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Social Media and the Projecting and Mining of the Digital Self

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Session 6: Social Media and the Projecting and Mining of the Digital Self

This is the sixth part of a now eight-part series on faith in a digital age. The outline of the series is:

Week one: Advertising in a Digital Age
Week two: Email, Multi-tasking and the blurring of the work/home divide
Week three: The Internet the Backbone of the Digital Age
Week four: The Impact of the Internet and Engaging it faithfully
Week five: Cell phones and a continually connected life
Week six: Social media and the projecting and mining of the digital self
Week seven: Dating and relationships in a digital age
Week eight: The dangers of a digital age

This is a series of classes I’ve been teaching with my congregation that I’ve been attempting to capture digitally so that they could be used by other communities or small groups or for members who are unable to be present in class.

We discussed briefly in session four about our digital identity, how we place a reflection of ourselves out in the digital world when we engage with the internet and with digital technology. As we enter the world of social media the projection of ourselves into the digital world encompasses a larger portion of our life. We project an avatar of ourselves, an icon or representation of what we choose to reveal of ourselves to represent ourselves in this digital world. We share certain pieces of our lives and our network of connections so others can see. At the same time, we project this representation of ourselves that projection is being examined and mined by others, including advertisers, to understand how to relate to us. Prior to social media what we shared digitally, with some exceptions, was passive-others may gather information about searches or websites we went to but normally we weren’t voluntarily sharing this information. With the beginning of social media sites, we began actively sharing a lot of data: from pictures to political opinions, from the places we go and the food we eat to our connections with other people. We can use this to stay connected but we also receive a lot of junk. People value pictures and the connections we have with the people who are important to us, but we also have to sort through a lot of information that may not be valuable to us.

When we use social media, it can create a lot of strong feelings for the user. We can feel connected, valued, loved or conversely, we can feel disconnected, angry, shamed or excluded. Sometimes it leads us into temptation by copying life we see others showing us and it can also make us feel inadequate. Other times, it can feel like we are being taunted or bullied. There is always the possibility that when we share a piece of our life digitally that we will be judged, just like we could be in the real world. All of these feelings of happiness and unhappiness are real and yet for many people there is a strong almost addictive draw to these platforms.

We can’t talk about social media without discussing the basic human need for connection. As humans we are social creatures and our brains are wired to want connection with other people. We want to feel liked, loved, valued, safe and seen by others. We will do some incredible things for this connection. This is why young people will join a gang, because by being a part of the gang they have a family of people and they have some value. This is part of the reason that people will go through the physical ordeal and sometimes hazing to be a part of a team or a group. It is also one of the reasons that we will go to incredible lengths for those who we love as family and those who we have romantic feelings for. One of the things that has been coming out in research lately is one of the greatest predictors of longevity is a strong set of social connections. A lack of social connections has been shown to be a stronger predictor of an early death than many things like environmental pollution or smoking.

When we feel connected it is a powerful thing to our brains. Think back to a time when you fell in love and because of the love you felt everything felt right in the world. When your brain feels safe, valued, and loved the chemical reaction in your brain is a powerful thing which is one of the reasons we seek these feelings so much. Conversely, when we’ve had our heart broken, when we’ve been rejected or ridiculed or shamed this is an equally powerful negative experience. We seek connection and we fear disconnection and sometimes the fear of disconnection is even greater than our fear of physical harm or death.

To talk about connection, I’m going to rely on the work of Brené Brown who teaches at the University of Houston in the Social Work department. In her research she looked for what made people feel connected, but when she asked about connection people would share their experiences of disconnection. These experiences of disconnection she would eventually come to label as shame. She defines shame as, “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experiencing of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love or belonging.” (emphasis authors) and she lays out twelve categories of shame that frequently emerge in her research:

Appearance and Body Image
Money and Work
Motherhood/Fatherhood
Family
Parenting
Mental and Physical Health
Addiction
Sex
Aging
Religion
Surviving Trauma
Being Stereotyped of Labeled(Brown, 2012, p. 69)

Some of these twelve categories of shame are organized along gender lines and social expectations of gender roles. For example, appearance and body image is more likely to be a source of shame for women while money and work is more likely to be a source of shame for men.

Women and men experience shame differently. Brené Brown describes shame for women as a web of competing expectations and demands: how they are supposed to look, how they are supposed to act, how they are supposed to parent, how they are supposed to balance all the expectations that are put upon them and to make it look easy. This is made more challenging because the expectations are not uniform. For example, women when critiqued on mothering are viewed by widely differing standards and often judged because they are not mothering the way another believes is the right way to mother. These criticisms or places where they don’t conform to these expectations often strike at their greatest places of insecurity.

We often neglect the way that men experience shame and for men it is often a subject that we are unable to talk about. Brené Brown in her work share the story of when earlier in her career she had only researched women and shame and then after a conference a man asked her, “have you studied men and shame?” She admitted she hadn’t and then he went on to explain how men have deep shame but are unable to express it both among other men and with women. For men shame is about failure: a failure to be strong enough, good enough, or to provide enough for others. As I mentioned above, money and work are a strong shame trigger for men and so if a man’s wife comes home and comments about the nice car that her friend’s husband bought it can unintentionally send a message to the man that because he is unable to provide the same or better, he is not valued or loved. Most men learn at an early age that it is socially unacceptable to show weakness or fear. I can remember a point in my elementary school days when I learned I wasn’t allowed to cry anymore and it was reinforced by both peers and family members.

