Shame, Guilt, and the Stories We Tell Ourselves- Part 2
Hey, y'all. Welcome to spiritual not religious. This is a podcast for young adults that explores
Mollie:the intricacies of God's kingdom and the modern world.
Shawn:Hey, friends, and welcome to spiritual, not religious. I'm your host, Shawnn Winburn, and I'm joined by my wonderful cohost, the visceral and vivacious Virginian, James Henry. And he is joined by the tenacious and transcendent Tennessean, Molly June Miller Bachman. And together, we get into all kinds of trouble and conversations relating to God, belief, the church, and how it all connects to us and what we hope translates into a very relevant way. Now regardless of who you are or where you are in life, you are bound to have some questions that might be based in being spiritual, not religious.
Shawn:And we're glad you are here with us. And we do wanna give a shout out to one of our faithful listeners. We've been doing this now, and I'm really excited about throwing these names out. And this one, this week goes out to Linda Patterson. Linda, thank you for your faithful following of this podcast and your instructive feedback about each one of us, particularly your feedback of James.
Shawn:God bless you, Linda. Thank you. And then this very special part two episode of spiritual not religious, we're going to be following up on our deep dive into the world of guilt and shame. And we began this conversation in our last episode by defining guilt and shame and the various ways that they affect our lives, our our behavior, and in particular, our mental and emotional health. Now there has been much set of guilt and shame over the years and still much needs to be addressed as both of these influence and affect all of us to one degree or another.
Shawn:And we're particularly sensitive to these concepts as many of our listeners may have experienced some negative outcomes associated with the church and or religion, which is exactly the direction we want to take this part two episode in. Now we're gonna focus on how religion and the church have used them historically, and how they may be considered in today's times. And we're gonna try to offer our best interpretation of what we believe the place guilt and shame holds in the economy of all things spiritual and religious. Okay, James and Molly. Let's get started.
Shawn:First, let us know how you both are doing. James, what's going on, man?
James:It's a beautiful year. It's a new year. Things are coming together. I thought things would calm down a little bit after the advent season, after Christmas season. Didn't.
James:It's the way life is. You just can't always predict how things are going to be. I'm thankful to be alive and to be busy, that I have things to do with my life and they matter. About Nice. How about you, Molly?
Mollie:Yeah. I'm doing super well. I've just taken to wallpapering my house. It's like a new hobby that I have where I just wallpaper things for fun. And so I've been working on our kitchen, and I've been doing some wallpaper backsplash.
Mollie:And then also, I did the countertops because we had, like, really old countertops when we moved here. So I've been putting, like, a wood grain countertop contact paper kind of thing over it, and they look really good. So if anyone wants some inspo pics, let me know.
Shawn:Oh my god. You said wallpaper for fun.
Mollie:I love it. Yeah. Oh.
James:I just don't mix those two words together, Sean. I think you and I are coming at it from the same place.
Mollie:But remember, it's like a peel and stick. So it's like not super, super hard. But
Shawn:Alright. Yeah. Maybe today's wallpaper is different.
James:Story. I could tell you a story about how when Linda when when we were expecting Hannah, my first child, and Hannah, we had decided to put up just a border in Hannah's bedroom. And Linda and I thought for a moment we could be needing a divorce. Yes. Yes.
James:To that place. Wallpaper and marriage can become a toxic environment. It is. It is. Place.
Shawn:Do not mix those
James:two together. Guilt. There was shame. There was pain. There was anger.
James:There was frustration, and it all emerged.
Shawn:James, do you guys still need some help with that? Do do we need to recommend a counselor?
James:No. Fortunately, we have made a mutual decision, some years ago never to involve ourselves with wallpaper again.
Shawn:Amen. Amen. I love the end of that story.
James:Never ever
Shawn:That's a happy ending.
Mollie:That is. Yeah.
Shawn:But not to knock your fun, Molly. I mean, sounds like you're having a great time, and really that's what matters.
Mollie:Yeah. It's like a nice, like, calm practice. Baker's usually doing something else, my husband. So Mhmm. It's just me wallpapering the kitchen.
Mollie:And soon, I'll probably move into the other room wallpapering. I'm it's gonna become a hobby, so I'm excited.
Shawn:Okay. And maybe that's the difference. You're not doing it together. It's just you. So Exactly.
Shawn:That makes sense.
James:And no one is questioning whether your level or whether it's going across correctly or whether it's in the right place or whether the ends are matching matching or any of those things.
Mollie:Yeah. He just walks in and says, wow. That looks different than before, and that's really about it. So it and not in a bad way. So Or at
Shawn:least that's how you hear it. Yeah.
James:We are going to keep believing that it's all positive, and we're on board with you, Molly.
Shawn:We are. We are. Thank you. We're excited for you. We are so excited for you.
Shawn:Well, speaking of guilt and shame, about all that kind of fun. So we did have a great conversation on our last episode. And so if you haven't heard it, go back, listen to that before you listen to this one. And in that last episode, we were trying to define some of the key differences between guilt and shame. And just kind of a real quick recap, we had talked about how guilt says your actions are wrong, but you can still be good and fix it.
