What's Here Now?预览

The past is a great place to learn from—but it’s a terrible place to live. Rehashing the past is trying to change something that has happened. I found some familiar places where most of us go. They are the signs to look for when living in WHAT WAS, instead of receiving WHAT IS. Today, we will look at blame, shame, and guilt, three indicators letting us know we are rehashing the past.

Blame is directing personal responsibility to someone or something else. Blame essentially ties a rope around your thoughts, pulling you to the past as you direct, defend or even deceive yourself or others away from feeling the weight of responsibility. Blame temporarily feels better than remorse because it gives you a way out. But when we let blame run the show in our lives, we lock ourselves up in a moment in the past that has a hold over our heart, mind, body, and soul.

Shame is another way we rehash the past. A friend of mine says shame spells “Self Hatred At My Expense.”

• Shame can come from something you’ve done or something done to you.
• Things you’ve said or things that have been said to you.
• Something that occurred last week or something that occurred decades ago.

Shame is a deep and often debilitating feeling that causes you to believe you are broken or bad and therefore not worthy of belonging. Shame has one simple goal: to get you to believe you are unworthy of love. Shame is committed to keeping us in the past, so we can’t experience present healing.

Shame is not a new problem, but it was an unknown experience for humans at one point. Back in the garden of Eden, the Bible tells us in Gen 2:25, “Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

It’s pretty easy to pay attention to the physical state of Adam and Eve. They were naked. (When people tell me the Bible is boring, I often like to point out verses like this.) But it’s not just their physical state that gets a mention. The emotional state of Adam and Eve is clear: they felt no shame. It could have said they felt no fear or anxiety or worry. But NO SHAME. God wants us to know there was NO SHAME because God knows how toxic shame can be in our lives. If you know the story, you know Adam and Eve eventually did the one thing God said not to do. They bit into that Honeycrisp apple, and immediately, SHAME entered into their story. And the human story. They hid from God, Adam blamed Eve, and they sewed together fig leaves to cover themselves up.

When God goes looking for them in the garden, He asks them an essential question, WHERE ARE YOU? Now listen, it’s GOD; he always wins at hide-and-seek. He knew where they were. He wanted them to pay attention to where they were. It’s as if God asks, What’s Here Now? Shame has kept us locked up in the past from the beginning of time, and one of the first ways to face the shame in our lives is to bring it into the present moment. Shame wants you to stay isolated in the past. But I have found the danger of isolation is greater than the risk of intimacy.

Another way we rehash the past is through guilt. Guilt is silent suffering from mistakes made.

• Guilt is a self-conscious emotion committed to rehashing past experiences that have not been repaired or released in our present reality.
• Guilt turns us inward, revealing that our insides don’t match our outsides. This is the self-conscious part of the guilt. Like a persistent telemarketer, guilt doesn’t give up until we pick up the phone and listen to it.
• Guilt is felt in the heart, held in the body, and replayed in the mind.

Regret from the past can have so much power over your present life. I think about David in Psalm 69 after he was filled with remorse over the mistakes he had made after having an affair and plotting the murder of the woman’s husband. Just listen to these words:

“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me. I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched.” (Psalm 69:1-3)

The waters are up to my neck

I am sinking into a miry depth

I am worn out calling for help.

These are words that sound like guilt.

Guilt wants to keep you in the gutter from the gaffes and mistakes in your life.

God is always guiding us back to the present. All three of these things, blame, shame, and guilt, keep us from the present moment with God.

Blame says you made a mistake.

Shame says I am a mistake.

Guilt says I made a mistake.

Spend a few moments and pay attention to how these three keep you from the present moment with God.