The word shame or being ashamed has been turned upside down of recent years, right?

Things that we used to be ashamed of, now we are proud of, and we have parade to express our pride

and things that we used to take pride in, now we're kind of embarrassed and ashamed

of it and we keep quiet about it.

And that's because our culture has departed from biblical definitions of shame and have produced

instead its own definition.

A prominent psychologist defines shame as a master emotion. He said,

it is very difficult to get rid of, but I'm going to show you that he's wrong in a minute.

Because the Bible portrays shame as an indicator of how we respond to sin.

And that is why there is a healthy shame and there is an unhealthy shame.

Healthy shame is what comes when we realize that we have violated our own conscience

and that we can immediately turn to the Lord, confess, and repent, and receive forgiveness and restoration.

That's healthy shame.

The unhealthy shame or guilt is when a person rejects himself or herself.

And they think that, well, I didn't just fail, but I am a failure.

And they begin to convince themselves that they are failures.

And they condemn themselves.

They condemn themselves as failures.

They condemn themselves as they'll never measure up.

They'll never.

And sometimes that kind of emotion has developed in an early childhood as a result of things

like abuse, whether it be physical abuse or emotional abuse or sexual abuse.

...