Shawn:And that it's some and in some ways, it's adaptive. But that shame says you're wrong, making you feel broken and unworthy of connection, and often hinders the change that needs to occur. We brought up our good friend, researcher, author, and storyteller, Brene Brown, who, had talked about, the key difference in her mind was that, between guilt and shame is that shame is connected to feelings of self worth, and guilt is connected to our actions and behaviors. And so, guys, as we think about our last episode, what were some of the key takeaways that, seem to stand out to you? Molly, you you got one or two?
Mollie:I think for me, one of the key takeaways is that shame and guilt are natural, that there are things that happen in our bodies, and that they can be helpful to us if we know how to channel them in a healthy way. And so I've often looked at shame and guilt as a bad thing. Like, I don't wanna feel those feelings. Like, I don't want that feeling of guilt. I don't want that feeling of shame.
Mollie:Like, the even thinking about how it feels, I'm like, oh, my body is, like, having a visceral reaction. Right? Like, you don't want it. But reminding ourselves that it can be really healthy if it happens and we know how to work through it and we're able to do it in a healthy way. So I would just encourage people to be able to find it in their life, pinpoint it and say like, this is a place that I can work on it, and it can help me grow instead of hinder me.
Shawn:Yeah. And I really love how you you categorize that as as being a healthy direction. That there's health behind it to view these things as something that is healthy. Absolutely. Right.
Shawn:And I like that. James, what you got?
James:I think learning that I think it might have a tiny bit of a take difference than my beloved Molly. And that is only that I think guilt, we all make mistakes. We all fail. We all trip up and we can feel guilty about that. Learn from the guilt, learn from the failures, the mistakes.
James:And guilt is just an invitation to recognize, wait, I was off base there and maybe I can get back on base. I can come back towards resonance with God when I'm out of base. Now, shame is when I internalize it. And I'm not sure that I could feel it's a healthy place to be, but it's a place that we when we've internalized the guilt and think that the guilt says that not only I made a mistake, but I am a mistake. And I don't want people to ever feel that way because none of us are a mistake.
James:We make mistakes but we aren't a mistake. But I do think it's healthy when we can name because we have talked about naming it. If you name the shame and can find ways to move beyond thinking you're wrong to the fact that maybe you have made some mistakes. And some things we're shamed into feeling about ourselves may not be true. I mean, it may be somebody else's, someone, one of the things we talk about, somebody else's stuff that they're putting on us.
James:Right. Which seems like a natural segue, And Sean, it's up to you, but a natural segue to talk about sometimes the somebody who puts it on us is the institutional church.
Shawn:Right. Which is, you know, many of our listeners, have probably experienced, that kind of experience within the within the church or a faith community. And and it seems to be one of the top reasons why people claim to be spiritual, not religious, because of church hurt. And and that is something that's widely discussed and talked about. And so we definitely wanna get into that, and I think that is a great segue into this conversation, of how religion, how faith communities, how, the church in general has used guilt and shame historically and over the years and even to today.
Shawn:And I want to just jump in real quick. And we mentioned this last episode as well. But a counselor by the name of Jessica Smith with Emerge Counseling Ministries kind of brought in these kind of faith based terms around guilt and shame that I want to share real quick, and then we'll we'll kind of launch into that. But she said that guilt is about conviction, and shame is about condemnation. Guilt is about confession.
Shawn:Shame is about blaming. Guilt is about recognizing the truth that we have done something wrong. Shame is a debilitating feeling that we are wrong. James, you just mentioned that. And then guilt is a sense of something true, but perhaps difficult to face.
Shawn:Shame is always connected to a lie. And so using some of these things, let's let's kinda like begin to launch into maybe kind of the historical aspects of guilt and shame. And James, I I kinda wanna jump all the way to the beginning of Genesis. Right? I feel like that's kinda where we see the first stories or aspects of of shame arise.
Shawn:Right? Where Adam and Eve are kinda in the garden and they get kind of deceived by the serpent, and next thing you know, they feel shame. So James and and Molly, you both Molly, you're in seminary. James, you have been a student of the Word for a very long time and been in ministry for a while that you have dealt with these aspects for a while and you're you're have have studied these concepts. So kinda wanna like like you guys begin to take us back to the beginning of all of this.
Shawn:And and maybe let's walk our way through how the church and religion has has used these in both positive and negative ways. So, James, you wanna get the ball rolling here?
James:Oh, wow. This could be a whole podcast all by itself, you know. John?
Shawn:Yeah. Well, that's what we're doing.
James:What's fascinating to me when we read Genesis is if it takes until the third chapter until we get people making this error. Well, everything else was good.
Shawn:Right? Know, kept calling things good.