One of the reasons for talking about this with social media is that we go to social media longing for connection and we may experience disconnection. We want to feel good and safe and valued and we may find messages that reinforce how we are not living into the expectations of others or how we are not good, strong or able to provide enough. We may find those things that play on our shame triggers and we are also comparing ourselves to the best projection of someone else. We compare our entire lives to the snapshot that others choose to share of their lives. We measure ourselves unfairly against others without having access to the whole picture of their lives.

The people who designed social media know that we are connection seeking beings and the media are designed to encourage our continued usage of their platforms. When people like or comment on something that we do it feels good to our brains, it feels like we are connected and valued and seen. Because of that desire for connection we do sometimes modify our behavior to seek the approval of others, even when we may not believe that it is the correct thing.

This leads us back to the discussion of lowered social boundaries that I initially introduced when we discussed texting in the previous session. It often feels less stressful to share something through a digital technology because we don’t have to see how the words impact the other person’s body language or voice and there is not the danger of physical consequences to what we say (at least not in the moment). I believe this lowered set of social boundaries also helps to explain some of the bullying or trolling that happens on social media. We may believe that we aren’t interacting with a real person and so our words don’t matter, but they do. Many in the congregations I’ve served have heard my repurposing of the children’s proverb, “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me” to “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will send me to therapy.” Words, even online words, can cause real emotional damage. We come in seeking connection and then someone else for their own reasons bullies or insults us in ways that they would never do to our face. Sometimes when we lower our social boundaries, we encounter the basest parts of our self and others. Also, these things are now recorded and we may have to address these things at a later point of our life.

All social media are designed to keep you engaged and to do that they mine your digital projection to figure out what you want to see. Facebook, for example, will categorize you as extremely liberal, moderately liberal, moderate, moderately conservative or extremely conservative and will attempt to tailor your feed based around those political values. One of the dangers of this is that we can be surrounded in our digital world by people who think and believe the way that we do to the exclusion of other viewpoints. This ‘bunker effect’ can shield us from interactions that may challenge our viewpoint and we may be encouraged to view those who think differently than us as our enemy or people unworthy of consideration. Adding into this picture some powerful mental forces like ‘confirmation bias’ we can become susceptible to partial truths and sometimes outright lies that fit within our worldview. This has had major effects on our political dialogue and has increased the polarization we experience in the world.

Social media are advertising platforms, they are not news platforms. They are designed to increase the projection of information for profit. In a profit model where clicks on a website result in greater payments we’ve seen the practice of ‘click-baiting’ evolve to get people to go to an article based on the headline. Social media does not censor things based on their verifiability. There are some practices they have introduced after the last election cycle but ultimately, they are designed to maximize profit and they are not incentivized to remove things that masquerade as news that may merely be opinion. This can present us with a very skewed vision of reality and we may find ourselves confused by the boundaries between someone’s opinion and a verified fact.

Social media are designed for addictiveness. Some of this goes back to our discussion of the internet and platforms like Netflix removing the ‘stopping cues’ to keep you engaged on the platform for longer. Facebook for example, has no stopping cues to keep you from continuing to scroll down the screen and stay on their platform. Some other media like Snap Chat or Instagram reward you for continuing to engage through things like ‘streams’ which are broken if you have a day where you don’t engage. These all send subtle clues to our mind to come back and to seek connection again on these platforms. The technology is not evil, but it does use some of the basic pieces of our psychology to keep us engaged.

As a Christian as I think about social media, I reflect upon the language of Genesis 1 where we are created in the image of God. As Genesis narrates the creation narrative, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1: 27) A person’s value comes not from how other people value them but instead, from a faith perspective, from the reality that they share some portion of the image of God. Especially from my Christian faith it goes back to the language of my baptism where, from my Lutheran Christian theological perspective, I have been marked with the cross of Christ forever and sealed by God’s Holy Spirit. I am reminded that my identity begins with the reality that my life has been claimed by God and that I am a child of God. That doesn’t mean I am immune to the desire for connection or the feelings of shame, but it does help me to remind myself that I have value and worth already and nothing can take that away. For me it means that even when I disagree with someone, I don’t attack them in a way that attempts to shame them or demean them.

Social media can enable us to connect with a broad network of people. It can be a place where we choose to share the things that we find meaningful and valuable. It can also be place where we encounter disconnection and where we can experience hurt and shame. I think the technology can be a place where we do a lot of positive things but like any technology it helps to understand some of the dangers involved.

Discussion Questions:

What are things that you share on social media? What don’t you share?
How do you feel after being on social media? What made you feel that way?
Can you think of a time where you felt shame? What triggered that feeling?
Which of the categories of shame seem to impact you more deeply? What messages from advertising and from others reinforce those messages?
When have you seen social media misused? What do you like and dislike about the platforms you use?
What ways have you found helpful to have conversations with people who think or believe differently than you?

Living Brave Reflection 5- Some Ways to Effectively Shame an Introvert

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I have been a pastor for almost twelve years and prior to that I had a career as an officer in the U.S. Army, both of these fields are frequently dominated by extroverts and require a level of social interaction that can be challenging for an introvert. Yet, both of these careers have times where individual learning is required, deep soul searching decisions need to be made, creativity is valued, and, especially in the leadership role, can be lonely places. There are a lot of gifts I brought to both of these vocations and yet there is a set of criticisms I’ve heard throughout my life that came to the surface reflecting upon the strategies of disconnection that were discussed in session five of the Living Brave class which Brené Brown has been leading me and many others through. I could talk about the ways in which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable, but what stood out to me this time was the way the same set of comments made me feel disconnected and in that place of shame, and how the other person probably never thought about the comments in the first place.

