Rick Patterson's Blog

Gratefulness from Others is Driven By Our Shame

Vance wants gratitude from Ukraine

Musk wants gratitude from Trump

Trump wants gratitude from everyone (as do I!! :))

We need gratitude for the same reason we need for approval: shame. Shame finds its source, often without even our awareness, in self-hatred. Because we carry this self-hatred, we are always looking for people and things to help us feel better about ourselves. People being grateful for what we’ve done, helps with that.

It certainly does not look like Trump suffers from self-hatred. Most would say he’s a narcissist. We believe narcissism is a result of self-love, but it’s not. Narcissism is a mask shame insists that people with self-hatred wear to throw people off track. Most people struggling with narcissism aren’t even aware they have such a struggle. One sign, is a compelling need for gratitude.

Why We Need Gratitude

If you press people for why they have such a need for gratitude, most would be hard pressed to come up with an answer. As you know from me by now, understanding the “why” is critical. The only answer might be “well, they just should be grateful”. Shame also requires us to make someone else the bad guy. This also helps us feel good about ourselves – it sooths the inner fear that we are worthless.

Why the Need for Gratitude is Dangerous

The reason shame, Narcissism and the need for gratitude (and approval) are dangerous is because they can be manipulated. If people simply “butter us up”, they can often get what they want. This can allow people to achieve results that may not be in our best interest.

This can also be true in reverse. Our need to be thanked can prevent us from doing what really needs to be done. We have in our mind that being kind, generous, and giving people will result in those people being grateful for us. Often, that’s not the case.

People Will Pay for Praise

I’ve spent most of my time working in corporate America and secondarily in ministry. What I’ve learned from both venues is that people will work for praise. The more you praise them, the harder they will work. This, I believe, is why corporations have awards ceremonies and acknowledgement programs. If we feel appreciated, we will work harder for less money. Is that the same as being willing to pay someone to praise you? Yes it is.

The challenge is that people in general can be ungrateful and our need for gratitude is often insatiable. What we will find at work is that what they really care about is our ability to produce and reducing what they have to pay us to produce that. Our employers have learned how to game the system, we just haven’t learned we’re are paying the price.

I have seen the same exist in ministry. It’s important to realize that ministry is just filled with the same people we will find in our work and political lives. Corporations are not bad. Ministry is not bad. Shame, which is manipulating each of us to achieve results to soothe our ego is bad.

Care for Those Who Don’t Express Gratefulness

Dorothy Day would warn new volunteers in her effort to help the poor that they should be aware of two things: the poor smell and they are ungrateful. For those of us (like Vance and Trump) who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, gratefulness for our benevolence should not be expected. Jesus himself showed us that in specific examples (Luke 17:11-19) and by the entirety of his life. Still, the demand of Christ is that we be benevolent anyway (Matthew 25). His command was to feed his sheep.

What is Life?

For many of us there are two paths in front of us. Jesus called them the narrow road and the wide road. The narrow road is one leading us toward a life of self-sacrifice for those who won’t be grateful. It’s hard work. It will challenge our entire shame-based psyche. This drive for humility is why Jesus insists we care for the least of these – not because they need care, but because we need to do battle with our own need to be thanked and appreciated. We need humility. Humility is the mission of God.  

The bible would suggest that to live is Christ. I suspect that is true whether you are a Christian or not. To live is to self-sacrificially care for others. Why? Because they need our help? No. Because we need to do battle with our internalized shame.

Why are Should Despite Not Seeing Gratefulness From Others

If we view the poor, the aliens, the outcast or the oppressed as those needing our help, it aids our shame and self-hatred by making us feel better than someone. We are great, they are small. It will not build humility. They are here to teach us. They are here to lead us. Jesus would even say that they are him (Matthew 25). We give, not because there is a need, we give because we are in need. We just don’t know it.

The post Why we Demand Gratefulness: Shame appeared first on Rick Patterson.

I just posted a video defining Christianity how Jesus seems to insist we live beyond our religion and find Christ beyond Christianity. You will see there the demand of Jesus to forget eternal life by living eternally through care for the sick. Jesus will insist we find Christ in a person the church has excluded.

The next day, this is in the news – a Republican Senator telling us that the poor don’t need medicine, they need Jesus. In this article you will see this was as a result of the taxation issues facing us which I recently discussed.

Like it or not, this is the face of modern Christianity despite the fact that Jesus said, what you have NOT done to the least of these (care for the poor and the sick) you have NOT done for me. The poor don’t need Jesus – they ARE Jesus. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself (Matthew 25).

Living Beyond Religion: Saying “I love Jesus” vs “loving Jesus”

Here’s another video I posted to YouTube on Peter’s calling. Jesus warns that simply vocalizing a love for Jesus is not enough – we must care for the least of this. If we don’t love them, we don’t love him. How this is not evident to those professing to follow Jesus, I have no idea. Exposing this has become the basis of my upcoming book.

What does all this have to do with shame? Shame demands we find someone to be against. It’s easy to be against those who can’t fight back. It’s easy to demonize those who take what we’ve earned. To those of us doing this, myself included, Jesus simply says this: woe to you (Matthew 23).

In order to be living beyond what our religion seems to demand, we often have to find Christ beyond Christianity. This is the picture of Jesus that will find us in the book of Matthew. This Jesus will force us to confront the shame in our lives that demands we denigrate others. The Jesus in Matthew will force us to simply live humbly through a radical inclusion of those the church has often cast aside.

The post The Poor Don’t Need Medicine? appeared first on Rick Patterson.

The Big Beautiful Bill – Is it Stealing?

The “big beautiful bill” has just been past in the house. It’s reportedly the largest Medicaid and SNAP (food assistance to the poor) cuts in history. Of course, these changes have received vociferous objection especially from poverty experts. For those folks, it’s tantamount to stealing. It’s an odd designation given the fact that the money going into those programs originally belonged to rich people from whom it had originally been taken (stolen?) through taxation. Is it stealing or government mandated generosity?

Taxation Steals from the Rich to Give to the Poor

The objection to this bill is that “the government” has stolen from the poor and given to the rich. However, it never belonged to the poor to begin with. The bill simply says we’re not going to take the rich people’s money anymore and therefore won’t have it available to give to the poor. This is not even close to the definition of stealing.

What Is Taxation: A Moral Obligation to the Greater Good?

Taxation is a funny thing. The leading democratic position is, evidently, that people who want to keep the money they’ve earned are somehow bad. The idea seems to suggest we should demonize them for wanting to keep what they’ve earned. A view that Republicans will and did quickly pounce upon. It’s a dumb argument really. It simply caves to the voice of shame that mandates we find someone to hate and demonize.

If generosity was easy, we’d all be doing it. Many Democrats who propose such an argument are not voluntarily generous themselves so it’s a hypocritical argument as well. We all want other people to be generous for us.

The question is not about stealing, it’s really about morality. What is our collective moral obligation to those who are not as well off? One could argue that the amount some people make is morally obscene. I suspect someone is sub-Saharan Africa might say that about me as well. It would likely be true. Warren Buffet has argued that the lowest 2% of earners in our country live better than John D. Rockefeller did in his own day. Along these lines, we are all remarkably well off.

So, effectively, here we all are in a bucket of immorality unwilling to take care of those less fortunate.

