5 Ways to Combat Shame in the Church

[Third Hour]

Shame can be a very hard thing to deal with in the Church. Those struggling with pornography, sex addiction, alcoholism, drug addiction, and many other sins are especially prone to feel shame, but others can feel shame as well. When we feel shame, we want to hide our mistakes. Feeling shame can lead to depression and self-hate. Shame is always unhealthy and never leads to sincere repentance. Guilt, on the other hand, can be a good thing if it leads us to repent. Brené Brown believes "the difference between shame and guilt is best understood as the difference between ‘I am bad’ and ‘I did something bad.’ Guilt = I did something bad. Shame = I am bad” (Daring Greatly 71). We want members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to avoid shame. Here are 5 tips you can do to try to combat shame in the Church. 1. Stop the gossip   Talking about other people never helps. When it comes to shame, gossip can be extremely hurtful. Several years ago, I...

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[The Folk Prophet]

Does it strike anyone else that teaching someone that they should never be ashamed of themselves...no matter what horrible thing they may have done...is a really bad idea?

[anatess2]

 

[Vort]

ONE WAY TO COMBAT SHAME IN THE CHURCH

1. Don't do shameful things

[Guest MormonGator]

3 minutes ago, Vort said:

 

1. Don't do shameful things

"It's always interesting when someone doesn't feel any shame or regret. And it's never a good sign."-Christopher Hitchens, everyones favorite Christian fundamentalist 

[NeuroTypical]

I think we're having a disconnect in what words mean here.

There is a thing out there, a lie spawned of lucifer, one of the tools he uses to lead hearts away from God.  This lie basically tells someone that their worth, their value as a human being, is lower than it actually is.  When believed, this lie can drive all sorts of awful behavior, from suicide to divorce to inactivity to cheating on taxes to eating too many hamburgers.  Because after all, isn't doing bad things (or failing to do good things), isn't that what people of little or no worth do?  

Anyway, the blog post takes that lie from the pits of hell, and calls it "shame".   Not to be confused with the other, more common definition of "shame", which is something more like this:

That's very true. 

 

It's important to feel guilt and shame when we do something bad or shameful.  But inappropriate shame is also a thing.  You can tell which one you have, because one motivates you to get off your butt and turn to God, and the other one tells you to do the opposite.

 

Edited September 24, 2018 by NeuroTypical

[The Folk Prophet]

5 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

It's important to feel guilt and shame when we do something bad or shameful.  But inappropriate shame is also a thing.  

If only this and other articles like it actually taught this then I wouldn't have a problem.

The solution to people feeling worse about themselves than they should is to teach people how to stop feeling worse about themselves than they should. It is not to teach that they should never feel like a bad person -- even if they just raped a murdered a village.

And...really...the solution is to teach the Atonement -- for people to understand (through the Spirit) that they can repent and be fully forgiven because of the Atonement of Christ.

Teaching people that they should never be influence by shame is a good way to create a generations of sociopaths.

[The Folk Prophet]

47 minutes ago, Vort said:

ONE WAY TO COMBAT SHAME IN THE CHURCH

1. Don't do shameful things (and if you do, repent and come unto Christ to be healed).

Modified.

[Vort]

Like TFP, I get tired of people repeating mindlessly vacuous philosophies of men like "Shame is bad!", apparently without a moment of critical reflection. Thus my snarky (yet oh-so-true) list of Ways to Combat Shame. And like NT, I recognize that there is a corrosive emotion akin to shame, something that turns wrongly inward, not merely recognizing that we have done evil but denying our own eternal potential.

The article itself is not bad. The author begins by (re)defining the term "shame". Within his redefinition, I have no major arguments with his essay, and mostly agree. But I disagree with his initial redefinition of terms, which is facile and ignores centuries of usage.

As for his five points, I'm mostly but not completely in agreement:

• Stop the gossip. No arguments here. Gossip by definition is uniformly bad. I think that the statement "talking about other people never helps" is a large overstatement, but if you replace "talking" with "gossiping", then I agree.
• Stop comparing yourself with others. Nonsense. Mindless pop psychology at its most inane. OF COURSE we're going to compare ourselves with others! How else can we possibly know whether we're meeting expectations, or even doing something anywhere near correct? One of the most popular adjectives in the kingdom of God is "Christlike" -- a comparison. And when you compare yourself against the Lord, you will always come out on the short end. Yet compare we do. No, this is silly. As I have occasionally been heard to say, the absurdness of this absurdity is just absurd.
• Be okay with having imperfections. Check. Beating ourselves up for being less than perfect is useless and even counterproductive. We should not be comfortable in our imperfections, but neither should we worry too much about them.
• Beware of labels. Yes, "beware" is the right word. We need labels; without them, everything is a monochromatic gray goo, and we cannot make comparisons (see two points above this one) necessary to discriminate between good and evil. But we must be wary. The labels describe; they do not define.
• Have charity. Sort of the "Remember to breathe" bullet point. Can't possibly argue against it, but there's certainly an element of "well, duh". Still good advice.