James:Story of creation is a seven day ordered creation that lasts from Genesis one:one to Genesis two:three or four, somewhere in there. And in each one of the instances of every single one of those, not every single day. There was a day God decided not to say good or bad or anything, just did the creating. But five times God says pretty clearly, good, good, good, good, very good on the sixth day of creation. Very good.
James:And for our Franciscan sisters and brothers, they have an alternative orthodoxy that does not talk about original error or original sin, but instead original blessing. But the second story takes us to a different place, to a garden setting, to a kind of an innocence of humanity. Depending upon if you take it as a word for word or if you take it allegorically, in some way humanity was given one specific choice and their innocence depended on them not choosing the desire for knowledge. They could trust God to be the one with the knowledge. And they chose.
James:And it's a mutual choosing. We blame Eve for taking the apple, but Adam tells us in the story, she was standing right there and it wasn't an apple, it was a fruit, by the way.
Mollie:Right.
James:Yeah. It's a fruit. You know, we always have an apple and then we put it in the hands of It's easy. A white snow white step bomb and all the honeycrisp apple. Apple just become evil.
Mollie:What about a gala?
Shawn:No. It was honeycrisp.
James:It it might have been. More likely, it might have been a persimmon, but, you know, we don't know. The multiplicity of it is that it opened a kind of vulnerability. Chaos entered the picture. Just so you know, serpents in Aramaic thinking are the image of chaos.
James:Now we've personified it. We've decided that was some being. Don't need to go there. But the long and short is the image of a serpent every time it shows up is the image of chaos. And chaos shows up and suggests that there's another way to go and chaos enters the picture through the choice of human beings to accept the knowledge.
James:And that knowledge helped them recognize about themselves that they were vulnerable. They were naked and ashamed, which is another way of saying they felt very vulnerable to the world. They felt a part of everything prior to that. And now suddenly they felt in some way separated, not only from God, but from the very creation of which they were a part. And so when they felt separated, they felt ashamed and so then they hid.
James:And in this story, God shows up on a regular basis for an afternoon walk. I kind of like that image, you know, God And showing up for an afternoon when God shows up for the afternoon walk and says, hey, Adam, Eve, where are you? We're naked and we're hiding because we're ashamed. And you know, the rest of the that's you know, the rest is history I suppose or at least ripple story about how we lost our innocence. And we gained a sense of vulnerability and part of that vulnerability is that we no longer saw ourselves as a part of what God was doing.
James:And of the entire creation, we somehow saw ourselves as separate, not toiling alongside God. And that's where guilt, the mistake of thinking we were as good or as knowledgeable as God, that we knew as much. Or did not need to be a part of all other things. That changed our history. That's now that's an interpretation.
James:All of them are in those first three chapters. We we interpret them. I was trained to call that a original sin. You know in in the third chapter. I would use different terminology now.
James:But more like what I just described to you, chaos and vulnerability and the loss of innocence. The recognition that we're different. Than the rest of creation and that made us feel separate, alone and alienated.
Shawn:No, that's good. I like that. I like that interpretation. Molly, when think of that particular accounting, what comes to your mind and and how does a story like that, an image like that, relay into your work with college age students?
Mollie:Yeah. You know, I I'm a person that thinks of things I believe kind of, like, as metaphors in a lot of different ways. And so if we want to say that the creation story has a metaphor within itself, I kind of see when Adam and Eve were naked and they knew that they were naked and they were ashamed. One of the first feelings that they felt other than, like, goodness and holiness was shame.
James:Mhmm.
Mollie:And I think that that for me runs deeply in thinking about when we think about holiness and goodness that because we can feel those things, shame also resides and lives in that same place. And I really appreciate that god said, like, I want this to be really important, and I want people to see that these two things can happen Mhmm. But both of them are gonna live in this place. And so for me, I just am reminded that there's good in those moments too. And in addition to that, I think in my students, there's a not just directly my students, but with young people in general.
Mollie:I think that there is a lack of wanting to be vulnerable and, like, wanting to be naked in the way that Adam and Eve were in order to feel that shame because they're afraid of what that shame's gonna feel like. And I think that that's completely valid and understood, but we have to remind ourselves that being vulnerable is really important. And sometimes that can cause shame, but sometimes that can also have people come alongside you and support you. And so teaching students how to navigate through that vulnerability in a healthy way that doesn't always lead to a point of pain is something that we're working through with this generation.
Shawn:Wow.
James:Very powerful, Molly.
Shawn:Very
James:powerful. I do think to echo what you said, just a very short, is to say that there are safe places to be vulnerable and there are unsafe places to be vulnerable. And if you can be seen and accepted for who you are, that can help you heal from shame because now you know that what you thought made you less than is actually just a part of life. And that you can be seen and loved for who you are. Because after all shame is saying, I can't be.
James:I'm unacceptable. I am not good enough. And for people to see you naked, vulnerable, if you will, and be accepted is a whole another it opens up the door for healing, salvation, if you will.
