Sin
Shame
Sin
etc., etc., etc.
Sin
etc., etc., etc.
The symptoms of believing a lie about myself and about God is palpable, it is painful. It is shame. My body has a physical reaction to it. Shame is feeling bad about who I am, it's a symptom of believing a lie about my own self hood, which brings immense pain.
Shame is like a painfully malignant tumor. If ignored, it will grow and multiply. It's survival is based on me believing lies about myself, which produces shame, which produces pain, which produces a desire to stop the pain. When I try to numb out the pain of shame, by depending on my own devices, it keeps the pain at bay, but only temporarily. Eventually, the pain will present itself again because the food source of the malignant tumor is still present: a lie about God and my self.
Shame is like a painfully malignant tumor. If ignored, it will grow and multiply. It's survival is based on me believing lies about myself, which produces shame, which produces pain, which produces a desire to stop the pain. When I try to numb out the pain of shame, by depending on my own devices, it keeps the pain at bay, but only temporarily. Eventually, the pain will present itself again because the food source of the malignant tumor is still present: a lie about God and my self.
When I believe that I am bad (a lie) based on my own judgment or the judgments of others, not God's, I am feeding shame. The common remedy is a more culturally accepted solution -yet a false solution to solving the root problem: believing a lie about God and myself, because I am made in his image.
Extracting the shame by relying on my own resources introduces more sin (depending on myself and not God because I don't believe He is trustworthy) to numb its pain. This results in further shame and hence furthering the addiction cycle or false dependency on myself in place of God, all while trying to get free from shame without trusting God's intervention is the vicious cycle of legalism and self-righteousness.
God's intervention: the Cross. Jesus dying on the cross to cut off the root of sin, which is shame from believing that God is not trustworthy and that He is not really FOR me. Any other intervention on this cycle of shame and sin, will miss the mark, because it depends on HUMAN effort which bypasses trusting completely in God because of believing a lie about God, that He is untrustworthy when it comes to the important things in life, and that is the foundation of sin - believing a lie about God. To demolish the foundation of sin, which is believing a lie about God, I need to have the truth about God, which is the foundation of an effective intervention to disrupt the sin/shame vicious cycle. God takes care of that himself by authentically revealing his own heart and character towards us, which is revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