Introverts are not shy, insensitive, cold, reclusive or any of the other adjectives that frequently get associated with introversion. Introverts draw their strength from inside and from reflection rather than from interaction with people. For many introverts, social functions may be enjoyable but extremely draining at the same time. They have probably been taught that their introverted nature as a personality trait is “somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology” as Susan Cain can voice in her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that can’t Stop Talking. Many, like myself, have invested a lot of energy and effort into becoming more social, in trying to learn how to interact with a noisy and often superficial world. They may feel uncomfortable mingling, but they learn how to do it anyways. They engage a world that is designed to fuel an extroverts need for continual stimulation by retreating for long enough to recharge and re-engage. They bring incredible gifts of creativity, the ability to listen deeply and a storehouse of knowledge gained from both reading and reflection. Many, despite their best intentions to blend in are singled out as not quite fitting in with the rest of the noisy crowd.

The following are not scientifically validated but rather come from my own experience as an introvert in extrovert dominant fields. They are things that create strong shame reactions within me because they highlight the disconnection that I may already feel in various moments. Especially in times where I have made incredible efforts to be social and engaged, expending immense amounts of social energy, hearing comments like the following make me, and I would guess others as well, want to retreat to a safe space, lash out or hide behind a social mask that is more extroverted than I may feel:

If only you were a little warmer, relaxed, less serious. This is one of those I’ve heard many times and every time it is painful. More painful than it should be. I remember I was once going through an evaluation where many extremely positive things were said and then this was my area for personal growth. For all the work I had put in to being outgoing this made all the previously good things disappear in my mind and had the critic in my head going for several days. I am a very kind hearted individual but for many reasons I am not a person who will ever be carefree, happy go lucky, or bouncy. I can fake those things for a short time but it feels really inauthentic to me. I am the person you want in a crisis because I don’t get rattled easily but the other side of that is that I don’t get excited over small things. Yet, the comment reminds me that for all my efforts to fit in I have somehow failed to live up to the expectations of others.
You are such an intellectual. On the one hand, when did being an intellectual become a bad thing. I get what the comment is trying to say, that I can live in my head and I am comfortable thinking things through academically and find it interesting. Frankly, I like that I can have internal conversations with authors and books and ideas and it helps me think. I also understand that most people are emotional beings who occasionally think rather than thinking beings whose emotions sometimes drive them. I tend to be more comfortable in the rational, intellectual space like others are in the spontaneous, emotional space. I also understand that we are living in an anti-intellectual culture that thrives as much on charisma as it does on substance. Yet, the comment still can be a shaming one. It drives home the reality that as engaged as I may want to be that I do not fit in. I may have attempted to adapt how I talk about something to a level I hope others can engage and it is a comment that highlights to me that I have still failed in that endeavor.
Why can’t you be more like ______who is an extrovert. We all have times where we are compared with someone else in an unfavorable light. Comparison takes one quality in you and compares it with what may be the best quality in someone else. To be honest, I’m probably my own worst critic on this one. It is easy for me to compare myself with others who relate to others seemingly effortlessly while it frequently involves work for me. I spend more time with the issue of comparison in my previous Living Brave Reflection.
Intentionally or unintentionally excluding from conversations. We all seek connection, even though it may be more challenging for some. Sometimes introverts feel very alone in a room and feel like they have to break in to the conversations that are already going on around them. Most find a way, but it helps to be invited in to a conversation. There are situations that are just easier for extroverts and sometimes it just takes the willingness to see the person nobody is talking to, invite them into a conversation and then allow them to be themselves. Many people know what it is like to be the one on the outside of all the conversations and it is a place that ultimately none of us want to be. We all seek those connections and a sense of belonging.

When The White Rider Falls

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Fallen White Knight by RachellaJH@deviantart.com

When the champion falls from his noble steed

And lays vanquished upon the ground

Struggling with the same mortality we all bear

Trying to rise under the weight of the expectations

Continually laid upon his shoulders by those

Bestowing their favor and placing their hope

On his ability to continue to enter the arena

While others merely enjoy the show that he puts on

Again and again, rising to meet each new challenger

Until that fatal day when he lays with his face in the earth

And he finds that those who had cheered him

Would rather see him die upon his white horse,
Than see him fall to the ground disappointing their hopes

To continue to exhibit the illusion of strength

Even when that illusion covers a gaping wound

And as the cheering crowds depart the coliseum in silence

Mourning not his injuries but their own disappointment

Leaving only the critics who look down with disapproving stares

As the one once lifted up as the hero becomes the outcast

And the white rider becomes quickly forgotten and ignored

His life’s blood sacrificed to quench the desire of the masses

Now crippled, he is quickly replaced by another who takes up the banner

When yesterday’s heroes fall from grace

We turn away in fear, for if those who we placed little lower than gods

With all their strength and mental resolve and ability

If they can know the sting on failure and weakness of wounds

Then what hope do we mere mortals have

Neil White, 2014

Freedom for Fear and Shame: Grace in our Lives-A Sermon from July 21,2013

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I don’t think it is a coincidence that the most common command in the bible is “do not be afraid.” And yet fear is a very real force in all of our lives and it causes us to do some things we are often not proud of. Fear causes us to shut ourselves off from others and even from God, and shame does this as also. Fear and shame are a little different, fear is related to something external, it can be another person, something in our environment, something that might happen, but it is fixed on something outside of oneself. Shame is focused internally, it focuses on the fear that someone else will not accept us if they know something about us, that they won’t like or love or care about me anymore. That they won’t want to be near me, it is the fear of disconnection with other people. Both fear and shame have a profound impact on our lives, they begin to tell us “we aren’t good enough” or “who are you to believe that you can do this” and they can keep us trapped inside that which is known and safe. We may shut ourselves off from other things or other people.

