Toni Kim shares her personal struggle with shame and the freedom she continues to find in Christ. With vulnerability and biblical insight, she reminds Christian women that while shame may try to define us, our true identity is found in being deeply loved daughters of God.
I can’t tell you how many times a day I call myself an idiot. Sometimes I even blurt it out loud. Other times it stays as a mental refrain. I want to get a cup but open the cabinet of plates. Idiot. I can’t find my phone for the fifth time that day. Idiot. Then I find my phone, and my five-minute break somehow becomes an hour wasted on it. Idiot. Realizing that I missed an important deadline. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Becoming aware that I’ve tried unsuccessfully for decades to stop this knee-jerk name-calling of myself? Shame on me.
I used to think that being a Christian meant that my life would, and should, be on a consistent trajectory of increasing faith and decreasing shame.
I used to think that being a Christian meant that my life would, and should, be on a consistent trajectory of increasing faith and decreasing shame. The more I believed God and his promises to me, the more I should be free from shame. So, whenever I felt any shame, I would then feel shame about my shame. If I really believe that God created me and loves me, why do I so often let shame define me as someone who is damaged and worthless, a hopeless idiot?
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Over time, I have come to see that shame is not one-size-fits-all. The shame that makes me spiral downward in self-condemnation, that is unhealthy shame I must learn to reject. It is the voice of the enemy who wants me to fixate on myself and how bad I am. Whenever the Good Shepherd convicts me of my sin, he does so in order to invite me to repent, confess, and fix my eyes on what a great Saviour I have.
When I harm someone or do something unbecoming of a follower of Jesus, I should feel shame. That is the appropriate response. But I need to fight shame’s urge to hide and instead respond to God’s invitation to come to him in repentance. Every time I do, I find him already running to me, throwing his arms around me, and reminding me that I belong to him.
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Other times, I feel shame for things that have nothing to do with sin: the colour of my skin, the shape of my eyes or my body, the way I stumbled over my words in my latest podcast. In those cases, repentance is not relevant, but God’s invitation is still the same: come to him to be reminded that the most true thing about me is that I am his beloved daughter. Finally, there’s the shame I have felt because of other people’s sins against me. I can’t repent of their sins. I can forgive them, but that still doesn’t erase the shame I experience because of what was done to me. Telling myself to just “get over it” doesn’t work. I don’t need platitudes from well-meaning people who don’t understand my pain.
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Enter Jesus, who “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness”
Enter Jesus, who “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil 2:7). And then this perfectly innocent man was abused, beaten, ridiculed, spat upon, tortured, and killed. Holy Jesus experienced shame because of many sins committed against him. But that shame was only part of his story. Jesus rose from the dead, victorious and vindicated.
The God who redeemed the shame and suffering of the perfectly innocent one and transformed them into glory is the God who is able to redeem all of our suffering and shame. The agony of shame has been transformed by the victory at the cross.
Therefore, I am not ashamed to admit that I am still a work in progress. The good news is that even though I have yet to conquer my shame struggles, I do not need to hide until I can emerge victorious. I am not defined by lies about me, even the ones I can’t stop repeating to myself. I am defined as God’s beloved daughter.
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