Korean American Christian Blog

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. - Genesis 2:24-25

I've been reading this book called  The Momentary Marriage by John Piper. In the second chapter, he talks about how shame entered into the world and how it arises in two ways:

1. Others can, at any moment point out the flaws in us to save face for oneself. We are born selfish.

2. Shame demonstrates itself because of our self-awareness that we are flawed.

Both stem from the reality that the covenant between Adam and Eve (as noted in verse 23, "become one flesh") was solid. When God created Adam and Eve, they were naked and not ashamed because they had an unbroken connection with their Creator. Nothing at that point was imperfect, let alone their own physical bodies. 

After reading this, I was thinking about how our self-awareness of flaws can often be masked with our own desperate abilities to save face by putting others down.

Discouragement only reaffirms the existence of the flaws, and among believers, seems unacceptable to do. If ALL have fallen short of His glory, but yet ALL are saved by His grace, then why do we keep shaming one another? Christ has reconnected us to our Father, and we share in Christ as co-heirs and as children of God, but we continue to do a disservice to one another by not reminding each other of this reality. I have been the victim of this, but to use the accuser to justify being the accused, I only contribute to the vicious cycle of preventing my believing brothers and sisters to see that we have been redeemed, and that they daily are being reconciled to God.

I'm going to end this with a funny anecdote on Valentine's Day:

Calvin, 4, was excited to be at church with all his aunties and uncles who love him very much. He has one uncle-friend whom he favors over all the others, and whom he even calls out in his dreams. However, it was on this unfortunate Valentine's Day that this uncle thought it would be funny to use the v-day card play tattoos to stick on Calvin. Initially, it was going to be on the hand, but by someone else's "genius" idea, it went on his back. Yes, they call this a tramp stamp. I don't know how Calvin knew it, but he was suddenly very embarassed as everyone watched this uncle put a Spiderman tattoo on him. He screamed and ran to the farthest corner of the church, with his back against the wall. It's been almost two weeks since this fateful day, and he will still not let his mom wash his back. 

I have no idea how he knew that this "tramp stamp" for a boy is embarassing to have, but our reactions, though probably perceived with limited understanding, only reaffirmed the imperfection of himself. Even as a child, he was aware of his shamefulness. 

Poor Calvin. I don't understand how he still loves to play with this same uncle. :(