Going back to the old paths indicates a change of direction. Going back to the old paths indicates that our first mindset was not necessarily the right one. Going back to the old paths means a paradigm reversal. It indicates that the paradigm shift we were told to take earlier did not turn out to be practical.
When we go back to the old paths, we form the habit of reevaluating how we have been thinking in light of God’s Word, the Bible. Sometimes this is painful because it causes us to make decisions against what we have been previously taught. However, if we never make any course changes in our life journeys, we cannot be said to have changed our direction, or path, at all.
For instance, a Christian talk show host recently declared “shame” to be “our most toxic emotion.” Listening passively while driving home from work, I could have accepted her statement at face value. But I realized that she did this in order to market a self-help book on the topic. Such books are popular now, presumably because many people are feeling insecure these days either about their own backgrounds, or about their present lifestyles. Many of these people call those who criticize them “shamers.” “Shaming” seems now to be politically equated with “hating” or “hate speech,” just because it sometimes makes people feel uneasy or “threatened,” whether or not that was the intent of the supposed “shamer.”
I questioned in myself whether or not shame is “our most toxic emotion.” “Toxic” means “poisonous,” usually to the point of death, or “lethal.” So shame is the one emotion that will kill us? Are “shamers” really the equivalent of murderers? Immediately I thought of anger, resentment, and bitterness. I have seen anger break things, hurt animals, and make people cry. I’m pretty sure anger can also kill.
But that’s just my own experience. My thinking may be logical but not necessarily Biblical, unless there is Biblical support for it. So when I got a chance, I looked up some Bible verses about shame on my Bible app. With a few clicks, I found an exhaustive list.
If shame means an immobilizing, paralyzing sense of worthlessness and hopelessness, I can see how that emotion could kill, both physically and spiritually, by depressing someone deeply to the point of suicide. However, if shame simply means an overwhelming sense of embarrassment or guilt because of a conscience of what is right and what is wrong, that emotion need not kill or be considered “toxic.” If a person is experiencing shame, that is when God can finally reach out and exalt that person. Consider the following verses, from my list:
Ezra 9:6b
“O my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God: for our iniquities are increased over our head, and our trespass is grown up unto the heavens.”
Psalm 25:2-3
“O my God, I trust in thee: let me not be ashamed, let not mine enemies triumph over me. Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed: let them be ashamed which transgress without cause.”
Psalm 40:14
“Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul to destroy it; let them be driven backward and put to shame that wish me evil.”
Psalm 119:6
“Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.”
Psalm 119:78
“Let the proud be ashamed; for they dealt perversely with me without a cause: but I will meditate in thy precepts.”
Proverbs 11:2
“When pride cometh, then cometh shame: but with the lowly is wisdom.”
Jeremiah 6:15
“Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord.”
Jeremiah 17:13a
“O Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed, and they that depart from me shall be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.”
Romans 5:5a
“[H]ope maketh not ashamed….”
Romans 6:21
“What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.”
I Corinthians 4:14
“I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.”
Of what should we be ashamed? We do not need to be personally ashamed of those things that are in our lives which we never could have changed (our races, our places of birth, our physical handicaps, our circumstances not of our own making, what others unfairly say about us, or how others unfairly treat us). We should be ashamed, however, of our own personal sin. For instance, a child rape victim should not be made to feel personal shame, as if she were at fault. However, the perpetrator of that crime should feel shame!
Today many people, even nominal Christians, are refusing to feel ashamed because to feel ashamed is to admit there are problems in their lives which need attention! But to deny that anything is shameful is to admit insanity, because that means everything is good. Things that are not good must be shameful. Those same people who would not be ashamed of practices that the Bible calls sinful will very readily shame any person who disagrees with their value system. So whose value system will we follow? Will we make up our own random codes of ethics and define shame haphazardly based on our changeable emotions, or will we adhere to God’s absolute standard of what is shameful according to His Word?
Shame can be a stepping-stone to repentance, which is necessary for eternal salvation. Shame does not have to be a destroying influence, or “toxic emotion.” On the contrary, I doubt that anyone who ever repented did not feel at least a little shame first!
2 Thessalonians 3:14-15
“And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.”
II Corinthians
“For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”
A much more toxic emotion than shame is bitterness. Bitterness destroys its own container. Bitterness may spring from shame. It is the emotion that comes from an inappropriate response to shame.
Hebrews 12:14-17
“Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.”
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