There has been a lot of coverage in the news over the last couple of weeks of the George Zimmerman trial, and I’m not going to go back into the trial itself, nor am I going to try to guess what the jury should or should not have decided. But the incident between George Zimmerman and Travoyn Martin was an episode based out of fear. You see, it arose out of one man seeing another man walking through the neighborhood on a stormy night, reacting out of fear and confronting him and eventually killing him. George Zimmerman believed Trayvon was a threat and he reacted out of that. Now we can’t go back and change the past, we can’t wave a magic wand and make everything better, but can we imagine a better future. This one of the things posted last week that I really liked was from Jermaine Paul, who is a singer, but he wrote, “How cool would it be to live in a world where George Zimmerman offered Trayvon a ride home to get him out of the rain that night.” That’s a different world than what we live in, but it is a world worth imagining and a world worth fighting for. I think it is a world that Jesus envisioned and we are going to hear more about as we go through the sermon today, but it is not the world I grew up in.

Those who know my story know that I spent four years in the Corps of Cadets and another 4 ½ years in the Army and they taught me a lot of the same things. They taught me a lot of what we commonly think about as courage, but courage as they taught is was to be bigger, badder and stronger than whoever else might be a threat. So instead of someone else being a threat you then you can be a threat to them but over the last thirteen years I’ve had to learn about a much different type of courage. The word courage comes from the latin word for heart ‘cur’ and courage literally means to be able to tell the story of one’s heart. That’s vulnerability, that being able to open up to who you really are. To be honest in my time in the Army you didn’t open up who you are but you pushed it down inside and you built up your own little suit of armor around yourself so that you were impervious to anything anyone might say or do about you. But real courage is being willing to take off that armor and to be open and vulnerable knowing that you are able to show who you really are. Knowing that you can be hurt and wounded because your armor is down, that someone might not accept you or the things you create or do. It is the courage to be who you are because who you are is valuable.

We live in a culture that doesn’t understand the very well, we live in a culture where our biggest idol is not money or power, at least as I’m coming to believe our biggest idol is security. We are so desperate to feel safe and secure. A lot of these things come in different forms and we are afraid to have enough to retire, afraid that someone might break into our house, someone might strike as a terrorist in the heart of our city. Yet, I think we have become more and more willing to surrender pieces of who we are to feel safe. We begin to give away pieces of our identity in order to feel safe. Yet, I need to be honest with you: security is a cruel, cruel god. If security is your god, then faith becomes transformed into certainty. There is no longer any room to question or to doubt, and yet when faith is transformed into certainty you are a short, short step from extremism. Faith as the bible understands it is about relationship and a journey, and if you notice from the stories of the bible the disciples often don’t get it and yet they keep following behind Jesus and in the journey they learn and grow. Love becomes trumped by the law. We begin to lock things down, making it more about absolutes and less about getting to know and love others. The world becomes transformed into them and us and we build up walls between us and them. Some of the walls are physical and some of the walls are emotional and social. This was the image of the wall I grew up with:

This is the Berlin Wall, it was built before I was born and while I was in college I got to see it come down, it was the wall that everyone knew about as I was growing up. The Berlin Wall separated East from West Berlin, two groups of people who were not really separate ethnically, sometimes even a family was split apart by the wall, but they were divided by two political systems. The wall separated two groups of people and it kept one group in and one group out and it was built out of fear, for security and honestly I believe it also was built out of a sense of shame.

But we come to know a very different God in Jesus, you see for Jesus faith is learned by following and we are following the one for whom love is the law. If you remember Jesus’ two great commandments, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus goes even further in the Sermon on the Mount when he tells them “you shall love your enemies” or in John’s gospel when the disciples are gathered around the table and he says, “I give you a new commandment, that you are to love one another.”And love comes up again and again and again as what Jesus commands and that is much different than trying to get it all locked down into a particular way. And as we follow Jesus we realize the world is no longer broken down into them and us, but rather as Paul can say in Galatians:

²⁸ There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3: 28)

All these things that in Paul’s life that had been the defining things became unimportant. Are you a Jew like or are you a Gentile, not a Jew, are you like us or are you not. Are you a slave or are you free, are you a man or are you a woman, rich or poor, college educated or not and we can put all those things in there, but ultimately in Christ all those things no longer matter. And Paul had to learn this in his own life. If you remember Paul’s story, he started out as a Pharisee and he understood that there were certain things that made him right with God and he was so convinced that these early followers of Jesus were wrong that he was out to wipe them out. He stood there looking on as they stoned Stephen and then he was on his way to Damascus to find any of Jesus early followers he could and bring them back to Jerusalem in chains. Until Jesus met him on the way. Paul recounts this way of thinking in Philippians 3:

⁴ though I could have confidence in my own effort if anyone could. Indeed, if others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more! ⁵ I was circumcised when I was eight days old. I am a pure-blooded citizen of Israel and a member of the tribe of Benjamin– a real Hebrew if there ever was one! I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. ⁶ I was so zealous that I harshly persecuted the church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the law without fault.

Paul may have been righteous, and I don’t think Paul had any sense of guilt for the way he followed the law, but it was a righteousness without love. And Paul realizes that now everything has changed because of what is now important in his life. Paul continues:

⁷ I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done⁸ Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ

You see Paul had to go through this transformation in his own life, from a world where he was separated from those who were not like him: I am a Jew and beyond that I am a Pharisee and a very zealous Pharisee, so zealous I persecuted these early Christians. I’m righteous, these other people are unrighteous, I’m a saint, they are a sinner, I am good they are bad.