Shawn:And so, like, let's talk about how this story of of these two and how that of of Adam and Eve being caught up in in shame and feeling guilt perhaps. And how has the church used this story then historically to use it as kind of like a power move for a lot of folks. And I and I think most of us know that the church does have a few black eyes here when it comes to how it is abused, these two concepts. So let's let's talk a little bit about I mean, is is shame I mean, is there any part of shame that is useful, or is it just just seen as kind of like this weaponization of power, from faith communities to keep people in line?
James:Mhmm. Well, I do think the church's job work is to help form people. And the danger is when we stop forming people and start trying to control people. The same formation, the shaping of a person's life, helping them be on this path of faith that we are on together to walk alongside without needing to try to control the way that God is seen or understood because no two of us, despite the universality of God, the experience of God is going to be unique to each individual one of us. And because of that, I think when I try to tell Molly what her experience needs to be, Molly, if you're gonna experience God, this is it girl.
James:Don't be going outside of this little space I'm giving you. That's when and if she feels like her experience of God is outside of that box, then I've given her something to feel guilty about and maybe something's wrong with me because I'm not experiencing God the way James told me I was supposed to and then it becomes I must be wrong. Therefore, shame enters in. I do think that when we tell the story in such a way that we control the narrative rather than invite people to the narrative as an experience of formation. Right.
James:That's when we use that tool in negative ways and perpetuate guilt and shame rather than heal guilt and shame.
Shawn:Right. You said that it's used as control mechanisms.
James:Yeah.
Shawn:Yeah, to potentially enforce obedience or some kind of conformity and how that's connected with worth, self worth, due to performance potentially. Yeah. That's interesting. I like that. Molly, what do you think?
Mollie:I think that this may be a hot take. This is what the the college students say. They call it a hot take when it's something that's not, like, super, like it might be a little bit taboo or people might be like, oh my gosh. I don't know.
James:Mhmm.
Mollie:But when I when I sit in this space and I think about what the church has done, I will say that, in my opinion, I think that the church is supposed to create a relationship, help you create a relationship with God, with Jesus, with yourself. And then once again, that becomes a relationship with God. And it's kind of this cycle of knowing yourself to knowing Jesus, to knowing God, and the holy spirit, and it's just beautiful, like, dance, you would say. But my hot take in this is that I think that when we use obedience first, we negate the fact that there could there is a lack of relationship. And so for me, obedience equals a lack of relationship.
Mollie:When we are obedient, we're just following, and we're doing something out of fear. But when we have a relationship, we understand that there's give and take, and there's grace in it, that there's moments when I'm gonna mess up and I may feel guilty, but let's work together to change that. And so that for me is where I sit in a really hard spot when students come to me and say, well, this is how I grew up. And, like, I was just told if I prayed hard enough or if I just went on this mission trip or if I just did this or if I listened to my parents. And I try to remind them that, like, anyone that has any anyone that thinks that they have all the answers, I'd be super weary of that.
Mollie:Because I just don't think, unless they're God, then we should be listening to them. So,
Shawn:I mean, This for is the answer.
Mollie:Yeah. That's about it. Mhmm. I At
Shawn:least he has
James:the answer.
Mollie:Yes. I don't know if we're gonna find out all of them, but maybe one day.
James:Yeah.
Mollie:But, yeah, I think that obedience for me is where we have done it wrong and where we have made people feel like they have to be obedient in order to have a relationship when really obedience is not creating relationship. It's using fear to create control, and there's differences for me in that.
Shawn:Mhmm. And and yet Jesus says, you know, if we if we love him, we'll obey him. And then so there's like a I I think there's a a form of obedience that, it's it's derived out of love. Does that make sense?
James:Yeah. I do think there's a place for obedience. But when obedience is expected, I think obedience born out of trust is a different kind of obedience than the obedience that's born out of fear or coercion.
Mollie:Absolutely. Yes. And I appreciate you saying that. Yeah.
James:And I think that I think as love grows, obedience, particularly to God naturally grows out of it because my heart really desires to do what God's heart desires for me to do. And so my will becomes more interested in willing what God wills. Loving what God loves, being who God sees me, not just as who I want to be seen as. And so I do think there's a coercive obedience, but I also think there's I I I'm with you Sean. There's a there is a healthy form of obedience.
James:Oftentimes.
Shawn:Right.
James:Some people want obedience before they build the kind of trust that invites that invites any kind of obedience. For instance, think of in monastic communities, they often have well, of them have abbots, which is just as our abbesses, Yeah. You know father or mother of the group. But in in certain more loosely knit ones they have a prior and or a prioress. The Franciscans or Dominicans, they have prior and a prior is first among equals.
James:That is all of the brothers or all of the sisters elect that person to be the first and they are then submit to that person. That person is a person of trust. They submit their will to that person. So when that person says, let's do it this way. They do it that way not because they feel coerced to but because they chose this person and they feel that this person.
Shawn:Yeah.
James:Their best interest and is trustworthy. When god asked me to obey, when god asked me to love, I think god has my best intention. He wants the best for me. She wants the best for me. They want the best for me.
James:Right.
