Freedom from Guilt and Shame for my 7-Eleven Employees

Sunday I'm preaching at Raleigh Chinese Christian Church--it's the English service, for those of you who are concerned that my Mandarin and Cantonese might be a bit rusty.

I'm re-working a talk that I've given twice before because the concepts continue to be fresh and needful for me: Freedom from Shame and Guilt.

I've posted on this each time that I've given this talk, but since blog readers turnover faster than the employees at your local 7-Eleven, I want to gather up some thoughts from previous posts and then share some fresh developments tomorrow.

The reason why a talk on shame and guilt matters is because all of us hear the voices. Those voices in our heads speak to us about our past mistakes (that's guilt) or our current deficits of ability or character (that's shame).

Guilt is feeling bad about something you've done. Shame is feeling bad about who you are.

Since we all hear voices, and we generally don't like what they tell us, we all have various strategies to deal with our voices:

1. Religious stuff--maybe if I get God to like me, it'll all be okay
2. Hedonism/Escapism--how many drinks or sexual experiences or highs or movies or hours of sporting events or hours of video games does it take to quiet the voices?
   
3. Moralism--never mind religion, I'll just try to be good enough to prove something to whoever that is that's talking to me about my shortcomings
4. Activism--if I save enough whales, I'll make up for what I did
   
5. Work-a-holism--if I make it through law school or dental school or med school or if I make partner or manager or vice-president or make enough money, then I'll prove myself

The problem, of course, as most of you realize by now if you stop long enough to think about it, is that none of this actually works. That's why most of us don't stop long enough to think about it. We feel stuck.

In fact, if it's up to us to figure out a way to quiet the voices, then we're dead. Nothing we can do will silence them.

The Christian story has a fresh invitation for us: it's not all about you. Jesus is Lord, not you. And that's good news because that means that it's not all on you to try to silence the voices of guilt and shame.

To live under the gracious umbrella of the Lordship of Christ is to be freed from the onerous and impossible task of trying to take make up for your past. If Jesus is Lord, then you no longer have the last word on you; Jesus does. If Jesus is Lord then he is Lord over all of you: present, past, and future.

If Jesus is Lord then your life is not your own and your future is not yours to worry about and your past is not yours, not even yours to regret. Let me say that again: if all of you is given over to Jesus, then your past is not yours any more, not even yours to regret. It is in Jesus to redeem, to heal, to mend, to fix, to make whole, to wash away. It is not up to you to fix it.

The solution to all our guilt and shame is not more work, but rather a cessation of work. Freedom is found in submission. Submission to the Lordship of Christ. That's the good news of the Christian story. That's the invitation that all of us are called to respond to.