Ashamed to Be Loved

Zephaniah 3:10-12, “From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia My worshipers, My dispersed ones, will bring My offerings. In that day you will feel no shame because of all your deeds by which you have rebelled against Me; for then I will remove from your midst your proud, exulting ones, and you will never be haughty on My holy mountain. But I will leave among you a humble and lowly people, and they will take refuge in the name of the Lord.”

I long for the day that I “feel no shame.” In my mind and in my spirit I know that that day should be today as “there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 8:1) But still I feel to a degree that shame and condemnation. Today’s short comings, today’s failures do nothing more to solidify that shame and condemnation. Somehow it seems so difficult to own the freedom of forgiveness in Christ. And not just for me.

At Iwo Jima the other day my friend George was engaging in some almost self-destructive conversation. In many ways he was asking the group to disown him. When asked by Jim Spivey what the real truth was he said tearfully, “When I feel people loving me I feel shame.”

Complete and total empathy flooded me in that statement. Past relationship flashed in my mind and how they were born out of this shame of being loved. Enduring the unhealthiest of relationships was feed by a deep feeling of being unlovable. Perhaps that is the root of my mysterious attraction to and interactions with the unlovable. Somehow in seeing them as unlovable I identify with that in myself.  And that shame is not limited to people. That shame extends too often into my relationship with God. I love Him for sure, and I know that He loves me, but the shame of being loved in such an unlovable state limits the relationship. I limits what I will accept from Him in the form of love.

Paul, another Iwo Jima'r, commented to George’s confession that being unworthy of the love is what makes it love to begin with. And that certainly is true. Being unworthy sure is what makes God’s love unconditional at the least.

This is going to sound crazy but I am so thankful for the shame. I am thankful because until George articulated the feeling, for me it only existed subconsciously. But now I am conscious. Now the dross has been brought to the surface and it can be scraped from my relationship with God. I am unworthy of God’s love and that is precisely why He loves me. To know this, and to not act on it—to accept both the unworthiness and the love… this attitude is what will just leave me humble and lowly, taking refuge in the Lord.