The Influence of our Christian Heritage

Our definition of “morality” comes from our heritage as a Christian nation. Oddly, those championing the moral right to take from the wealthy to help the needy, are those frequently most unaligned with modern Christianity – Democrats / liberals.

Evangelical Christianity is now synonymous with the republican party – the group presently proposing we stop taking from the wealthy and cutting programs to the needy. Given an evangelical Christian control of government, I would think that our desire to be empathetic and generous would grow as a country based on their professed allegiance to the person of Jesus Christ. Remember that it was Jesus himself who exposed “what you have done to the least of these, you have done to me”.

What Would Jesus Do?

It seems like a nation led by “Jesus lovers” would be falling all over itself to give to the hungry and homeless and offering a welcome to the alien since we believe they are, in fact, Jesus himself (Matthew 25). But we’re not. Instead, we’ve demonized them as freeloaders. Jesus wasn’t much kinder. He called them sheep. However, he still commands his followers to tend their needs (John 21:17) regardless of what we think about them, how they live, or how they treat us in return.

Here in lies the challenge with helping the needy – it can be hard, thankless and often unrewarding work. Jesus did not paint any other picture than this exact picture (Luke 17:15-19). This has begun to be termed empathy exploit.

I would think in our current governmental pre-disposition to evangelical Christianity, our fear of having our empathy exploited by the poor would fade. It’s not faded, it’s grown. I don’t see an administration trying to find a way to be empathetic even while claiming to be followers of Jesus. Even evangelical Christians are giving up on these woke teachings of Jesus out of fear of empathy abuse.

Government Mandates from an Evangelical Christian Leadership

The current evangelical Christian leadership in the government has shown a desire to mandate (it’s understanding of) Christian morality through law. We see this in areas of gender, sexuality, and abortion for example. However, what they refuse to mandate is generosity. This despite the fact that generosity and greed are mentioned in the Bible infinitely more frequently than issues concerning our genitals.

In fact, the very nature of Jesus is that of a generosity program for those who haven’t earned it and may not deserve it. Jesus then says to us – if you are following me, you better count the cost. Following Jesus means you are signing up for mandatory generosity to the elderly and orphans. It means we are to care for the hungry and sick and imprisoned. There is no other way to interpret Jesus.

However, this does not mean this government is stealing from the poor in the “big beautiful bill”. It simply means they are refusing to mandate generosity to people they feel haven’t earned it.

Christian Opposition to Taxation

Paying taxes has been a human sticking point throughout the ages. Today, followers of Jesus claim to have valid (even Christian) reasons for avoiding them. We don’t want our money going to support things (or people) that conflict with our beliefs. These things have included tax funded abortions and art that does not appeal to our sense of decency. We certainly want to prevent our money going to people who don’t deserve it (as we are defining it).

In fact, we can even feel righteous in hiding our taxable income to prevent it from going to such things. We do this apparently believing Jesus would prefer our lying over against funding things we think Jesus would oppose. It’s an interesting grey area for many.

Ironically, the majority of people who are objecting to hiring more IRS workers to catch rich tax cheats (or poor tax cheats) actually are conservative Republicans who likely identify as Christians. It’s also worth noting that people already convicted of cheating on taxes are being pardoned by the person arguably leading the current evangelical church.

I find it hard to believe we would want to live in a country that allowed people to evade paying taxes that were legally owed. It’s even more implausible to me that conservative Christians promoting themselves as a beacon of justice and righteousness are so willing to allow people to cheat, steal, and lie. But this is where we are.

Taxation and Christianity: Jesus is the Problem

The problem? As always, Jesus is the problem. The problem is that Jesus commands us to pay our taxes precisely when it may be going to what we feel are evil purposes and/or evil people (Mark 12:17).

The taxes religious folks had to pay in Jesus’s day were not going to making Israel great again as Jews were likely hoping. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Those taxes were going directly to a government that subjugated them to a form of servitude. Their taxes were paying their own prison warden to keep them (the tax payer) in custody. This fact wasn’t lost on the church of Jesus’s day. They repeatedly tried to trap Jesus on the issue.

Biblical Example: Matthew 22

Matthew 22 15  Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words [emphasis added].   16  They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. 

“Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. [first note the sarcasm] You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”

The reason this is a trap is precisely the same reason it is today. Surely Jesus would be on our side (religious folks) against what we perceive to be an unjust government correct? However, in saying so, this would put Jesus on record against a government that could well imprison him for such talk – much like our present government is threatening to do to people today.

It’s also important to note that the recipient of the taxpayer money has been demonized here in this example (Caeser) just as is happening today. This makes this example perfect for modern times. The question is around taking money from one group of people, often against their will, in order to give to another group that has not earned it and will be using it for things we find disagreeable.

Deciding if something is right or wrong is actually the moral question around taxation. Is it right to pay your taxes when you believe it’s going for immoral purposes? Is it right to “steal” one person’s money and give it to someone else?

The Imperial Tax

The “imperial tax” specifically was an even more pointed example. This tax is particularly offensive because it’s only paid by people who were not Roman but who were ruled by the Roman government. You would be really paying people to fund their efforts to illegally rule over you. It would be like a tax Ukrainians would have to pay Russia to fund their war against Ukraine. The church leaders thought they had Jesus in a bind here. Who could agree to that?

Matthew 22

18  But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said,  “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me?  19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.”  

They brought him a denarius,   20  and he asked them,  “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

21  “Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then he said to them,  “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

22  When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

What is Money: A Tool for Self-Preservation

Jesus makes one thing clear about the money itself: It’s Caesar’s. This is where we object the most. The idea that we own nothing is incomprehensible to us, yet it’s theoretically and theologically foundational to a Christian belief system. Jesus is suggesting that what happens to this coin they are discussing is not his or their problem. This is going to be hard to swallow and maybe impossible to believe. Jesus seems largely disinterested in taxation. He seems entirely interested in generosity.

Jesus challenges their hypocrisy as Jesus is wont to do (Matthew 23). Is he calling them hypocrites because they are being hypocritical in other spheres of their lives or is there something specifically hypocritical going on here? Likely both.

Who or What Actually Sustains Us?

Jews lived in a belief system that insisted their wellbeing was only in and through the breath of God. Their belief system suggested that it was only in and through God that they lived and moved and had their being. Jesus can see here that they, like us, have transposed this understanding of where their security comes from in their obsession with maintaining their wealth. Their resistance to paying taxes is coming from a desire for self-preservation. Self-preservation is the driver which is a function only God is able to accomplish (per Judeo-Christian thinking).

It’s little wonder that Jesus so often challenged people to give all their wealth to the poor before deciding to follow him. It would cut straight to their allegiance to self-preservation of self-sacrifice. Further, it would be a self-sacrifice for those who haven’t earned it and won’t be able to repay it.

We argue that we have a desire to avoid taxation because we think the government will waste our money on things we personally don’t agree. We also argue they even waste our money on things we do agree with because they are simply inefficient distributor of wealth! All of this may be true. Jesus didn’t seem to care. That also is true. Taxation is an often inefficient form of generosity.

We suggest we could do a better job being generous on our own without government interference. That is mostly untrue. Jesus knows what’s motivating us. It’s not a drive for righteousness it’s a fear of preservation – we want to keep the money for ourselves.