Shawn:You not shamed into it, of course, like you said.
James:Right. It's it's not about shame. It's about it's about desire and trust.
Mollie:And I
James:think Yeah.
Shawn:Go ahead.
Mollie:Going off of what James said, I think for me and the reason that I see obedience as something that can be dangerous is because of the way that I've seen it played out in our world. Mhmm. I've seen obedience look unhealthy, and I've seen obedience lead to shame and lead to pain points and lead to people being vulnerable and then that being used as a weapon against them. And so I think when we talk about obedience, I've haven't seen obedience in a way that feels like it's been rooted in love. But for me, like, when I follow, you know, what God says in my life, I don't know if I would say that's obedience for me.
Mollie:It's more just like my heart aligns with God's heart, and we just move in a direction together. And some may call that obedience. And for me, I think I just call that, like, god's will and my will are aligning. And so I I hear you in that, but I also wanna make sure that I name that as Mhmm. A thing that young people may be feeling.
James:Mhmm. Word. Respect.
Shawn:Truth. Alright. Well, that's great. Hey, listen. We're gonna take a break right now.
Shawn:But when we come back, we've got so much more to talk about. And, so stick around. And welcome back to this episode of Spiritual Not Religious. We where we are talking about shame and guilt, and the close connection that it has with faith communities, church, with religion. And we were just talking about how the church can use shame and guilt as control mechanisms, to enforce obedience, or, conformity by linking, worth to your performance, or through sexual shaming, or potentially linking finances to blessings, or what we like to call the prosperity gospel.
Shawn:Mhmm. And we believe that this kind of manipulation can stunt personal growth. It just creates fear that James had talked about, and, it'll discourage questioning by making members feel inherently flawed or rebellious rather than loved. Though some traditions view shame as a necessary tool, potentially, for repentance and healing when used redemptively to turn towards God. And I'll just share a little bit real quick about my growing up.
Shawn:I'm a Gen Xer. And when I was young and teenager, young adult, you know, the big taboo things were, you know, don't don't have sex, don't do drugs, and don't listen to rock and roll. And if you were kinda doing anything kinda outside of the bounds of the understanding of of what the church thought was, you know, good healthy living, then you you felt pretty guilty pretty quick. You felt ashamed. And so there were a lot of things in in my generation that it was just always like, oh, the devil's hiding under something here.
Shawn:And so you just always felt like you were getting pulled into something. And even the smallest thing could be just another small temptation that would lead you into just feeling terrible and that you were failing God. You were failing your family. You were just embarrassing yourself. And you just you could never quite be good enough.
Shawn:And and so it was just always I I I carried a lot of shame growing up. And even into my adulthood, it just you know, you just always had this fear of of not being loved enough by a guy because you just kept messing up. I just had, you know, bags and bags of guilt heaped upon me. And so as we just talk about these concepts, I know James and Molly, you have probably have lived through some of this. Molly, can you talk a little bit about where you feel yourself in this time?
Shawn:I mean, you have these kind of similar experiences with your faith community growing up? Or was it a little bit different? And are you hearing and seeing different experiences from the young adults that you minister to?
Mollie:For me personally, growing up, I grew up Catholic, and I was a Catholic or or of the Catholic faith until I was in about second grade. And then my family moved over to the Methodist Church and kinda from there, that took off, and I became confirmed in the United Methodist Church, all the things. But I can remember when I was young in the Catholic church. I don't remember specifically, like, for me because I was so young, but I do remember my dad grew up in Catholic grammar school, was a Catholic his whole life and I remember when we decided to go to the Methodist church, in the beginning, he still went to the Catholic church and the whole family went to the Methodist church but he wouldn't come with us because he felt like, if I do that, like, there's guilt associated with that. And his mom, my grandmother, had passed by that time and he was like, she would be disappointed.
Mollie:Like, I have to I have to keep going. Mhmm. Over time, he was reminded that, you know, god doesn't only fit in the Catholic church. God's not only there. God's also in the Methodist church and in other spaces.
Mollie:And so if you're going to church on Sunday or even if you're not, like, god's not saying this is not okay or this is. And so over time, that changed for him, but I remember that being, like, super fundamental in my shift in my brain of, you know, what kinds of things did he grow up with in order to have that feeling now? Like, what what did the world do for that to happen? But as I grew up, I had such I had a really great experience within church. And, of course, there's moments where things are hard things are hard everywhere.
Mollie:But I personally had a great experience. And I remember when I moved to Tennessee for the first time, meeting students and meeting individuals that did not have a similar experience to where that I had when I grew up and had a lot of shame and a lot of guilt and a lot of things attached to their faith that just felt like heavy bags, kinda like you're talking about of, like, I strapped this on myself, and now I'm just trying to get up this hill, and I just can't make it because it's too heavy. And working through that with students right now of why do we feel like we're carrying those things? And, you know, who put that on us? Did we put that on ourselves, or did someone else put a rock in our backpack?