And then we encounter Jesus, and have you ever noticed that Jesus is always getting in trouble for being with the wrong people at the wrong? Almost all his controversies are because he either is healing on Sabbath or he is touching and eating with the wrong people. He touches a leper, that should make him unclean- and yet instead it makes the leper clean. He is sitting at the house of a Pharisee and then a woman comes in and anoints him with perfume and washes his feet with her tears, and while the Pharisee is thinking, ‘if this Jesus was really a prophet he would know what kind of woman this is and not let her touch him’ but instead Jesus says to him ‘do you see this woman, when I came in you didn’t anoint me nor did you wash my feet, but she anointed me and has washed my feet with her tears and her sins which are many are forgiven.’ Or he hangs out with sinners and tax collectors, like Matthew. This is Carvaggio’s painting of the calling of Matthew:

The Calling of St. Matthew by Carvaggio (1599-1600)

Jesus is on the right pointing and Matthew is in the center of the table with a bewildered look on his face, with his fingers pointing to himself as if to say, ‘me, you are calling me.’ This is how Matthew records it in the 9^th chapter:

⁹ As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his tax collector’s booth. “Follow me and be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him.

¹⁰ Later, Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to his home as dinner guests, along with many tax collectors and other disreputable sinners. ¹¹ But when the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?”

I actually like that translation, even though they take a little freedom with the word there, for I think we often think of being at the table with Jesus being like this:

Where everyone is holy and righteous and good, yet people in Jesus day saw it being more like this:

Where Jesus is there with the sinners, tax collectors, all the wrong people the people they didn’t want to hang out with. Sinners and tax collectors in Jesus day were no less likely than the people in the picture above. In my own experience I keep being stretched as I encounter Jesus among the least likely people I expected. Matthew continues the story

¹² When Jesus heard this, he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor– sick people do.” ¹³ Then he added, “Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’ For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

We come from a tradition, the Lutheran tradition, that gives us a great place to wrestle with this because the person we take our name from, Martin Luther, wrestled mightily with this. Luther started out as an Augustinian monk, the most rigorous of the religious orders of his day, and Luther strove to do everything the right way, to live according to all the rules to try to be right with God and Luther never felt he could achieve that. Staupitz who was Luther’s superior in the order as well as his confessor, after sitting through hours and hours of hearing Luther confess is reported to have said, ‘Luther you come in here confessing every little thing you have done, you can’t so much as fart without coming here fearing condemnation and yet I’ve never once heard you confess anything remotely interesting.’ Yet Luther was afraid that he couldn’t keep all the commandments and love God. He was convinced that God didn’t love him, at least before the reformation breakthrough where he realized that God loved him well before he ever began his journey that led him to monasticism. It transformed him so much that later in his life he could tell his friend and younger colleague, Philip Melancthon who was trying to get everything right and was afraid of making a mistake, “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ evermore boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death and the world.”

Paul also had to come through this transformation from being viewing righteousness as being a part of the law to being transformed by the righteousness of God that comes through the love of Christ. As he writes in Romans 8:

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. ² And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Who can take that away from you? Nobody. You have been freed from the power of sin and death, now that doesn’t we don’t find ourselves struggling, but the victory has already been decided. Paul continues

³ The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. ⁴ He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit. ⁵ Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit.

So who gets to say who we are, who gets to have that word. Is it others who say that we should be afraid of those who are different from us, who ask us to build walls between ourselves and others. No. Is it our own selves telling us that we are not good enough, smart enough, worthy enough. No. It is the God who made us the baptized children of God, who marked us with the cross of Christ forever and sealed us by the Holy Spirit. That God who promises that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, nothing in our lives, nothing in heaven or on earth, no rulers or powers, nothing.Who are you, you are baptized children of God and no one, nothing can take that away from you, and you are loved. And it is in that love that we can imagine the way the world looks in light of that love, Jesus spends most of his ministry talking about the kingdom of God, talking about his vision of the way life should be. This was not a new thing, in the Old Testament this would have been talked about in terms of living in God’s shalom, God’s peace and vision for the world and harmony with God and the world around them. That is why the two great commandments are you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And as we begin to claim who we are in light of this love and identity those things like fear and shame which cause us to give away potions of who we are begin to lose their hold on us. Now this isn’t easy, I certainly don’t claim to be the one who has mastered this. There are times in my own life where fear kept me paralyzed or shame made me believe that I was unloveable. I can own that, and the reality is that I didn’t earn it. Martin Luther would say that “God’s love doesn’t find that which is pleasing to it; God’s love creates that which is pleasing to it.” We weren’t right with God on our own, God went out and made us right, God goes out seeking us because that is who God is. That gives us a great opportunity. You see, in the midst of Jesus ministry he never built any walls, but he sat at a lot of tables and tables bring us together. He sat at tables with those many in his day would have excluded. I had the opportunity to hear Bishop Mark Hanson, the Bishop of the ELCA a couple years ago and he related a story how when he was elected bishop a colleague who he trusted told him, ‘your calling is to take the walls that divide us and turn them into tables for conversation.’ I think that is what Jesus did, he took the walls that divided Matthew from the rest of the community, ‘he’s a sinner, he’s a tax collector’ and he brought him to the table where he was included as well as the other sinners and tax collectors. That’s what Paul did in going from the ministry that divided Jew and Gentiles to being the apostle to the Gentiles. And grace frees us from that shame, that fear that we need to create a different and better past, indeed grace is freedom from having to seek a better past. The reality is that who you are is accepted right now, God has made you and claimed you. So take down the walls and join those at the table. Amen.