Taxation: A Government Mandated Generosity Program

If we, collectively, were truly operating from a system that believed God was the sustainer of all, then giving away our wealth would not be such a struggle. As it is, we are hypocrites. We say we believe God will sustain us, but we refuse to be generous. We do this despite the Bible’s assurances that we will be repaid for our generosity (Malachi 3:10, Matthew 19:29).

Since we don’t practice what we preach, compulsory generosity becomes required.

A Personal Example

Seeing taxation as generosity was something I learned early in life. I My wife and I adopted a sibling group of four kids that had become wards of the state. Technically, by law, they were orphans though their parents were not deceased.

In Michigan, where I live, the state gives foster and adoptive parents subsidies for caring for wards of the state to help new parents financially manage the spot they find themselves in. In order to accomplish this feat, for example, I left my job in corporate America to take a non-traveling assignment planting a church at about a 70% pay cut.

Would we have adopted the kids without a subsidy? Absolutely. Did the subsidy help? Without question. Where did that subsidy come from? From you. Thank you. Because you paid your taxes, we were able to take four lives into our home and do our best to raise them. Is that what you wanted to do with your money? Probably not. Did they deserve your generosity? I don’t know. But James 1:27 commands it of “religious” people whether or not they deserved it. This defines the narrow road if we are to dare travel it.

Errantly, we believe it was “the government” that helped us. We still insist the government help us. This is horrifically unfortunate. When we are asking the government for help, we are asking them to take money from one group of people and give it to us. They can collect money from individuals and distribute it to those in need, but the government is not our helper. Individuals giving sacrificially is who helped our family.

Generosity is a Biblical Command

James 1:27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

We don’t get to choose or decide if our money goes to the good orphans are bad orphans. Choosing whether we help the righteous widows or the unrighteous is not an option either. We don’t get to choose which sheep (John 21:15-19) we feed and which we let starve. All we can do is attempt to see taxation as generosity.

This could be even harder had your tax dollars gone to support these kids if they had not been removed from their original home. This is how we understand Medicaid and SNAP today. We’re helping people who are many Christians believe to be freeloaders and “bad” people. They are not yet “orphans”. There was a mantra when I was younger suggesting we are “paying people to have kids”. In doing so, we are supporting their “immorality”.

In this case, where children are not yet orphans, we become responsible for feeding people we believe are not working – “living on welfare” – and certainly not “deserving” of your money. This makes the rest of us responsible for paying a “debt we did not incur”. Yup – it’s what Jesus did too. It’s no fun. It’s not fair. It’s the life of Christ. He paid a debt he did not incur, but we refuse to do it so it has to be mandated. The hardcore words of Jesus? Life’s not fair. I’m not sure why we still think it might be…

But Aren’t They the Pollution of the World We are To Avoid?

Conservatives tend to focus on a misinterpretation of the second half of the James passage. Conservatives often suggest the second half of James 1:27 – keeping oneself from becoming polluted by this world – means avoiding bad people like deadbeats, filth, and people from shithole countries. These are people we often don’t want to be recipients of our taxation or generosity.

However, this section does not mean what conservative wish it meant: avoiding bad people. This passage does not give us liberty to demonize individual people as being pollutants – whether they are wealthy or poor.

Through the lens of Christ, avoiding becoming polluted by this world means avoiding the selfish and retributive mindset that owns our souls and prevents us from sacrificial giving to those who don’t deserve it. That’s the “pollution of this world” we have to avoid. It’s inside us. That’s what makes us not want to pay our taxes.

This idea that the orphans of other people are not our responsibility is what pollutes us, not the “sinners” who made the babies we have to take care of. Jesus loved them. He cared for them. He commanded Peter do the same (John 21:15-19). Jesus didn’t command Peter to only care for the good sheep or the sheep he liked or the sheep that were nice to him. The command was to sheep. Are we above Peter?

This means sacrifice. I get it. Sacrifice is hard especially when it’s for people who we don’t know or we think just keep doing bad stuff (as we define it). This is the sacrifice Jesus seems to have lived and is now demanding of us.

A Final Example: Social Security

I will turn last to the idea of social security – a taxation program I’m increasingly interested in as I near retirement. Why am I interested in it? Because I’m concerned with my own self-preservation.

Originally, this “tax” was something of a forcible retirement plan – a government mandated 401k if you will. As mentioned earlier, many of us are still insistent on getting “the government” to help us out with our retirement. When we consider that social security could run out of money, we feel ripped off – after all – that’s OUR money. You can see here how this already contradicts what Jesus was saying in Matthew 22.

The biblical view is much more closely aligned with the name “social security”. Social security is what it says it is: a government mandated taxation based generosity program. Today I give my money to social security, not because I’m putting money into some fictitious bank to aid my self-preservation when I get older. I do it because some elderly people need to continue to live with dignity today. It’s not “my” money. I’ve given it away to help the elderly.

Remaining employed can be an act of charity.

Viewed it this way, I realize that “my” money is gone. This is also hypocritical of me because it was never mine to begin with. Regardless, it’s been donated to the elderly. The only way I can get ticked off is if helping the elderly is not what I wanted to do with my money – maybe I don’t like the elderly or I think they already have too much money or I think I should not be responsible for them or that they should have done a better job saving their own selves. All of which is a fair and rightful reading of what may well be.

Generosity is Often Mandated, Following Christ is a Choice

The choice we all have is whether or not to agree to follow Jesus – he actually seemed to recommend against it. We have no such choice when it comes to social security or paying our taxes. So, my friends, I’m sorry forced generosity is causing such suffering. Jesus knows the feeling. When we know the feeling of sacrificial generosity for those who don’t deserve it, we know Christ.

What’s Shame’s Angle?

Shame’s goal is to divide us. Shame’s goal is to help us find someone to hate. Some of us hate the ungrateful poor. Some of us hate the immoral wealthy. All of us seem to hate the government. We are all then attempt to find people who share our particular hate. This is shame in operation.

Defeating shame insists we do the opposite of what it’s asking us to do. We must refuse to hate even while the behavior we believe we are seeing looks reprehensible. Giving is an extreme challenge. Remaining employed is an act of charity. Being grateful to those we believe are immorally wealthy feels wrong. These are beliefs we must challenge ourselves with if we want to defeat shame. That challenge will come directly through the issue of taxation and our ability to see taxation as generosity.

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What is pride?

I am frequently challenged to explain the difference between pride and shame.

Because of our collective roots in Christianity, many of us are familiar with the phrase “pride came before the fall”. Sadly, that is not biblical. Biblically we see it was shame motivating eating the apple not pride and it’s shame driving all our poor decisions today. So what is pride and. how is shame involved?

We have spent eons interpreting “the fall” and “original sin” as being primarily a result of pride. As such, the church is well versed in seeing pride as the greatest enemy of humanity.  Pride has even been labeled number one of the “seven deadly sins”. There’s little surprise that the church spends so much time trying to help us deal with it. Shame can then be twisted into becoming your ally in fighting pride and other social “ills”.

How does shame fit in?

I did a radio interview with a conservative Christian radio station in Indiana. The person interviewing me challenged me that the world actually needed MORE shame. He suggested that with more shame, there would be fewer young girls out there getting pregnant. Yes, that was his actual example. He never mentioned the young men getting the young girls pregnant.

I pointed out from Genesis that God put all things “good” in the garden and he had specifically excluded putting shame there (Genesis 2:25). If God had thought shame would be helpful in corralling our behavior, I suspect God would have put it there to begin with.

