Hello and welcome to spiritual the mental health. I'm your host Don Mackintosh and today we're talking about shame. Shame is that intensely painful feeling that we're unworthy of love? Have you ever felt unworthy of appreciation or love? Let's look first of all at the physical symptoms, the scientific view of shame, and look more closely then at some spiritual approaches to dealing with it. The brain signals when you feel shame the adrenal glands release elevated levels of cortisol.

The eyes look downward and avoid direct gaze, the cheeks blush, the neck and shoulders slump. The heart rate elevates because the adrenal glands have released cortisol which caused major arteries to constrict The elevated heart rate while the major muscles are flooded with glucose. So, in other words, you just kind of get locked up. And looking more closely at the neuroscience it says your parasympathetic sympathetic drive, sympathizes with what you want to do and gets things done for you. And shame shuts down the parasympathetic, parasympathetic drive. It says no to our forward movement by activating the sympathetic fight or flight system in our bodies.

It also activates the right hemisphere and the temporal lobes which help us perceive emotions. So we're not able to really understand the emotions of others we might become not as emotionally aware, because we're so locked up in ourselves and we're in this kind of battle. Maybe you felt this, we experience shame most powerfully in glances tones and body Language, rather than through literal words, it may just be the way someone looks at you, it might be the way someone moves. And when this is happening when all of our system is focused on reacting, it makes our senses and our emotions unavailable to deal with other aspects of life in a healthy way. So it really impacts all of our relationships. We might become avoidant avoiders, we might become those who flee situations, but we're really reacting to something maybe that happened in the past.

Most shame takes place inside your head dozens of times every day. It's silent. It's subtle, and characterized by the quiet, self condemning conversation that maybe you've learned ever since you were a child. Shame turns us away from others, rather than moving us toward each other. So I don't know this. This characterize maybe what you've been experiencing in your own life.

So that's the science of shame. Simply put, and I guess if we'd summarize it, we just say, our mind or our emotions are so preoccupied with reacting to what's happened to us in the past, perhaps something that's been done to us. And we feel shame for that, or perhaps because of something we've done to others, and we're ashamed of that. So it kind of gets us both way. So how does, how can we respond to this spiritually? If you were looking at this from a Judeo Christian perspective, in other words, from the Bible perspective, all the New Testaments, and we often do this in our programs here, not because we don't realize that or people that are not in that category, but because most of the people that we serve in America, are familiar with the Judeo Christian mindset.

And so how does God respond to those who who have shamed or are shamed. First of all, we would say number one, he pursues those who have been shamed. So he doesn't just leave them, you know, alone. In Genesis chapter three, we see the picture of God. In that very first story of Adam and Eve in the fall, we see that it says in verse seven of Genesis three, the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.

So here they were, they were shamed. They covered themselves up. And then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden, the cooler today, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. And then the Lord God called to Adam and said, Where are you? And he said, I have heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. So here we see two things that People are ashamed of what they've done.

They're they're naked, they're trying to cover their nakedness. And then you see the Lord God looking for them. Now that's interesting, that phrase, the Lord God, Lord is all uppercase l o rd. And that means the judge. So, you know if you look at God through that picture seems like he's the judge, but also God, g lowercase o d means the mighty covenant maker or the relationship might even though he might be able to make a judgment in this picture, he's one that still wants to be in relationship, no matter who you are, what you've done or what's been done to you. He is seeking for the people who are engulfed in shame.

And then, you know, later in the chapter, it says, and for Adam and his wife, the Lord God, there is again the judge but the one that still wants to be in relationship, made tunics of skin and clothed them so he wanted to cover their nakedness. He wanted to cover their shame again, A beautiful picture of a caring deity. So look in another text that kind of covers this. It was actually a text that was never allowed to be read. It was from Ezekiel chapter 16 and cheek Zico chapter 16. You have this picture of God's people that are growing up says I made you thrive like a plant in the field and you grew and matured and became beautiful.

Your breasts reform your hair grew and you were naked and bear. And then verse nine, I watched you in water I washed off your blood and I anointed you with oil. So God taking care of Israel in 15, but you trust it in your own beauty. You played the harlot because of your fame, poured out your heart and train everyone passing by who would have it so this is a time in Israel's existence where they're really struggling with their own identity. They're doing things that maybe they should not have been doing. And they kept doing that the chapter talks about all that.

But then notice how God relates to this, even though they had done shameful things, and maybe you've done shameful things. And maybe I've done shameful things. This is how he relates to them. Verse 60, nevertheless, I will remember my covenant with you and the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. So in other words, even though they've been shaved, done sample things, God is still pursuing them. You see the same picture in the New Testament with the woman who was caught in adultery.

God did not just give up on her. He also pursued her or got rid of those who were speaking evil against her and you know, said what's, and I began to write The sins of those who had had shamed her. And not only she but they then were exposed, and he protected her from them. And then later on, he said to her go and sin no more, he made a way of escape from the shame. And then in Revelation, relationship 317 and 18 The same thing happens with one of the churches laya to see it. So what does he do?

Number one, he exposes her rather he pursues those who have been shamed, and reaches out to them. And number two, he exposes and rebuked the same for abusers. And there's a bunch of case studies in the Bible about this, I'll let you look them up. If you'd like to. One is found in First Corinthians five one through five where someone in the family is taking sexual liberties with someone else and they shouldn't be doing that. It'd be like sexual abuse today.

And then one is also On First Timothy 120, same type of thing. And then also the one we just talked about that woman who was supposedly caught in adultery, but had been abused by the very people that were. Were saying she had done shameful things. Does that ever happen today people have been abused, and then the person that's abused gets blamed for it. That's exactly what they were doing in this particular story. So these are the case studies that you see.

So from beginning to end, he is attempting to reach abusers, and those who have been abused, now an ex ex rarely come back. And I want to share with you how, in this message of the Scriptures, and this is a very helpful thing I've seen with people over the course of a number of years. How is it that God radically pursues someone who has been shamed or abused? What does he do and what can we learn from that? So join us when we come back.