When the Bible describes the arrival of shame, it shows the process of how it works in our lives in three separate steps. And when we can recognize the pattern, only then we can stop it’s devastating effects on our lives.
Step One: The Hiding — this is where guilt reminds us of what we did:
“I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” (Genesis 3:10)
This is the voice of guilt, and even though guilt might be speaking the truth; it has violated a very important boundary. For example, yes it’s true we committed a sin. Yes it’s true the wages of sin is death. But notice what the latter part of verse 10 tells us: “I hid myself.”
Did you catch that? The alarm is doing it’s job by warning us that something is wrong, the atmosphere has changed. However, the real problem is that guilt causes us to hide ourselves from God because we know that sin has consequences.
We can almost see the fear in Adam’s voice because the voice of guilt is constantly reminding him that he has disobeyed his Creator. He has broken his commitment to God which causes him to hid in terror.
Now, I want us to go back to verse 9 and notice what God does. He asks Adam a question:
“And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” (Genesis 3:9)
Why Did God Ask This Question?
- It’s important that we remember the Bible tells us that God is omniscient. God is all-knowing (meaning that He knows all things). Therefore, this means that He already knew exactly where Adam was hiding.
- God was giving Adam the opportunity to confess what he had done. When God asked Adam where he was, this question gave Adam a chance to take responsibility for his disobedience.
- It brought to the light the broken relationship that sin had created. Asking where Adam was revealed the emotional and spiritual distance that sin had created between God and humanity.
- God demonstrated His incredible and undeserved Grace. Instead of coming with instant judgment, God initiated restoration and reconciliation by calling out to Adam who was hiding in the bushes.
This question is a powerful reminder to every human being who thinks that they can hide their sin from God!
God’s first move towards a guilty man is to ask him a question he is able to answer. This is not a prosecutor building a case; but rather a loving Father opening a door. However, the sad truth is that Adam does not walk through it.
Step Two: The Covering — this is where shame is born:
We must understand the sequence, because it is the foundation in this blog.
Even before God shows up in the garden, something dramatic had taken place. Adam and Eve attempted to cover their nakedness with fig leaves. And this was the exact moment that shame was born.
Guilt causes us to hide from God; but shame causes us to hide from ourselves. In other words, the voice of guilt tells us that we did something wrong. However, the voice of shame tells us that we are the problem!
Because the moment that a person convinces themselves that they are the problem rather than what they did, they stop looking for forgiveness and start looking for camouflage.
Why? It’s because forgiveness is useless to a person who believes that they are no longer worthy to receive it. In other words, it wasn’t what they did — but rather, it’s who they are!
And the dangerous part about the covering of fig leaves is that it does work — at least for a little while. And this is when the voice of shame becomes our worst enemy.
If shame were simply unbearable pain, people would run from it. But shame is pain with a coping strategy attached. The apron functions. The performance functions. The busyness functions. The reputation, the ministry title, the carefully curated version of your life — they all function.
They hold, and they hold, and they hold. Right up until the wind moves.
Step Three: The Blame — this is the one that does the most damage:
Now God asks the second question, and Adam answers it.
“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” (Genesis 3:12)
I know that you’ve probably read this verse many times before, or maybe even heard it preached at church. However, this time I want you to read it very slowly because what actually took place in this single verse of Scripture changes everything.
In other words, in just a few words we read where Adam tries to blame his wife for own disobedience to God’s command. And it gets worse, because even before Adam blames his wife, we read how Adam is blaming God for giving her to him because he says, “the woman whom thou gavest to be with me.”
And finally after Adam is done putting the blame on everyone else except himself, almost as an afterthought, he admits the fact did he disobeyed a direct command from God, “and I did eat.” Wow!
Isn’t this exactly what we try to do when we are caught doing something that we know is wrong? We start looking for someone else to blame for something we did? We always try to find excuses for our own wrong actions and our bad attitudes.
The proof can be found in the very next verse because Eve instantly follows the exact same pattern:
“And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” (Genesis 3:13).
And here is what I want you to notice. Neither one of them were lying because everything they said was true:
- Eve did give Adam the fruit.
- God did give Eve to Adam.
- The serpent did deceive Eve.
Therefore, nothing either one of them said could be disproven in a court of law because blame-shifting does not require a person to lie. It only requires the redistribution of true facts away from yourself! And this is the reason why it is so difficult to notice in our own lives.
In other words, you are not aware of deceiving anyone, because you aren’t. You are simply rearranging accurate information in such a way that the responsibility for your actions lands on someone, or something, else other than on you:
- “I wouldn’t have done it, but she…”
- “I act like this, because he…”
- “I wouldn’t have left that church, if the pastor didn’t…”
You see, every word that Adam and Eve was true. But, the question is why did they choose this path?
Did you know that when we try to blame others for the things we have done, it transforms a wound that can easily be healed into a something that can be deadly. We will take a deeper dive concerning this in the next post…
But notice, the moment God asks the second question, Adam is standing there experiencing real shame. However, the shame is not yet lethal. Why? Because there is still a path, a way of escape, because the door is still open.
When God called out to Adam and said, “Adam, where art thou” there was still an opportunity to receive forgiveness and be restored. But instead of Adam taking responsibility for his actions and confessing his sin to God, he takes that shame and gives it to his wife Eve.
This is when shame becomes deadly. It wasn’t the fruit, the nakedness, or even the hiding. But rather, it was the moment when shame gets deflected onto someone else — onto his wife, onto God, or other circumstances.
This is the moment when shame transforms from something survivable into something that will follow him out of the garden and enter into his own children. The Bible clearly tells us, “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children…” (Exodus 34:7).
And we later discover that one of Adam’s sons becomes a murderer and kills his own brother.
But notice closely what God does before He makes them leave the Garden of Eden. We can’t afford to miss what happens because it is the entire gospel in one verse.
“Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them.” (Genesis 3:21)
Adam and Eve sewed leaves together to make aprons; but God made them coats! Their garments of leaves cost them nothing; but the garments God gave to them required that something/someone had to die.
God looked at the covering they had sewn to hide from themselves — and He replaced it with something better. And guess what? He has been doing that ever since.