As we’ve discussed, shame is never your ally. Shame never leads to an “improvement” in behavior.

So, with a cultural background (largely Christian) of understanding shame as helpful to achieving “good” behavior (as the church defines “good”) and pride as harmful to our mortal souls, you can see why it’s quite a challenge to suggest shame is actually the root of all evil and not pride! It’s equally difficult to explain that pride didn’t come before the fall, but shame.

The lightning parallel

I will try to draw a parallel between lightning and pride.  Pride, like lightning, can do a lot of damage. This is likely true of all the seven deadly sins. I don’t need the bible to tell me that as I’ve seen enough of it in my own life.  While lightning does the damage, it has a hidden source that generates this destructive force.  Hidden in the atmosphere is a buildup of static electricity that no one can see which soon enough must erupt in violent damaging force. 

Shame is the hidden “static” in our psychology – our emotional “atmosphere” – that generates pride and other destructive forces such as perfectionism, legalism and timidity.  My goal is to unmask this hidden driver so we can diffuse it before our pride, anger, ego, or whatever form our lightning is taking today can cause any more destruction.

Pride is real. Shame is the source.

I am not trying to dismiss pride or its potentially destructive nature. Like lightning, it is destructive! I’m trying to say that shame is the source of pride. Internal shame causes people to have to have the external expression of pride (or other destructive vices) to cover up an actual internalized self-hatred which is shame.  Shame (which has never been considered a sin in any religion that I know of), is the source of a wide array of behaviors. These behaviors can hurt our relationships with ourselves and each other.

Ironically, it’s very difficult to deal with pride or anger or perfectionism without getting at the root of these behaviors. Until we can see that these things are drive by this static in our psyche, we won’t be able to deal with the lightning bolts coming from our being. Until we get at the root we can’t see, we won’t be able to control the weed we do see.

The post Pride vs Shame appeared first on Rick Patterson.

What is the difference between Shame and Guilt?

Guilt says you did something bad. Shame says you ARE something bad.

Guilt says you made a mistake. Shame says you ARE a mistake.

Guilt says you did something stupid. Shame says you ARE stupid.

It’s shame that makes us hide our face, not guilt.

Hiding has become synonymous with shame. Shame wants to prevent people from seeing what we fear is the real us – the ugly us. This is why, after Adam and Eve ate the apple they weren’t supposed to eat (guilt), they hid. They didn’t hide because they were guilty and thought they were going to get in trouble. They hid because there were naked and felt exposed and vulnerable.

Shame’s goal is to prevent us from ever being seen. It’s goal is to prevent us from ever being vulnerable of having anyone ever see our flaws.

Guilt is simple (you did it). Shame is Complex.Guilt is often obvious. Shame prefers to stay hidden.Guilt can lead to good. Shame will never lead to good.Shame can use guilt. Guilt can’t use shame.

In short, guilt is a fact about our state of being. Shame is a hidden driver behind our destructive decisions.

A personal example

I often tell the story of breaking my hand when I punched a wall in a fit of rage. I punched a wall. Guilty. I did it. That’s what guilt says. You did it. Simple.

This is why we focus on guilt and not shame. It’s simple. The problem is, much of what we do that we regret – like punching a wall – is because of shame. So, if we really want to change our reactions to things, we have to deal with shame.

To deal with shame, we must look beyond what we did (guilt) and focus on why we did it. That’s complex.

At face value, I punched the wall because my teenage daughter rolled her eyes at me and it enraged me. Simple. I got ticked off. That’s why I did it. Shame would like us to stop there because we’ve really uncovered nothing. The question is, why did it tick me off so much?

You can ask yourself that about almost any circumstance in life. Why did whatever situation you just experience, tick you off so much? Why did it hurt your feelings so much. Why did it embarrass you so much? THOSE are shame questions.

You’re an idiot

When someone rolls their eyes at you, they are sending you a message. That message is that you are an idiot. You’re a moron. When someone tells you that, you don’t need to break your hand against a wall and spend the rest of the day at ER and amped up on pain meds.

So why do we? Well, deep in our soul we are afraid they may be right. It’s often subconscious, but that’s why we react. Again, we could give a hundred examples – and I will give more in later videos because I think examples are helpful.

So, when my daughter, through her eyeroll, suggested I was an idiot, something inside me thought maybe she’s right. I am an idiot. I have no idea how to parent. I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no idea what to do in this or that situation so then shame realizes I’ve been discovered. I’ve been exposed for the fraud and idiot I deeply fear I am.

We fear what we’re afraid is true

If I didn’t inwardly really fear I was an idiot – if I didn’t inwardly fear she discovered the truth about me, it wouldn’t bother me.

When I feel found out I will often lash out. What that does is it helps throw As we discussed previously, shame wants to prevent us from having our shortcomings found out and me punching a wall was just the thing to change the subject.

So, the reason I really hit the wall was because I thought someone saw the truth about me and called me out on it. So shame gave me a tool to use to get out of it – my anger. That’s what shame will do. It will help you decide what to do now that you’ve been discovered as a fraud or failure.

Now we have a double whammy. Because I have now lost my temper, hit a wall and broke my hand, it proves I actually am an idiot because only an idiot would do such a thing. That’s how shame can use guilt.

Guilt is a statement of fact. Guilt says you made a mistake. Shame says you are a mistake. Guilt says you did a bad thing. Shame says you are a bad person. Guilt is a statement about a one-time event in our lives. Shame is a statement about the entirety of our life.

But it only tells us those hurtful things about ourselves for what it thinks is our own good. Shame thinks that the worse we feel about ourselves, the less likely we are to put ourselves out there for others to see us. The worse we feel about ourselves, the less likely we will get caught exposed making a mistake.

Shame to the rescue

Shame is doing this to protect us from the greatest human fear of all time. The fear of abandonment. The fear that if people really see the real you, they will abandon you. It’s why we hide our real selves from each other. It’s why Adam and Eve hid from God.

That next Sunday morning I had to preach at the church where I was the pastor. My hand was in a cast. When your hand is in a cast, you will get the inevitable question – what happened?

The cover up

Shame will now try to come to the rescue by presenting us with some options to prevent being exposed as a rage filled pastor that can’t even control his emotions around his own children. It’s important to not let anyone see how dark you really are on the inside.

Once you are aware you are going to have to face the reality of your guilt in front of everyone – especially as a pastor who broke their hand in a fit of rage – shame will offer you some suggestions:

Call in sick (lie)Blame your daughter (blame is the oldest shame excuse in the book)Blame your upbringingBlame anything but yourselfLie (#2) – I fell! Or I fought off an intruder! Make yourself heroicShame can use guilt. Guilt can’t use shame.

This one is critical to understand. Shame will use your guilt as proof of who you really are. It can use your guilt as proof that since you screwed up, you ARE a screw up. This will make it easier for shame to manipulate you in the future. It could prevent you from ever wanting to parent or pastor again.

Here are the layers shame can use in this one example:

Underlying issue shame is using: my fear that I’m an idiot has been exposed

When my daughter exposes my shortcomings, I hit a wall.Shame will use this to actually prove I actually AM an idiot unless I find a way to pass the blame onto my daughter or someone/something else. This means I need to hide all the evidence so no one else sees it.I then am inclined to lie to my congregation: I’m sick that day. I fell down stairs. I fought off an intruder.Now I’m guilty of lying.Shame will now convince me I’m also a liar.

