We humans are like hermit crabs sometimes. (Never dreamed I’d ever think that thought, let alone write it in a public venue, but I also didn’t expect to make any connections between a 1930s guidebook on the inhabitants of Pacific tidelines and Fernando Ortega songs, and here we are. Comment here or send me an email if you’d like the whole train of thought.) We scurry around and pick up things that don’t really belong to us and take them on as a vital part of us – and no, this isn’t about thieving. I see a parallel – however tenuous – between a hermit crab’s shell and the shame we carry around with us. The difference is that when a hermit crab’s shell is no longer helpful – whether the crab has outgrown it, or it’s broken after a crab conflict, or it was never a good fit in the first place – the crab is smart enough to find a new one. We, however, tend to never lay our shame down, even though it’s rarely useful.
Shame. It’s not really a fun topic of conversation, and it’s also not something most of us understand well. It’s often confused with guilt; the technical distinction is that guilt regards something we have done, whereas shame regards who we are. Like guilt, though, shame can be misplaced, taken upon ourselves for things that were done to us or heaped upon us by others. Both have their useful intended purposes, to modify our behavior and ultimately to drive us to the Lord. But so often they’re misused, misplaced, misguided, and drive us further from each other and from the Lord. Like Tamar, the cries of our hearts, whether recognized or not, may well be “Where can I carry my shame?” (2 Samuel 13:13), and all too often, our answer is, like that unspoken response in 2 Samuel, “Nowhere”*. And so we avoid it, bury it, numb it, but never lay it down.
Compare Tamar and her shame – which was placed on her by someone else – with the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet while he was at table with Simon the Pharisee. We can find that account in Luke 7:36-50, and I do strongly encourage you to take the time to pause and read it. This woman, identified in this story only as “a woman of the city, who was a sinner”, went to Jesus, breaking all sorts of cultural protocols and norms, anointed his feet with the oil and her tears, kissed his feet, and wiped them with her hair. We could say all sorts of things about this event, but what I’d like to focus on is the response of the Pharisee, in v39: “Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.’” You can see the imputed shame there, a stigma that she carried with her that went beyond what she had done and had implications for her identity.
The answer for us all, whether like the woman in Luke’s account the shame seems well-deserved or like Tamar the shame has its roots in what others have done to us, is the same: it’s found in Jesus. He alone gives us new life and a new identity, truly making us a new creation. No one else transforms us from “not a people” to “the people of God”, from immoral / idolaters / adulterers / thieves / greedy / drunkards / revilers / swindlers to washed, sanctified, and justified (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). Truly He is Lord of our shame, Lord of our sinful hearts, our great Redeemer.
*I’ve written about Tamar before; if interested, read the initial post and the follow-up as well.
For a more complete treatise on Jesus as the answer for both the sinner and the sinned against, consider David Powlison’s Making All Things New.