Mollie:Like, let's find where that is, and can we remove that rock, or can we just take the whole thing off? And for students now, it looks a lot different than I think it did even when I was younger.
James:For me, I think in subtle ways, I grew up in the mainline Protestant church and there was a subtle, it was more subtle, a subtle expectation that you would conform to the norms. And a lot of what I grew up with, yeah, there were some kind of moral taboos like, I don't know if rock and roll was one of them. There were some people in my home church growing up that just thought dancing was not good, evil But kind of all of our moral taboos were built around sex and sexuality. Those were interesting things. And the majority of my faith formation was about making sure you knew enough stuff that it really was, there was a time when Protestantism really thought its job was to educate us about what was true and what wasn't.
James:And so sermons were more instead of exhortative, that's a bizarre word, instead of encouraging us to live a certain way.
Shawn:There you go.
James:There we go, much better word, sorry. Training came out in a bad way. Instead of encouraging us to live a certain way, they just presented what we know about the history of the scripture and who the players were, and then you had to make your own choices. There weren't always good bridges that were built to faith. So, conformity was making sure you knew all the answers and I did.
James:So, got checked that box. And then conforming primarily to morality built around sexuality and the lack thereof until the right time in your life. You know, don't even use that word. Right. So, kind of thing because it could just using the word was so suggestive.
James:It could create all sorts of terrible consequences. Exactly. And so I think there was shame built around the idea that you would even be a sexual being instead of recognizing the gift that it is to be a human being made as a human being with a sexuality. It was treated more as a complete taboo and you know, so it had a natural way of shaming you if you were even interested in asking questions about sexuality. You know, there's just no, there wasn't room for that.
James:So Yeah.
Shawn:And I'm so curious what you two think. Why did sex become the big taboo, the big no no, where I think so many different faith traditions have have used this. Like, this is where we get the the scarlet letter from, and this is where we've heard about so many people flogging themselves because of their desires. And and but it yeah. I think you're right, James.
Shawn:I think it does kinda center around sexuality or just the idea or the topic of sex. And this is this brings so much shame and guilt, and that the church is is it just the church was trying to use this as a controlling mechanism, or did they just understand it, or did they just see some examples in the bible and were so afraid that everyone was just gonna, like, turn into this Sodom and Gomorrah kind of thing? Or what what do you guys think, of the reason that sex became such a a hot button topic for the church and why it created all of these issues?
Mollie:Yeah. I think in that, what kind of bubbles up for me is this idea that, like, sex in general and sexuality is a universal thing among all living humans.
Shawn:Mhmm.
Mollie:And so because of that, that is something that all humans are gonna experience, sexuality, and, you know, being attracted to individuals or not, there's gonna be a universal experience. So because of that, and in design, we were wired for that, and being able to multiply is part of why we are on Earth as well. I think that that can be used as a control mechanism because nine times, nine and a half times probably out of 10, this will apply to people, and this will apply to humans. And so I wonder if there's a connection between and this could be completely wrong, but I wonder if there's a connection between having it be a universal thing that everyone feels to being able to use it as a mechanism of control. And I don't know if James, you have a better read on this.
James:I don't think I have a better read on it. I do I I had never thought about the universality of it. I think that's brilliant Molly. I know that the early church fathers particularly believed that sinfulness was passed on through sex. So, because the early church fathers of the church believed that that's part of where the whole idea of the immaculate conception of Mary came along because if Mary was immaculately conceived then she wasn't the bearer of sin and could give birth to Jesus who was also immaculately conceived by the spirit coming upon.
James:And so the importance of the virgin birth and particularly for our Roman Catholic sisters and brothers of the immaculate conception of Mary was because otherwise sin came into Jesus and we needed for our theology for Jesus to be sinless upon entering the world. And so they tied a lot of sinfulness to sexuality for the early church fathers and it carried forward as an undercurrent. Now, course, fast forward to today and Protestantism, moral purity is a big deal. And I think that sexuality is just a low hanging fruit if we're being honest. I mean, I think that it's hard.
James:Why don't we preach as horror preach as diligently about lying? A dishonesty. You know, that does so much more damage than okay, maybe they all do things. But it does so much more damage. Why do we avoid that?
James:Is it because it's much more common? I don't know. But I think it was just easy to target sexuality. And
Shawn:It just seems like such a big misunderstanding to me within the faith community where this is something like sex was a gift from God. It was God's idea. It's just one of those things that, sure, we've mishandled greatly. Right? Like, we've mishandled everything.
Shawn:But And maybe you're right, James. Maybe it's low hanging fruit. I mean
James:Well, it's low hanging fruit. I do think that there is there are consequences to sex that are different than other kinds of consequences.
Mollie:That's true.
James:And I do think when the church tries to lean into recognizing it as a gift, it's a gift that should be shared selectively. And so maybe what they're trying to encourage us to do is to be a little bit more selective, but in order to make us be more selective, they make it exclusively never ever, ever, ever do it. Instead of recognizing that it has a place in a loving committed relationship that there it's a gift. And I think the more you repress something and our society just doesn't, I think that the repression of sexuality that we were unwilling to talk about it in public ways leads to things when you repress something, it comes out in uglier ways, pornography, you know, and other kinds of places where it's not a health any longer a healthy expression of that sexuality. I think we didn't want to talk about it at all.