All these things will add up to keep me in hiding and to prevent me from doing what I need to simply do – apologize and move on.

Guilt can be good. Shame is never good.

Defeating shame requires us to understand that shame never leads to good. I have maintained that it is the root of all evil. It is the source of most all the harm we levy against ourselves and against each other.

To defeat shame, we must actually do the opposite of what’s it’s telling us to do. If it’s telling us to hide, we must show up – cast and all. If shame is telling us to blame, we must apologize. We did it. Mostly if shame is insisting we believe that what we are guilty of defines us, we must object.

Defeating shame is a moment by moment battle to wrestle back control of our lives from this hidden manipulator.

The post The Difference Between Shame and Guilt appeared first on Rick Patterson.

Shame is not an emotion

Many suggest shame is an emotion that can be experienced like you experience embarrassment or humiliation. It’s not an emotion. Emotions are responses to external stimuli. For example, when we screw up a speech, we feel embarrassed. Embarrassment is an emotion that shame can use to prevent us from ever wanting to give a speech again.

For example, If someone corrects our speech we feel humiliated that we got it wrong or we feel angry that someone found a flaw. These are all emotional reactions to an event that are generated by shame.

Shame generates and uses emotion to get us to act

Using these emotions, shame will then insist we flee, or fight. It will insist we quit in disgrace or find someone to blame. These are all actions that feel normal once shame has convinced us that they (the actions) are in our best interest.

Shame actually generates and uses emotions in us to aid in our psychological survival. So, it is not an emotion, it is a defense mechanism inside each of us. When we feel psychologically vulnerable, it will come to our defense.

A protective defense mechanism

I look at shame like bone marrow. Bone marrow produces white blood cells when the body comes under physical attack from infection. Shame produces emotional defense reactions in us when we feel we are under psychological attack. This can happen when we get corrected or discovered having made a mistake.

In this example, when our boss corrects our work, we feel emotionally attacked and emotionally vulnerable. When that happens, shame jumps into action. This may well happen even though part of our bosses job is to correct our work!

We will feel emotions surge through us like humiliation or rage. Shame will then guide is in how to manage those emotions – it will begin making decisions for us. I could suggest we hide under our desk or lashing out at a coworker we blame for our failure. It could cause us to lash out at our boss and get fired or feel under appreciated and quit.

The hidden defender

Bone marrow is hidden away deep inside the most inner parts of our physical body. So too shame is hidden away in the most inner parts of our mental constructs. Both shame and bone marrow do their work without being instructed to do so. The bone marrow has the body’s best interest in mind. Shame has our psychological survival in mind.

So, it is not an emotion. Emotions are not bad. However, allowing shame to make our decisions for us will almost always result in decisions we will later regret. The key to managing all this is thinking – using our brain

Bone marrow’s job is to keep us protected against illness, however bone marrow does not prevent us from becoming exposed to pathogens or injury. Our brain does that. Our brain tells us to wash our hands and avoid situations where we could get sick. Bone marrow let’s our brain make our decisions for us.

Shame, on the other hand, intends to prevent us from being exposed to psychological harm to begin with. Shame’s desire is to prevent us from being exposed and found vulnerable psychologically. It does this by offering us disguises to wear and places to hide so no one really sees the real us.

Shames desire is to prevent exposure to unpleasant realities

Shame tells us to quit our job or blame our coworker or quit giving speeches – all to prevent the exposure we fear. Shame’s desire is to prevent people from finding out that we are a fundamentally flawed creature. Shame doesn’t want our brain making our decisions for us. It wants to be making the decisions for us that prevent our flaws, shortcomings, and inadequacies from being exposed.

This is why fear (an emotion) of failure and mistakes, keeps so many people immobilized. Shame’s desire is to immobilize us so we don’t make mistakes and become exposed as someone capable of failure. Shame’s fear is that we become exposed not as someone who failed, but someone is IS a failure. Big difference.

Shame is Rooted in self-contempt

As fuel, shame carries a belief that in our flawed condition (which is a normal human condition), we are a disgusting being. Humans make mistakes. Shame says: you ARE a mistake. All this is rooted in self-contempt. Shame’s goal is to prevent people from seeing what it believes is true about ourselves – that we are fundamentally “bad”.

This is the myth we must overcome if we want to overcome shame: just because we’re flawed, doesn’t mean we’re bad. Just because we fail, doesn’t mean we are a failure.

We are creatures that were designed to need each other and need God. We don’t like the idea that we are needy, but we are. So shame helps us militate against a basic human reality. As such, shame is nearly always a harmful actor in our lives because it prevent us from embracing reality. Shame is nearly always harmful even though it presents itself as our helper and friend.

We hate that we are flawed

Herein lies the problem. No one likes the idea that we are flawed. No one likes the idea that we are imperfect creatures. As such, none of us want those imperfections on display. Shame assists us in hiding those flaws. The trouble is, we are all flawed. We are all imperfect. It simply is being part of the human race. So shame is in a battle against our human nature. This won’t end well.

The problem with shame is not shame itself. The problem is what shame produces: emotions and actions based on those emotions that are most likely not in our best interest. As I said, unlike bone marrow that allows our brain to make our decisions about getting our body exposed to danger, shame wants to make those decisions for us.

Shame is The Hidden Driver Behind our Destructive Decisions

The actions shame insists we take are largely unhealthy and not in our best interest, but they will throw people off the track of what we fear most – being discovered as flawed. Ultimately, we fear that when (not if) we are found inadequate, we will be abandoned.

What shame prevents us from doing is hearing criticism. It can prevent us from actually hearing anything as we anticipate that whatever anyone is saying is criticism even though it’s not meant that way. How many of us have misread an email where we think someone is attacking us when that’s not what they were saying at all? That’s shame talking.

When we can’t hear criticism and correct, we can’t learn and grow. We can’t do the fundamental things humans are required to do. It also prevents us from honestly apologizing when we need to. Oddly it can also force us to apologize when we don’t need to. Shame prevents us from learning, growing and realizing we need other people at times – which I realize can be a frightful thing to acknowledge. It can turn us into bashful, fearful wall flowers that take all the blame on themselves or it can turn us into raging narcissists that blame everyone else for everything. It will do whatever it needs to do to prevent our vulnerability and exposure.

How to regain control

Our mission is to recognize when shame is beginning to affect us. Our goal is to sense when an emotion has been released to come to our defense whether that emotion is rage or embarrassment or fear or jealousy. Then, when we sense that emotion wants to start making our decisions for us, we use that moment to assure this hidden driver that we are big boys and girls capable of knowing what’s in our own best interest.

When we have control of shame instead of it controlling us, we can realize that emotions are not bad in and of themselves. We can simply begin to control them in a way that’s consistent with the life we want to live – a life without fear.

The post What is Shame? appeared first on Rick Patterson.

The Incitement of Rage – A Shame Response

Elon Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.

This quote going around on social media now. It’s getting a lot of traction because it generates rage. That’s why it caught my attention. What kind of sociopath would say this? One blogger weighed in on this article noting

“In my work with the defendants [at Nuremberg], I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men.” — Captain Gustave Gilbert, the US army psychologist assigned to observe the Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg trials.

Many Musk haters, such as myself, will quickly glom on here drawn like moths to a rage flame. I’ve quoted this article often which states empathy is the attribute that makes us truly human. I use that idea in my own testimony of my personal struggle and desire to be empathetic.