[The Folk Prophet]

For the sake of discussion, a few responses:

4 minutes ago, Vort said:

• Stop the gossip. No arguments here. Gossip by definition is uniformly bad. I think that the statement "talking about other people never helps" is a large overstatement, but if you replace "talking" with "gossiping", then I agree.

Any sort of solution for individual problems that recommends everyone else changing is set up to fail. I meant, really? The solution to my not feeling shame is for the entire membership to change? That's not gonna work.

6 minutes ago, Vort said:

• Stop comparing yourself with others. Nonsense. Mindless pop psychology at its most inane. OF COURSE we're going to compare ourselves with others! How else can we possibly know whether we're meeting expectations, or even doing something anywhere near correct? One of the most popular adjectives in the kingdom of God is "Christlike" -- a comparison. And when you compare yourself against the Lord, you will always come out on the short end. Yet compare we do. No, this is silly. As I have occasionally been heard to say, the absurdness of this absurdity is just absurd.

Agreed.

6 minutes ago, Vort said:

• Be okay with having imperfections. Check. Beating ourselves up for being less than perfect is useless and even counterproductive. We should not be comfortable in our imperfections, but neither should we worry too much about them.

Beating ourselves up is not the opposite of being okay. Beating ourselves up (whatever that means) may be a problem...but just "being okay" with it. Never. And yes we should worry about them...but "too much"...well, yeah...by definition "too" much is "too" much.

10 minutes ago, Vort said:

• Beware of labels. Yes, "beware" is the right word. We need labels; without them, everything is a monochromatic gray goo, and we cannot make comparisons (see two points above this one) necessary to discriminate between good and evil. But we must be wary. The labels describe; they do not define.

I call "garbage" on this one. (Not your response...but the point in the article). Beware of labels? What does that even mean?

But as I said earlier -- what makes someone a bad person if it isn't what they do? "I just murdered a baby...but that doesn't make me a bad person...it just means I did a bad thing. It doesn't make me a murderer. It just means I murdered."

What nonsense.

You just cheated on your wife with someone else's wife...but don't call yourself an adulterer...that's where the real harm is. Labels.

14 minutes ago, Vort said:

• Have charity. Sort of the "Remember to breathe" bullet point. Can't possibly argue against it, but there's certainly an element of "well, duh". Still good advice.

But not the solution. First, see my point 1 response. Is the solution to my being too hard on myself to expect the entire membership to just be perfect...then I'll be okay and stop being too hard on myself? Beyond the obvious, "do you really expect this to happen" sort of response, even if everyone in the entire church read the article and magically became perfect from it, it wouldn't solve the problem because my psychological status is not really a result of other people's actions. People will always be cruel, selfish, hateful, gossipy, etc. I can either deal with it or not. That's up to me. And if I develop bad thinking that's also about me, not them, and I'm going to beat myself up over things regardless of how kind people are or or not.

[Fether]

23 minutes ago, Vort said:

Like TFP, I get tired of people repeating mindlessly vacuous philosophies of men like "Shame is bad!", apparently without a moment of critical reflection. Thus my snarky (yet oh-so-true) list of Ways to Combat Shame. And like NT, I recognize that there is a corrosive emotion akin to shame, something that turns wrongly inward, not merely recognizing that we have done evil but denying our own eternal potential.

The article itself is not bad. The author begins by (re)defining the term "shame". Within his redefinition, I have no major arguments with his essay, and mostly agree. But I disagree with his initial redefinition of terms, which is facile and ignores centuries of usage.

As for his five points, I'm mostly but not completely in agreement:

• Stop the gossip. No arguments here. Gossip by definition is uniformly bad. I think that the statement "talking about other people never helps" is a large overstatement, but if you replace "talking" with "gossiping", then I agree.
• Stop comparing yourself with others. Nonsense. Mindless pop psychology at its most inane. OF COURSE we're going to compare ourselves with others! How else can we possibly know whether we're meeting expectations, or even doing something anywhere near correct? One of the most popular adjectives in the kingdom of God is "Christlike" -- a comparison. And when you compare yourself against the Lord, you will always come out on the short end. Yet compare we do. No, this is silly. As I have occasionally been heard to say, the absurdness of this absurdity is just absurd.
• Be okay with having imperfections. Check. Beating ourselves up for being less than perfect is useless and even counterproductive. We should not be comfortable in our imperfections, but neither should we worry too much about them.
• Beware of labels. Yes, "beware" is the right word. We need labels; without them, everything is a monochromatic gray goo, and we cannot make comparisons (see two points above this one) necessary to discriminate between good and evil. But we must be wary. The labels describe; they do not define.
• Have charity. Sort of the "Remember to breathe" bullet point. Can't possibly argue against it, but there's certainly an element of "well, duh". Still good advice.

Why don’t you write the MormonHub articles??

... or do you think after writing them you would have further critiques?

[The Folk Prophet]

9 minutes ago, Fether said:

Why don’t you write the MormonHub articles??

FWIW, my concern (and my interest in discussion) is not the article, specifically. It's a philosophy that I've seen in a variety of places. The article is just another expression of it. I think it's a mindless regurgitation of a bad philosophy floating about out there. It's the philosophy I want to address -- not the regurgitation.