The Father’s We Seek

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Saint Joseph the Carpenter, Georges de La Tour (1640)

On Mother’s Day I wrote about women being more than mothers, and on Father’s Day I’m going to take a different angle because I think men struggle with a different issue and that is in society they are at best fathers only after they are whatever other role they have. To understand why this is I’m going to approach the male concept of shame, which is different than shame for women. For women shame comes from the inability to fit into the expectations of perfection defined first by looks and second by motherhood. Shame for women comes from how others view you and how you view yourself. Shame for men comes from being perceived as being weak or a failure. For men the societal expectations are: emotional control, primacy of work, pursuit of status and finally violence (the ability to take or protect that which is yours). Yet in relationships men are expected to put these things aside and be vulnerable, to share in the nurturing of children, to show restraint (it is very easy for a man to injure a child just due to the strength differential and the preponderance of rough play that is sought from fathers by boys and girls alike), and to enter into a world that is still defined by women’s expectations in the home. Just as women have struggled with the predominantly male expectations of the world of work, men have struggled with the very different set of expectations within the home.

Just as there was a time when a woman’s worth was tied to her ability to bear children, a man’s worth is still tied to his ability to provide security in terms of protection, shelter, food and comfort. Men are still primarily viewed as producers in society, and some of this is reflected in the way that employers view men taking time off for their family’s needs. Men do not give birth, but frequently they are expected to be back on the job within days of their wife or significant other giving birth. Men are looked upon as not having their work priorities straight if they take time off to be with a sick loved one, and this also can extend to women as well-but the societal expectations are not as strong (although the expectations of perfection that women in the workplace put on themselves may be).

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are important and should be celebrated, but I get the impression that of the two holidays Father’s Day is viewed as the lesser of the two. Perhaps this is because for men fatherhood is a secondary identity, second to their ‘real’ identity in the world of work. In the past couple generations while the role of men as fathers has changed the expectations in the working world have not decreased, nor has their compensation increased and like women they find themselves trying to live well between the worlds of word and home. As the workplace is learning to value women for who they are and the gifts they bring (and I understand that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done here), so in the world of the home as men become an increasing part of the world at home it will mean that the expectations in this world will need to begin to shift as well to be able to account for the gifts that men and women can bring.

I know I am leaving the issue of single parenthood unaddressed, which I definitely sympathize with being a single dad, but on Father’s Day I hope I was able to help us think about how we might help our young men be the fathers we hope they will be.

Creativity, Spirituality and Shame

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As I embark on the thought experiment I call the creativity project which will not be in any way systematic, but a set of explorations from various perspectives around topics of creativity, spirituality, and imagination I am going to start in what many will initially think is an unusual place: shame. Brené Brown’s work on shame has been one of the most revealing perspectives in what limits or destroys our capacity for creativity. Shame as Brené defines it is:

Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance or belonging. (Brown, 2007, p. 4)(emphasis author’s)

Shame is that emotion that tells us that we are unworthy, unloved or unloveable, it can allow an action or another’s perspective to define who we are in our own eyes. It shouldn’t be surprising that this incredibly powerful fear can dampen if not kill creativity for an individual or an organization and that it can also by extension powerfully effect spirituality. In Brené Brown’s book I Thought It Was Just Me she makes this insightful comment which is well worth the two paragraphs it spans:

I did see important patterns and themes in terms of how women experienced their faith and spirituality. For example, the women who talked about feeling shame used the words church and religion more. The women who talked about resilience used the terms faith, spirituality and beliefs more. At first I wondered if there was a connection between “organized religion” and shame. I didn’t find one. At least half of the women who used the terms faith, spirituality, and beliefs attended church and were members of an organized religion.

What did become clear to me is this: It is the relationship that women have with God, their higher power or their spiritual world that often serves as the source of resilience. The essence of resilience, in a spiritual sense, is about relationship, spirit and faith. For many women, spiritual connection is essential to shame reliance. In fact, over half of the women, who, as children, experienced deep shame around religion developed shame resilience by forging new spiritual paths. They may have changed churches or their beliefs, but spirituality and faith remain an important part of their lives. Another pattern that emerged is the belief that faith is about nurturing our best selves and shame moves us away from that purpose. The sources of shame seem much more connected to earthly, man-made and interpreted rules and regulations and social-community expectations around religion (Do you go to church regularly? Are you loyal to your family religion? Are you raising your kids a certain way? Are you breaking rules that might shame the family or the community? Do you know your place as a woman?). (Brown, 2007, p. 259f)

Brené’s later two works, The Gift of Imperfection (Brown, 2010) and Daring Greatly (Brown, 2012) (which I blogged about in the posts Daring Greatly, Cultures of Scarcity, and Shame on You) she moves to the concept of vulnerability as the characteristic that people who feel loveable (and are able to move beyond their shame) share. This vulnerability allows people to be courageous, compassionate and connected with others. In contrast fear, disengagement and yearning for more courage may come out of an environment’s or an individual’s shame. For example when shame is a management style “engagement dies. When failure is not an option we can forget about learning, creativity and innovation.” (Brown, 2012, p. 14)

As we think about the type of community’s that will nurture creativity and spirituality for the coming generations we need to pay close attention to the ways shame, fear, manipulation and coercion are used. Do we have communities where people are valued for their conformity or for their individuality? Do we have communities where people feel they need to fit in (shame is the fear of being disconnected)? Can we be a place where not only failure but forgiveness is an option? Do churches begin to reflect the culture of scarcity we experience in the world around us or can we dare greatly and trust greatly in the abundance that is found in our own faith?

The reality is that many if not all communities and individuals have a long way to go in nurturing a climate of acceptance, connection, resilience and support, faith and spirituality. It is a journey that we must undertake if we are really going to be about helping people in their relationship with God and with one another. The likelihood is that on the journey there will be many failures, many times where we will need to be forgiven for returning to shame for motivation, and hopefully on the way we may all grow both more courageous and more vulnerable and more resilient to the shame which dampens our creativity and spirituality.