So, when I read the Musk quote, my rage boiled against a man I am pre-disposed to dislike. I assume the worst because I am biased that way.

The Great Pause is the Shame Killer

Something caused me to pause. In that pause I wondered if Musk really said those words. This is what must happen if we want to defeat the effects of shame in our lives. We must pause and ask ourselves “why” we are feeling what we are feeling. Then we must attempt to hear what another person is actually saying.

The goal of shame is to separate us from each other. Anger is a great way to make it happen. Fear and jealousy have the same effect. Asking “why” questions call shame out of the shadows where we can deal with it. Sometimes when we pause, we find out we were wrong. That’s called education. Shame would prefer we avoid being educated.

I Was Wrong – A Shame Killing Admission

It turns out the Musk quote is quite misleading at best.

In total context, Musk said this:

“I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people,” Musk said as part of the same discussion on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide.”

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy . The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot”. 

The Musk / Empathy Breakdown

I break the entire thing down like this:

I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people. This part was left out by most social media posts. It would have softened my anger. It would have made me want to hear him out. That’s why it wasn’t included. As I will discuss later, posts are designed to generate revenue and rage generates revenue.

The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. This is what is often quoted to incite rage among us woke liberals. It worked. I fell for it as did others. Shame was pleased.

The empathy exploit. Musk immediately corrects himself. Shame loves it when we catch people in their mistakes. Shame loves it so much we refuse to let them repent. We also won’t allow them to apologize even if they are willing.

The Empathy Exploit

They are exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. Let’s take a closer look at this idea.

Empathy can easily be exploited by others. No question.

I had a tenant – a single mom with two kids. I had to kick out of the apartment she was renting from me because she refused to pay her rent and refused to talk to me about it. The empath might be exploited. I probably was exploited. Tough decisions will need to be made. We probably shouldn’t be robots.

I sincerely wonder what Jesus would have done though. He seemed routinely exploited for his empathy personally. He also seems to be suggesting we follow his path (Matthew 5:38-47). These principles he lays out are probably quite “woke”. Since most Republicans are followers of Jesus, their behavior here seems quite contrarian to their belief system.

Empathy is Good, but Misuse is Bad

Still, we all know that when empathy is exploited, bad things can happen. This clearly is true. You could probably find that slogan on a YWCA wall suggesting battered wives leave their husbands.

Would you advise an abused woman to stay with her alcoholic husband because of her empathy toward him? No. Narcissists routinely exploit what Musk calls the “empathy bug” in people in order to exploit them as well. The elderly are scammed routinely because of their empathy for a cause. It happens. It’s a real thing. We should guard against it. Musk is right.

However, here Musk is also attempting to show us who is to blame. It is “them”. It is the one exploiting our empathy. We have a good trait (empathy) being exploited by “them” (some bogeyman). Who are “they”? He doesn’t seem to say. He just suggests we must stop “them”.

Empathy is good. Yes Musk said that. Does he believe it? I don’t know. In what context? I don’t know. He says “you should care about people”. Does he believe it? I don’t know.

Anger and Division Sell

Regardless, we avoid pushing the “empathy is good” comment out into our socials. It doesn’t help our cause to generate anger and division. Anger and division sell. You need to think it through, not be a robot – anyone disagree with that? What if the rage engendering posts had highlighted this: empathy is good, we should care about people, but you need to think it through…?

All bloggers have a need for followers and content. Bloggers have a need for a “tribe” and a tribe often requires someone to be against. Henry Rollins is often quoted as saying that nothing brings a group together better than a mutual hatred. We need to keep readers amped up instead of offering solutions and perspective. We need things that sell. Hate and division sell.

Choices and language by the current administration appear to demonstrate a remarkable lack of empathy when empathy is as defined “caring about people”. Even a preacher’s plea for mercy on the immigrant and LGBTQ community while in church was chastised. The examples are nearly endless.

Empathy is in the Eye of the Beholder

Empathy and care can also be viewed differently by different recipients. I don’t give money to some people because I care about them. Do they view it that as empathy? When I withhold money do they think I care about them? I don’t know. I doubt it.

From what I can see, Musk doesn’t operate in a way that suggests he cares about people. But I don’t know that. I’m not sure how someone can accrue that much wealth and be so resistant to sharing. However, that may well be shame helping me make Musk the bogeyman so I can avoid looking at myself. The things he is doing are certainly harsh things. Are they non-empathetic things? It may depend on who you are.

Many of the administration’s choices and Musk’s choices may be seen as empathy and mercy to toward boarder states struggling with the immigration crisis or biological women losing athletic competitions to transgender women. It may be seen as empathy to those who want to keep more of the money they earn while sending less to the government. Those people may finally feel heard.

Empathy Wins Elections: Narcissists Know This

Empathy is in the eye of the beholder. Narcissism is not. Narcissists are empathy exploiters themselves. They will exploit the need for empathy for love, money, praise… or votes.

It was empathy that won Trump the election. It’s always empathy that wins elections. Trump convinced certain people he cared about them. That’s a politician’s job. Most importantly, he convinced people who vote that he cared about them.

His emphasis that the forgotten will be forgotten no more was and is a work of empathic genius. Perhaps it was manipulative to get votes. That’s what a narcissist does. Having lost their jobs, some Trump supporters  believe they have been duped so the tides can turn.

Many, perhaps most, original Trump supporters still believe he cares about them. They believe that purging waste in the government and lowering taxes is a sign of empathy toward them. It may well be – to them. But a Narcissist never cares about them personally. Never be deluded about that. The goal of the Narcissist is to be adored and to win.

Governmental Empathy

I suspect the Musk quote coming from his visit with Joe Rogan had nothing to do with individual people. This is probably why Musk clarified that in his own remarks. The topic probably had to do with a government’s role in being empathetic – and the risks involved.

A government must decide with whom to show empathy (if that means give money), and to what extent (how much to give). After all, there’s only so much money. This reading would all play into Musk’s role of cutting spending.

There’s no question we are cutting off vast programs meant to serve the under privileged. This includes food supply to countless in poverty. We are defunding USAID as well as local food pantries for instance. The examples are endless and could show a lack of empathy toward those groups. However, it could also show empathy upon those who don’t want to be taxed any further to support those things. It may be a show of empathy toward those who feel the poor are taking advantage of their empathy.

The Cost of Empathy

The main problem Musk is actually trying to address is we can’t pay for these programs. That is an unavoidable reality regardless of which side of the aisle you reside.

We (as a country) are borrowing money to pay for these empathic choices. Do we all realize that? Would you advise your friend to borrow money to give it to charity? No. Would a charity advise such a thing? No. A charity might advise us to stop being self-indulgent so you can give more. That’s always an option! So where should the government cut? Wherever it is, someone will lose their funding or their job. There will be no empathy for that person.

Perhaps we should be discussing our budget priorities or our taxation process. That’s fair. But, if we tax further, we don’t show empathy to the taxpayer. Some taxpayers may be in favor of increased taxes. That’s the opinion of Warren Buffet, but he has plenty of money!

Many taxpayers may well believe they are just getting by as it is. Many taxpayers don’t want to be charitable to the less fortunate. Regardless, we have to stop borrowing to be charitable or to employ people. I can’t believe that’s really open for debate.

