Over the weekend I finished reading “Shame Interrupted” by Dr. Ed Welch. As with everything Dr. Welch writes (he is one of my favorite authors) this book is an excellent resource in counseling and growth.

It also took much longer to read than expected!

The reason why is I spent so much time highlighting, making notes, and thinking about what he had written. The book itself is a wonderful deep-dive into why we are ashamed, and how to Biblically deal with it.

One thing I truly love abut this book is it doesn’t give cheesy (basic) answers to the same problem. Instead he takes his time studying the source of shame, and who we are in Christ.

There are many lessons I learned in this book, but the most important comes from the quote below.

In other words, shame always leads to Isolation

In a sense this is just natural since nobody likes to be embarrassed. Let something embarrassing happen (like falling down) and the person immediately starts looking around to see if anyone noticed.

This isolation is more serious though…..

It is an isolation that believes they are unworthy on being with others.

This kind of isolation will eventually get to the point where we believe nobody can be allowed to see our weakness. So we can never truly be present with others in a relationship since they may notice our failure.

The truly sad part about this is we don’’t have to be isolated.

Because our identity is not found in accomplishment…

It is found in Jesus Christ.

This doesn’t mean failure or a mistake shouldn’t bring temporary embarrassment (that is human). And taking some time to heal from emotional pain is okay.

But we cannot isolate ourselves, and call ourselves failures

Instead we are children of God, and joint-heirs with Christ