so I picked it up expecting it to be mildly funny and to get a couple of good laughs before putting it down and moving on to something better like Gabriel Garcia Marquez... who's my favorite author to read on days I feel like this. However I found myself entangled in the pages it was so true and so funny the author Jonathan Acuff is brilliant. The entire book is short essays on... well things Christians like. They're a little sarcastic and definitely satirical but most of all its true... and I say that as knowing I do half of the stuff he talks aboutmys. If you have the time I suggest you pick it up I read the whole thing in B&N for free. He has a blog too Google that because you need to at least read "Booty, God, Booty". Anyway one of the things said in one of Jonathan Acuff's essays that caught my attention. He told a story about his daughter experiencing shame for the first time and that's what this is about.
We all know about it because at some point everyone has been a little or sometimes a lot ashamed. The first time humans experience shame is in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve realized "Oh crap we're butt booty naked! and we've been naked this whole dang time! Oh double crap!! God's coming we gotta hide and cover up! Quick fig leaves yeah we're gonna use these fig leaves."-CAPV (Christina Alicia Polite Version... its fairly accurate lol) In all seriousness that's the first shame and its been all down hill from there for us people. We get all backed into a corner and feel so ashamed of ourselves and it works it way into lives of so many of us and we all get hurt by the shame monster, and he's often accompanied by friends like Doubt, Jealousy, Fear, and Hate. All these monsters are running a muck in our lives... well I know they do in mine. Most of us totally live every day of our lives crushed under the foot of some manifestation this monster... I just didn't have a name for it until I read this book and I thought about it. You know what God said to Adam and Eve? He says, "Who told you that you were naked?" Now God knows what happened he isn't really asking them to tell him who said that. It isn't like God's gonna be that mom... you know the one... the mom that asks who bothered her baby so that she can go get them and punish them for hurting her baby, God is not that mom. In Acuff's essay he says God was expressing his hurt because his creations were experiencing something that he never meant for them to feel. God was brokenhearted that Adam and Eve were too ashamed of themselves to stand before Him and I agree with him Acuff God was expressing his hurt. Furthermore I think the rest of us who came into being way after the fig leaves incident of 1 B.C.E. (I don't know if that's accurate dating... I don't get dates) have broken God's heart a lot with how much we allow our shame to make us fear standing before God. We fail to believe in who's he's made us to be. See I firmly believe in God and who he is but I think I waver on who I am sometime... and I'm gonna go out on limb here and say that I'm not the only one.
There are probably a million things holding peoplekind <--- my word > back. The fear of looking silly in front of other people, perhaps not being good enough, tall enough, or short enough(I know someone out there feels awkwardly tall... you aren't... you're majestic! and this is for you). Maybe we don't think we fit in or something like that what ever your particular beef with yourself is. Well who told you that? Who said that? Why do you believe that? Did God say that? I don't think so because God doesn't want us to be ashamed of who we are. Adam and Eve were rocking their birthday suits happily before the fall... maybe we should go retro and happily rock our birthday suits (figuratively please... I don't want anyone getting arrested) and just be comfortable in our own skin no matter what it looks like.
God's probably all tear-eyed sitting there next to you saying "Who told you that?" right now.
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