Shame is the Root of All Evil – Empathy Kills Shame

I agree with this blogger that evil requires the absence of empathy. This reflects a simple reality of not caring for the suffering of another. Captain Gustave Gilbert called it “the ability to feel with your fellow man”. Is it possible to be empathetic and not give? If we are no longer able to send money to Africa, it doesn’t mean we don’t care does it? Or does it?

Musk calls this “caring about people” in his Rogan interview – to which Musk seems to be a supporter. However, Musk was probably describing empathy as measured by giving away resources. To do that, we will have to think in order to be functionally empathetic. We can’t be robotic in our approach as Musk describes. We only have so much “stuff” we can give away even in our empathy. Musk describes this as empathic suicide. Others describe it as negative empathy. Musk is right. That’s hard for a Jesus lovin’ woke bloke to admit.

Empathy vs Greed

We want things we can’t pay for. This is not an empathy problem, this is a greed problem. However, I’ll bet we have a greed problem because we lack empathy. These two forces are constantly battling against each other in our souls. My forthcoming book describes this as the will to self-preservation vs the will to self-sacrifice.

Contrary to Musk’s point, I suggest we don’t actually care about people. Musk may believe we should and may even believe he personally does. Actions matter more than words. Some of us want to be empathetic and generous because it helps us feel good about ourselves. Somehow we know it’s “right”. Some of us have no interest in being empathetic because we may believe it’s “their own fault” they are in whatever predicament they are in.

Either way, materially responding to the suffering of others can be expensive. We will have to give up what we’ve earned for the benefit of others. This is true in our households as much as it’s true in our country.

I personally want to be more generous, but the road to generosity is hard. It means sacrificial giving on my part. It means I have to do with less to alleviate the suffering of others. Am I willing to do give like that? Not so far.

Governmental Empathy Requires Taxation

We often want other people to pay for empathy programs through taxation. That would help us feel good about ourselves as a nation. We want the appearance of being empathetic without actually doing it ourselves.

For a country to give more, it will have to tax more. That doesn’t sound good to most of us either. We often say – don’t tax me, tax the rich. In general, I agree! So does Warren Buffet. In doing so we simply risk satiating our need to find someone else to blame. We can now blame the rich. Or the tax system. But who is “rich”? By standards of the world, I certainly am. Most likely, if you’re reading this, so are you.

I personally could give more than I do. Instead, I blame people who have more than me. That’s a shame maneuver. Blame is always a shame maneuver.

Through taxation we claim that we would all be collectively doing our part. We claim that it’s a governments job to care for people. We insist the government “do something” to take care of us in our age and illness and poverty. That, also, is arguable. That insists a government actually care. A government can’t care. A government has no emotion to exchange. Only individual people can care.

Is this a Musk Defense?

Am I defending Musk? No. I’m as woke a joke as a redneck preacher can be. That said, I realize our individual rage may require some to hear me defending him. I get it. I do the same thing with others. We all do. If one is angry at the thought of me defending Musk, it may prevent us from continuing to talk. That is as shame would like it.

I am not defending Musk. I have no idea if Musk actually believes what he says. What I’m defending is sanity. We are now so driven by division that we’ve gone insane for it. We see whatever we need to see to fuel our hatred for our perceived enemies.

Shame encourages us to hear things that aren’t said if they can facilitate rage and division. Shame’s number one goal is division. It always has been. Shame prefers we not see points of similarity that would allow us to communicate. Communication requires empathy – a desire to hear what another person is actually saying. Jesus even said we are to love our enemies. Why? It defeats shame. Is it possible? I have little hope it is.

I Am no Better

When people originally said “black lives matter”, I heard them saying that I personally didn’t matter because I’m white. Of course, that’s not what they were saying, but it’s what I heard. It’s what many of us heard. It’s why we came up with our retort: all lives matter! I misheard them even though I’m the parent of black children.

Then I saw this child, who could be one of my own kids, with this sign. When I saw this child, I was biased toward her because of my kids. My bias allowed me to hear here and what she was actually saying. When I did, I realized shame had ahold of me again – driving division where none needed to exist.

The Role of Bias and Prejudice

I am biased against Musk so I pre-judge him. I am prejudiced against him. Prejudgment doesn’t have to be about race. When I see a social media post taking something he said out of context, I’m drawn to it to aid my ability to secure that my pre-judgement is accurate. In doing so, I stop listening and I stop thinking. My bias against him is making my decisions for me. That’s never helpful.

Shame requires us to pick someone we hate and hate them with all our might. We need to find someone to be against so we find them. Shame doesn’t care who we find, only that we find someone. It’s all the better if we find people who agree with us in our hate. We take what they say out of context because it aids in our pre-determined (biased) view of them.

Humans are all prejudicial beings. We pre judge for our own safety and well-being. Prejudging or being biased is a basic survival instinct. We do it attempt to immediately assess if someone is friend of foe. However, allowing our pre judgements (prejudices) to guide decision making is flawed because it’s driven by fear. Fear is the vehicle shame drives to work.

How Do we Fix All This?Realize it’s happening. Shame prefers to be the hidden driver behind our destructive decisions. It prefers to be hidden so we don’t know it’s happening so that we are not inclined to act against it.We pause when we feel angry and ask ourselves why we feel angry. When I saw the social media post documenting Musk saying “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy”, I was enraged at his stupidity. Oddly though, I did something shame preferred I not do – I paused. I wondered, did Musk really say that? The same could be said for how I approached Black Lives Matter.Stop finding a “them” to hate. Shame insists the problem is some “them” – whether a race, a person, or an income bracket. If we want to do battle with shame, we must stop looking at them and look at ourselves. To defeat shame, we must stop arguing about what a good person is, and go be one.

The post Lessons from Musk on Empathy appeared first on Rick Patterson.

I wrote an article for the Reformed Journal that intended to highlight a deep psychological insistence we have for greatness. The comments to the article show I potentially missed the mark. It did not start a conversation about what motivates us and our need for greatness. Instead, the article opened up an argument over what happened on January 6. Was it an insurrection or people standing up against a tyrannical government?

Even the headline (which I did not create but probably mistakenly agreed to) draws us into that debate. It plays against our anger toward each other though my own words in the article leave the question open. Still, people seem to have determined my position on the matter as what I was trying to get across. I leave the question open on purpose. I do so because it’s not the point.

Addiction to greatness and the role of shame

The issue I was trying to emphasize was our addiction to a greatness defined by shame and the world. I tried to emphasize our choice between that and a different type of greatness emphasizing self-sacrifice for others over self-preservation. In the article, I even confess the addiction my own heart has for becoming great again. I do this while I see in Christ a greatness focused on self-sacrifice for others I should really be pursuing.

What stands in my way? Shame. My need to feel important as TS Eliot warns. My need to win. My need to be bigger, faster, and stronger. My need to be right. My need to defend myself against my accusers. Rather you are a Christian or not, we can’t miss the greatness the person of Jesus Christ offered the world. He represents a similar challenge to our version of greatness today – 2000 years later. It’s an eerily similar story played out right in front of us.

Shame is the hidden driver behind our destructive decisions

Why did this discussion around our motives not come up more often in the comments? Because we always focus on what happened and not why something happened. We hide behind anger toward each other to avoid the real issue – that which resides in us.