I’ve included another of Brené Brown’s talks and I love the comment she makes that “Faith-vulnerability=extremism, that faith is the vulnerability that flows between the shores of certainty…spirituality is inherently vulnerable.”

The Names We Take and the Names We Give

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I enjoy music, a wide range of music, and so one of my hopes was to take something that strikes me when I am listening to it throughout the week, take the lyrics and their meaning and then see what thoughts it evokes. Just because today’s offering comes from the world of Rock/Metal and it happened to be what got me thinking today…you never know what might provoke thought.

One note before going further, the song, My Name by Shinedown does contain profanity which some people may be offended by. I have removed much of the repetition of chorus and tags in the text of the lyrics. My comments will be below, I also deal with some offensive material in this post due to the nature of the subject.

My Name (Your Wearing Me Out)

My name is worthless like you told me I once was
My name is empty ’cause you drained away the love
My name is searching since you stole my only soul
My name is hatred, and the reasons we both know

Worthless, empty, searching, hatred
Who am I right now?

You’re fuckin’ wearing me out!
You’re always dragging me down!
You’re the fake fallen force of nature’s sick mind!
I don’t need a gun to take back what’s mine
It’s over
It’s over now
You’re done wearing me out

My name is screaming like the sound of your heart failing
My name is loco like the motive that betrayed me
Screaming, loco, don’t say you know who I am right now

You’ll be ancient history
But who am I right now?

My name is revenge and I’m here to save my name

I’m sure somebody is thinking, “these are terrible” why would anyone want to focus any time on this, but we all give and take names, some that are honorable and good and some that are horrible. I say to people dealing with the aftermath of verbal and psychological trauma, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will send me to therapy.” Names and words hurt, and even the most resilient person will occasionally take a label that someone else gives them into part of their personality. If you look back at some of the work I discuss from Brené Brown’s work on shame and vulnerability, you can see how powerful this is. Taking a name is a way that shame takes hold of us. In the song the person’s names become: worthless, empty, searching, hatred, screaming, loco, revenge…they may not be the names we want but sometimes they are the words we take and give.

Miroslav Volf in Exclusion and Embrace relates a story from his homeland from the perspective of a Muslim woman:

“I am a Muslim, and I am thirty five years old. To my second son who was just born, I gave the name “Jihad.” So he would not forget the testament of his mother—revenge. The first time I put my baby at the breast I told him, “May this milk choke you if you forget.” So be it. The Serbs taught me to hate. For the last two months there was nothing in me. No pain, no bitterness. Only hatred. I taught these children to love. I did. I am a teacher of literature. I was born in Ilijaś and I almost died there. My student, Zoran, the only son of my neighbor, urinated into my mouth. As the bearded hooligans standing around laughed, he told me: “You are good for nothing else, you stinking Muslim woman…” I do not know whether I first heard the cry of felt the blow. My former colleague, a teacher of physics, was yelling like mad, “Ustasha, ustasha…”And kept hitting me. Wherever he could. I have become insensitive to pain. But my soul it hurts. I taught them to love and all the while they were making preparations to destroy everything that is not of the Orthodox faith. Jihad—war. This is the only way… “(Volf 1996, 111)

Fortunately most of us are not literally named something as horrible as Jihad, although the family dynamics of hatred passed from one generation to another are very real, as does the reality of abuse: physical, psychological or sexual. The natural response for a wounded person is to wound another, if I am insulted the natural response is to bring someone else down to make myself feel better (even though this doesn’t work and only decreases my own self worth). Yet the cycle of naming continues.

How does the cycle end? How do we give new and better names to ourselves and others? It isn’t easy. It starts first with being clear about who we are, and what are the names we are willing to accept for ourselves, and even the type of self-talk we do. No matter how bone-headed some action may have been that doesn’t make a person an idiot-they are simply someone who did something dumb. A child who shoplifts can either take it into their identity that they are a thief or they can be ashamed of the action, I stole something, but that doesn’t change who I am. I’m a person with a fairly strong sense of who I am, but even I have to work at this.

I have a plaque in my office, given to me by Nate Frambach who was my advisor which says: “Neil Eric White you are a baptized child of God. Whatever else you are, remember you are that; for that is the basis of whatever else you are.” I go back to this often. At the root, that is a name I’ve taken that I desire to be the touchstone any other name is judged by. I’m not always there, there are times when another name seems to overwhelm that or any other name, but eventually I come back to this name that I claim this name that isn’t wearing me out. There is much more to say so perhaps I’ll spend some more time here next week.

Shame…on you

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Shame is a feeling that everyone struggles with, men and women of all ages, social status, education level and perceived levels of success. We all struggle with shame. “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” (Brown, 68) Shame is not guilt, where we realize we have done something wrong and can’t believe we did whatever we did. It is not humiliation where we feel like we are receiving treatment we don’t deserve. It is not embarrassment where we can see others having made the same embarrassing thing. Shame becomes a part of the story we tell about ourselves, we begin to believe that we are the issue. Shame moves beyond I have done something wrong to believing that I am something wrong.

