It is inevitable that we will do or experience things that contradict what we believe to be good or valuable, whether these beliefs come from our conscience or somewhere else. When this happens we have a sense of guilt, although this sense can be dim or even completely buried. This guilt – from the contradiction or violation – then produces an inner sense of dishonor, disgrace or inadequacy. This is shame. In a sense, most shame is a sense of sinfulness, since it is awareness of a lack of what is good.
We all have shame because we all have standards that we violate. We also commonly violate the standards of those whom our specific culture respects as people of character. We also have shame thrust upon us by people who harm us in degrading ways; corruption is inflicted on us. Much of our shame is left over from childhood. As Christians, we can have shame left over from childhood and our pre-Christian life, and we can generate new shame when we engage in anything unholy and don’t accept forgiveness and pursue repentance. Shame easily becomes self-rejection when we let the sense of dishonor, disgrace or inadequacy become a belief about ourselves, specifically, our value. This is where shame becomes destructive.
Self-rejection is sin because it damages something God loves: humans made in his image. Self-rejection means that you have decided that because of shame you or part of you is devalued. The longer you carry shame the more likely it will become self-rejection. Self-rejection is self-destruction. Self-rejection cuts off part of ourself that God wants to remake in his image. Also, when you reject part of yourself it usually transforms into a belief that you cannot accept love from others (or at least not without someone’s tremendous effort), including God, into the part of you that you reject. Thus, you don’t allow God’s acceptance and love to Christform you. In short, if you don’t deal with your shame in the healthy and loving way God intends, then you will be damaged and crippled in that area and Christ’s new life will not flow there.
As you can see, this creates a tremendous inner conflict. We want to experience God’s acceptance but we don’t believe that God should accept the part of ourselves that we reject and so we do not receive acceptance. Often we are not aware of this conflict because we are not aware of the self-rejection. This is because we often bury our self-rejection especially if it is from childhood when we chose to bury the pain because we didn’t know how to deal with it. If it stems from trauma we often prefer not to bring the pain back to our awareness. Unfortunately, it is the unprocessed pain that locks in the self-rejection.
Persistent self-doubt is a form of self-rejection. If we are constantly doubting whether we are trusting God enough even though we are doing as well as we know how, then the self-doubt will neutralize us because we will always be uncertain about where we stand. In effect, this is self-rejection. It is better to recognize that you are making a serious effort, that you may not be doing very well at trusting God, but you accept your weakness and continue to learn more about trusting God. Perfectionism must be rejected. This approach applies to any area of self-doubt where we are making a serious effort.
As you can see, it is critical that we process our shame and defeat self-rejection. You can go through our step-by-step guide to overcoming self-rejection starting here.
