tool of the Christian church to keep social control.

It is no wonder to me that shame serves as the ultimate tool of empire to keep the people of God from recognizing their own worth.

Who’s story of you have you exchanged GOD’S story of you with? Who told you you were naked? That you were bad? That you were wrong? Your critical mother? Your absent father? A teacher who told you you wouldn’t amount to anything? A preacher; a false prophet? The middle school mean girls? Your jealous boss? Whose story are you listening to? Your abuser’s? The mean voice inside your head who tells you you will never be good enough?

That’s the serpent’s story; the liar’s story; the devil’s story.

When we see ourselves through the eyes of God, we can be naked, and unashamed.

You all remember the story of Jesus and the woman caught in the act of adultery. The woman is dragged before the crowd, naked, to be stoned to death.

In the story, Jesus runs into the circle of angry men, stands beside the naked woman and says, “He who is without sin cast the first stone.” He reminds the crowd of who they are.

Suddenly, they recognize the stones themselves are sin’s weapons.

One by one, the men drop their stones.

Jesus says to the woman: “Who condemns you?”

She says, “no one.”

And he says, “neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

Erwin Raphael McManus says that the thing that stands out to him about this story is that Jesus doesn’t try to cover up the naked woman. Jesus didn’t call for one of the disciples to go and get a blanket for her. He doesn’t give her his coat off his back.

The woman just walks home, head held high, naked and unashamed. She is not condemned by her God; she is worthy of love.

Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that we regularly pray naked in front of a full length mirror, “especially for someone who officially believes that God loves flesh and blood, no matter what kind of shape it is in. Whether you are sick or well, lovely or irregular, there comes a time when it is vitally important for your spiritual health to drop your clothes, look in the mirror, and say, ‘Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s address.’ After you have taken a good look around, you may decide that there is a lot to be thankful for, all things considered. Bodies take real beatings. That they heal from most things is an underrated miracle. That they give birth is beyond reckoning. When I do this, I generally decide that it is time to do a better job of wearing my skin with gratitude instead of loathing. No matter what I think of my body, I can still offer it to God to go on being useful to the world in ways both sublime and ridiculous. At the very least, I can practice a little reverence right there in front of the mirror, taking some small credit for standing there un-guarded for once.”

Beloved, remember who you are. Part of God’s beautiful creation, made and called good. You were not made for shame. You were made for Love. Do not exchange the story of who you are for someone else’s. Your body is your soul’s address. It is useful to the world; deserving of reverence. Be shameless, the way God made you to be.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Keep the Faith: Shame is 'the serpent’s story; the liar’s story'