Men and women experience shame differently. For women the primary trigger is how they look, followed by motherhood. It sounds like this:

Look perfect. Do perfect. Be perfect. Anything less is shaming.
Being judged by other mothers.
Being exposed—the flawed parts of yourself that you want to hide from everyone are revealed.
No matter what I achieve or how far I’ve come, where I come from and what I survived will always keep me from feeling like I’m good enough.
Even though everyone knows that there’s no way to do it all, everyone still expects it. Shame is when you can’t pull it off looking like it’s under control.
Never enough at home. Never enough at work. Never enough in bed. Never enough with my parents. Shame is never enough.
No seat at the cool table. The pretty girls are laughing (Brown, 85)

For men it is organized around the perception of being weak, and this comes from both men and women. If you haven’t watched the video, I know I can really resonate with the man who exclaims, “but when we reach out and share our stories, we get the emotional shit beat out of us.” And not just by other guys, women play into this as well. Men learn young how to pretend to be vulnerable.

Shame for men sounds like:

Shame is failure. At work. On the football field. In your marriage. In bed. With money. With your children. It doesn’t matter—shame is failure.
Shame is being wrong. Not doing it wrong, but being wrong.
Shame is a sense of being defective
Shame happens when people think you’re soft. It’s degrading and shaming to be seen as anything but tough.
Revealing weakness is shaming. Basically, shame is weakness.
Showing fear is shameful. You can’t show fear. You can’t be afraid—no matter what.
Shame is being seen as the “guy you can shove up against the lockers.”
Our worst fear is being criticized or ridiculed—either one of those is extremely shaming. (Brown, 92)

The experience of shame is the same but the way it is received is different between the sexes. We never become immune to shame, but we can learn to become resilient. Shame prevents us from risking and being creative. It tells us we are not good enough, not smart enough, not popular enough…you can fill in whatever possible fear you like. It keeps us out of the arena, keeps us from sharing things that are important to us and keeps us imprisoned in our own shame. It thrives in an environment of secrecy and judgment.

I know I haven’t done justice to Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly, which is an incredible book-better even than the videos, but it is time for me to move on to something else. Enjoy the video and may you develop resilience to the power of shame.

Cultures of Scarcity

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Narcissism, you would think we are surrounded by it, that every person is self absorbed:politicians, movie stars, young people, athletes, police, parents, CEOs, and the list could go on and on, it is ‘those people’ who are self absorbed, but it is rarely me. “If only we could cut these people down to size, put them in their right place, make them realize that they need to work for a living” might be some people’s response to those people they dub as narcissists, but the reality is that narcissism is an outgrowth of shame. It is the fear of being ordinary, of not being noticed or being loveable, belonging, being cool. Often it grows from trying to cultivate a sense of purpose in what may seem to be the hollowness in their lives.

We live with scarcity, the never enough problem. Fill in the blank never _________enough:

Never good enough
Never perfect enough
Never thin enough
Never powerful enough
Never successful enough
Never smart enough
Never certain enough
Never safe enough
Never extraordinary enough (this list comes from Brown’s Daring Greatly, 24)

We get scarcity because we live in a world where we believe it and live it. And scarcity strives in a culture where you are hyper aware of what you lack, now the flip side is that scarcity can blind you to what you have. How big of a paycheck is big enough, how much money do you really need, and yet we live in a culture where we are measured by impossible standards and we have visions of perfection put before our eyes-visions of what we should have, what our family should be, how our marriages should be, how we should look and the list goes on and on. “Scarcity doesn’t take hold in a culture overnight. But the feeling of scarcity does thrive in a shame-prone cultures that are deeply steeped in comparison and fractured by disengagement” (Brown, 26) Wow, we eat, breathe and drink comparison-we measure ourselves against others and alienation or disengagement is one of the words that when you ask people about how they feel that often sums up there experience. We have much greater access to what is going on in the world, but that engagement often focuses heavily on the negative…school shootings, corporate scandals, wars, natural disasters, famines, unemployment-and even when we are not directly involved we feel that these events “out there” are stealing our sense of security “here.”

There are three components to a culture of scarcity:

Shame: is fear of ridicule and belittling used to manage people and/or keep people in line? Is self worth tied to achievement, productivity or compliance? Are blaming and finger pointing norms? Are name calling and finger pointing rampant? What about favoritism? Is perfectionism an issue?
Comparison: Healthy competition is beneficial, but is there constant overt or covert comparing and ranking? Has creativity been suffocated? Are people held to one narrow standard rather than acknowledged for their unique gifts and contributions? Is there an ideal way of being or one form of talent that is used as measurement of everyone else’s worth?
Disengagement: Are people afraid to take risks and try new things? Is it easier to stay quiet than to share stories, experiences, and ideas? Does it feel as if no one is really paying attention and listening? Is everyone struggling to be seen and heard? (Brown,27)

Scarcity is not cured by abundance. There are many people who are convinced that there is never enough money, never enough time, never enough sleep, never enough health, they will never be beautiful enough or smart enough or popular enough. If you live from a perspective of scarcity it is never enough, no matter what abundance you have. The opposite of scarcity is enough, it is a different way of looking at the world. Scarcity breeds shame and fear, but enough allows you to take the risks involved with being vulnerable. It is not easy to believe you have enough in a culture that thrives on scarcity, just like it is not easy to remain calm when everyone else may seem anxious.

I think we all seek a feeling of being worthy and nobody wants to live a life based on fear. Courage involves risk and perhaps the greatest risk is vulnerability.

Note: I’m doing this because I am trying to internalize some of what I have learned from Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly which is a phenomenal book and this is a part of a series of posts that pull very heavily from that work.

Sign of the Rose

Searchings: Sacred and Secular

Tag Archives: shame

Living Brave Reflection 5- Some Ways to Effectively Shame an Introvert

When The White Rider Falls

Freedom for Fear and Shame: Grace in our Lives-A Sermon from July 21,2013

The Father’s We Seek

Creativity, Spirituality and Shame

The Names We Take and the Names We Give

Shame…on you

Cultures of Scarcity