James:So, we just said it's bad, don't talk about it. Instead of saying it's a wonderful, beautiful gift. It's healthy in these situations. It's not healthy when it's coerced or when there's not between equal consenting partners, all those kinds of things. Instead of talking about the hard stuff, it was just easier to say, off limits.
Shawn:Yeah, let's draw a hard line. Which is not what Jesus ended up doing in this situation story of in the New Testament that I wanna bring up where a naked woman was thrown down before his feet in a in a public environment and was about to be killed for her sexual disobedience and publicly shamed and all the things going on there. And and I love this story in the sense that instead of this intolerance and this anger, this righteous anger, there was in place of that forgiveness and tenderness from Jesus towards the situation. Jesus could have easily, I guess, shamed the woman, and she was guilty according to the law at the time. And but I just I I I'm just so curious there too where this guilt, this shame that was all into this, and yet Jesus' example was, hey.
Shawn:You know what? We're all kind of equal here with this. But if you're not, then I guess you can throw the first stone. How does a story like that impact our thoughts about guilt and shame? What do you guys think?
Mollie:I think that even brings me back to the point that I was just talking about of, like, sexuality being universal. Like Mhmm. In that moment, Jesus was saying, like, this is a universal experience. Like, you've all felt shame before. You've all felt guilt before.
Mollie:You've all done something before that you should not have done, and you did it anyway. And if you're saying that you haven't ever done that, you're saying you're not a human, and that's a part of living is feeling guilt. Hopefully, it doesn't manifest into shame. But part of being a human being is feeling guilt in moments, and that can be healthy guilt that we use in order to help us be better and be more connected with the divine and the divine that lives within us too.
James:It's one of my favorite stories, the John eight story of the woman caught in adultery. Know, the questions lots of questions arise from that story. Where was the man? Because if you're committing adultery, you know, you can't do it by yourself. Or else it's not adultery.
Shawn:Right.
James:It's something else but it's not adultery. And there is a sense that we all we are quick to condemn somebody else and it was easier to condemn this woman than it was to be self aware of. And what Jesus invited in that crowd that had gathered that was busy blaming the woman. That bad word that we talked about that you brought up at the very beginning of our time together today, Sean, and in last episode, blaming is an unhealthy thing. They were quick to blame without even being self aware enough to recognize that we all have done things that have put us in misalignment with God's intention for our lives.
James:That have made us dissonant with the eternal vibration that God has and that we all deserve the opportunity to seek reconciliation in one way or another. And just be aware that, you know, if you've never been misaligned with God, anyone without sin.
Shawn:Wow, I was going to say, yeah.
James:You know, if anyone without sin, you go ahead, you throw that first stone baby. Otherwise, and then beginning with the oldest, as he looked back on his life, you get the sense, as quick as I was to blame. And I think we like to externalize blame because we see in ourselves our own shame. And so, we externalize it on somebody else, we transfer it onto somebody else and therefore we can put it to death in someone else, something that really is our problem, our mutual problem. I think it's a powerful story at so many levels.
James:And I think it's worthy of explanation. That's the one where Jesus draws on the ground and people spend more time arguing about what he wrote on the ground than what the whole story is about. What was he writing? Well, I don't know, but we do know there are other parts of the story and there was no man. I don't understand how that could be because the law allows for her to be stoned, but with the man who committed adultery as well.
James:We left out a bunch of people here. One out of two. Guess one out of two could be bad, but it's really bad. And Jesus, so there's a lot of, it's a good story. And I don't know.
James:That story is about, go and not don't misalign yourself anymore. Take another chance. We all make mistakes and we get a chance to live differently. That's what to change our mind about how we're living. And that's a guilt that invites a different form of life.
James:And I think that's a healthy way to see guilt. I
Shawn:just I like the face of God in this picture, in this story. Because And it it juxtaposes the face of the church around a topic like this Mhmm. Where there's usually just an anger associated with it. There's the shame just comes pouring out, and there's judgment. And in this story, we don't get any of that.
Shawn:We get tenderness. We get kindness. We get mercy. We we we are we see love in action here. And and boy, how did how did this get missed?
Shawn:And and I I just I know so many people who have who have been hurt by the church because of this. People who committed sins or sexual acts or whatever and then cast out of a church instead of embraced for healing to occur. And people that'll never darken the door of a church again because of the way the church treated them based on some of their actions. Yeah. And, you know, we know that shame has no place because shame says we're helpless and we're hopeless and Christ says we're his.
Shawn:And I know I'm kind of like veering more into like my own personal faith, but
James:Oh, I think I think you're right, though, Sean. For thanks for saying that. Yeah. Thanks for bringing us back around. That's exactly preach it, brother.