Shame prefers to remain a hidden driver – it operates better when we are not aware it’s happening. Shame insists we attack and defend “positions” against “others” – something Walter Brueggemann calls the “crisis of the other”. We do this instead of looking into our own selves for the root issues around why we do what we do. I am an expert in all that shame demands because I have been its obedient servant most of my life.

Entering the battle with shame for control of our own choices

The challenge in front of all of us is to call this hidden motivator out from the shadows of our lives. Our goal is to begin to make decisions that are less destructive to ourselves and others. When we begin to get a handle on shame, we will see this pivot happening. We will see the needs and suffering of others begin to outweigh our own need for self-preservation.

Again, whether one is a Christian or not is irrelevant. Shame will insist we draw sides in this argument as well making some of us “good” while others “bad”. All that is relevant is the silent almost imperceptible pursuit of self-sacrificial giving. It’s a trait often exemplified only by a minority while the majority travel off to celebrate a victory for the greatness for which shame and our soul yearn. It seems this is as true inside as outside the church.

Jesus described this as the difference between the wide road and the narrow.

The post Shame drives our addiction to become great again. appeared first on Rick Patterson.

I wrote an article for the Reformed Journal that intended to highlight a deep psychological insistence we have for greatness. The comments to the article show I potentially missed the mark. It did not start a conversation about what motivates us and our need for greatness. Instead, the article opened up an argument over what happened on January 6. Was it an insurrection or people standing up against a tyrannical government?

Even the headline (which I did not create but probably mistakenly agreed to) draws us into that debate. It plays against our anger toward each other though my own words in the article leave the question open. Still, people seem to have determined my position on the matter as what I was trying to get across. I leave the question open on purpose. I do so because it’s not the point.

Addiction to greatness and the role of shame

The issue I was trying to emphasize was our addiction to a greatness defined by shame and the world. I tried to emphasize our choice between that and a different type of greatness emphasizing self-sacrifice for others over self-preservation. In the article, I even confess the addiction my own heart has for becoming great again. I do this while I see in Christ a greatness focused on self-sacrifice for others I should really be pursuing.

What stands in my way? Shame. My need to feel important as TS Eliot warns. My need to win. My need to be bigger, faster, and stronger. My need to be right. My need to defend myself against my accusers. Rather you are a Christian or not, we can’t miss the greatness the person of Jesus Christ offered the world. He represents a similar challenge to our version of greatness today – 2000 years later. It’s an eerily similar story played out right in front of us.

Shame is the hidden driver behind our destructive decisions

Why did this discussion around our motives not come up more often in the comments? Because we always focus on what happened and not why something happened. We hide behind anger toward each other to avoid the real issue – that which resides in us.

Shame prefers to remain a hidden driver – it operates better when we are not aware it’s happening. Shame insists we attack and defend “positions” against “others” – something Walter Brueggemann calls the “crisis of the other”. We do this instead of looking into our own selves for the root issues around why we do what we do. I am an expert in all that shame demands because I have been its obedient servant most of my life.

Entering the battle with shame for control of our own choices

The challenge in front of all of us is to call this hidden motivator out from the shadows of our lives. Our goal is to begin to make decisions that are less destructive to ourselves and others. When we begin to get a handle on shame, we will see this pivot happening. We will see the needs and suffering of others begin to outweigh our own need for self-preservation.

Again, whether one is a Christian or not is irrelevant. Shame will insist we draw sides in this argument as well making some of us “good” while others “bad”. All that is relevant is the silent almost imperceptible pursuit of self-sacrificial giving. It’s a trait often exemplified only by a minority while the majority travel off to celebrate a victory for the greatness for which shame and our soul yearn. It seems this is as true inside as outside the church.

Jesus described this as the difference between the wide road and the narrow.

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What is Truth? The Great Exposer

“What is truth?” is the rhetorical question made famous by Pilate during the interrogation of Jesus.  This has become the non rhetorical question in today’s world. We struggle to understand the possibility of “alternative facts”. However we define truth, its end result is the same: truth destroys shame.

Due to this reality, truth is a struggle if we attempt to live by it. My own struggle is no secret. Shame’s goal is to protect us from being exposed and the job of the truth is to expose. Truth and shame are archenemies.

It’s important to see this is actually the reason shame exists. The truth is we are imperfect. Shame’s goal is to prevent that secret from being exposed and getting out. Truth destroys shame and shame destroys it. They cannot live together.

Truth Hurts

So truth is an exposer while shame is a hider. The more we are and feel exposed – our weaknesses and failures for the world to see – the more pain we are going to feel. Due to this pain, we learn to hide from the truth. The more pain we feel, the more we learn from shame how to deflect, defend, lie, and blame. We get so good at it we begin to believe it.

The Truth: we are weak and needy

Jesus makes this central to his mission on earth. He calls himself the way (which I’ve spoken about), the truth and the life. If Jesus is the truth, then we can define it as vulnerability, compassion, empathy and forgiveness. It is strength in weakness.

Jesus claims the reason he came into the world was to bear witness to this thing called “the truth”. He wanted to show us “the truth”. In his life and death, he demonstrated the power of vulnerability, exposure, and weakness. He testified to the reality that humanity is fragile and needy. When we saw him, we saw the truth and we learned we did not have to fear it.

Perhaps it’s precisely when we are fully exposed to our shortcomings, failures, and imperfections that we here his voice. Until that time, we hear the voice of shame. The voice of shame is the opposite of the voice of compassion, vulnerability and empathy. The voice of shame is the opposite of the voice of Jesus.

You can’t handle the truth!Parenting Exposes You to the Truth

Recently, one of my kids confronted me about my parenting. I had hurt her feelings and it brought up a bunch of stuff from the past. She wanted to know why I didn’t come get her the second time she ran away at age 17.

I was told about how lost and confused she was and how all she wanted was for us to come get her. She said she was just a little girl, our little girl, and we did nothing to intervene or help. She was convinced we didn’t care and that she really wasn’t our daughter as she had thought all along (she was adopted).

Shame to the rescue!

When I heard that I blew a gasket. “How dare you”, I said. “How dare you accuse me of not caring when my heart was bleeding out in that car as I waited at the bus stop for you to get off and I never see or hear from you again for years?”

She left me. She abandoned me. How am I supposed to know what to do in that situation??

Why am I so angry right now? She’s being ungrateful. That’s blame.

As soon as I hung up the phone I realized what had happened – shame won. My feelings were hurt so I defended myself and, once again, at age 49, I reacted with anger and shut down my little girl. I may not be an expert in much, but I know what shame looks like when it shows up and I did the only thing I could do – apologize.

The Apology is the Shame Killer

Apologizing is difficult because it’s vulnerable. It means admitting weakness. Shame will attempt to prevent apologies. I told her it was possible that I screwed up. It was possible that I simply wasn’t a strong enough person to be a good parent. It was possible that I wasn’t smart enough to know exactly what to do in that situation.

Fortunately for me, she had the courage to try again – to be vulnerable with me again and tell me how that little girl had been hurt by my actions. And she was right. She had some very good points. I had failed. It hurt. All I could do was apologize.

You’re only Human

Right now you are all may be saying to me “Rick, you’re only human”. That’s my point. I hate being human. It means I’m limited, weak, make mistakes, and generally am imperfect. But the truth, I am only human. And the sooner I live into that truth, the sooner I live into THE truth, the sooner the truth shall set me free.

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