Shawn:I just I I mean, for for our listeners who that might might be something they can absorb just yet, but like at least where's the hope in this? Where where where can we find some healing? Where can we find some reconciliation with this with this idea, with this concept? And Molly, I think you are right. This is a this is something that we all experience.
Shawn:Right? And none of us are are left out or are better than the other. But it does invite, because of our global experience with this, it means that we can also open ourselves up to healing. And I think our healing and our hurts are spiritual in nature. And so any what are some of thoughts on on shame and guilt in the church and maybe something that we might not have covered just yet.
Shawn:Either of you have something.
Mollie:I think one thing that I would have liked to be reminded is like, that I could tell other people would be that God is the one who defines us. The people of the church do not define who we are. And so, yes, the people of the church are supposed to be connected to God. Mhmm.
James:But that does
Mollie:not mean that they are God. And some of them may be way misaligned more than others with who God actually is. And so let's not obviously what they say matters in moments, but let's also be reminded that God is the one who is going to do the judgment, and that is what matters. And so if you feel like maybe I'm living outside of what my church is okay with, I think that's a beautiful place to be.
James:I think it creates struggle. I'm I'm with Molly that, just because your church tells you something doesn't always mean you need to take it. Unless it's my church and it's me talking. Then that's another thing. I'm kidding, of course.
James:I do think that there needs to be space. I do think that the church buys into this idea that you know, it's a very Hebrew bible idea and that's scapegoating. It's much easier to you know, we all have sexual desires. But if we can catch somebody whose sexual desires got just a little out there, we can blame them for all sexuality. We can blame them for all the challenges.
James:Who are the most who preach the most against the LGBTQIA, who are most homophobic, tend to be the people who are afraid deep within themselves. Has been shown psychologically that they have those tendencies themselves and they hate that part of themselves. So, they externalize the hate on somebody else. Can't control your sexual desires, externalize them on somebody else, the woman caught in adultery. I think we have to help people be more self aware because we all bring a story to the church, a story of ourselves and experience of ourselves.
James:So I always remind people, remember, no matter what anyone else says, you are infinitely precious and unconditionally loved for the gift you already are and that's the gift you already are. Not the gift that you will become down the road. Although you'll be loved for that too. But who you already are, god loves you unconditionally and you are so infinitely precious to god. Never forget that.
Shawn:And I love that. I love that that is our answer to guilt and shame is not let's figure out all the ways that you're wrong here. And I think there's a place for guilt and I think there's a place for shame. But like we talked about, what is the healthy side of that? Mhmm.
Shawn:But, like, let's tell let's tell you who you are in in someone like Jesus' eyes, for example. Mhmm. And let's start there. Because I feel like going back to that story of the woman called an adultery, that's exactly what Jesus did. It wasn't so much he was there to cast blame, but now this is who you are, and this is who I want you to be.
Shawn:And this is who you could be. You know, I mean, just kind of reversing that a little bit. And so, yeah, we could have said so much more. And there's probably a lot more that needs to be said about this topic, particularly in the the backdrop of religion and your faith community. And we would love to hear from you, your thoughts on this and then the things we were talking about.
Shawn:And Molly's gonna tell you just how you can get in touch with us and share your thoughts and your questions.
Mollie:You can follow us at Instagram on at spiritual dot not underscore religious podcast. And then you can find us on Gmail if you wanna send us an email at spiritualnotreligiouspodcast@Gmail.com.
Shawn:Awesome. And then check us out on Instagram. I believe there, you can also order some of our merch.
Mollie:Yes.
Shawn:And so we're excited about that. And I'm not sure, do we are we gonna be on YouTube or do we still like figuring that part out?
James:We are doing our darndest to make that happen.
Shawn:Well Your producer
James:is an epic failure when it comes to putting all those pieces together.
Shawn:Yeah. I'm trying. Were we guilting him into this? Were we shaming him?
Mollie:Yeah. No guilt. Only love. We love you.
James:I know. I I I the raw I I can I can upload the the raw recording, which usually includes a middle part, unless I cut it out of our bizarre conversations with each other, you know, about what were you thinking when you said that James? What I was thinking? Know, those kinds of things all come out in that little space. So, I have all those.
James:I make sure I download them every time I download the rest of the podcast. So, I always have those and they can be made available on YouTube. It's just a matter and Molly has even given me access to our YouTube channel. I have no excuses whatsoever. Oh my goodness.
James:Except I'll work on it harder. How's that?
Mollie:You're still the best even if you don't do it.
Shawn:Well, I only had brought it up because Linda Patterson was asking about it. So and she's one of our faithful listeners, and
James:I care.
Shawn:Linda, we're gonna get to work on this.
Mollie:We love you, Linda.
Shawn:Your patronage, so we're gonna get this done. Oh my gosh. Alright. Well, guys, thank you so much for tuning into another episode. We look forward to catching you on our next podcast.
Shawn:And in the meantime, be blessed, know you are loved, and we'll see you soon.
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