How Self-Judgment, Shame and Fear Began

Looking at the title, were you a little bit afraid to start reading this post? If you were, you’re not alone, and take heart, because it’s good! Self-judgment, shame and fear are the principal emotions that we all face and that drive us all. We may be more familiar or more aware of one or another, but we have them all. They are at the core of all our pain. They cause disconnection, war, broken relationships, etc. Everyone can relate to them. If you are experiencing problems, there is a good chance one of these three is at the core of them.

To demonstrate historically how clearly judgment, fear and shame have been with humanity since the beginning, today’s post will start off with a lot of reading in Genesis. This will set a biblical foundation, or history, of how those three emotions have been around since ancient times.

All passages in this post are from the New Living Translation.

Genesis 1:26-27

“Then God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

This passage is establishing that Adam and Eve, and therefore all of us, were both created in God’s image. Since God is spirit, not human, our human form can’t have been what was referred to by “the same image”. It seems rather obvious that we were made in the same image in spirit. Our bodies are just vessels to house the spirit he created in each of us. This also means both genders were equally representative of God. It states, ‘in the image of God he created them; male and female’.

Genesis 1:31

Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.”

In case there was any doubt, in the beginning our representatives were very good!

Genesis 2:4-7

“Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person.

He wasn’t a living being until God breathed into him.

Genesis 2:15-17

Then the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east, and there he placed the man he had made. The Lord God made all sorts of trees grow up from the ground—trees that were beautiful and that produced delicious fruit. In the middle of the garden he placed the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:19-20

The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. But the Lord God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden— except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”

So the Lord God formed from the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would call them, and the man chose a name for each one. He gave names to all the livestock, all the birds of the sky, and all the wild animals. But still there was no helper just right for him.”

Genesis 2:21+25

“So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. While the man slept, the Lord God took out one of the man’s ribs and closed up the opening. Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib, and he brought her to the man.

Now the man and his wife were both naked, but they felt no shame.”

This part is important. They knew no shame although they were completely exposed. They did not feel exposed. They were oblivious to that knowledge.

Genesis 3:1-24

“The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made. One day he asked the woman, “Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?”

“Of course we may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,” the woman replied. “It’s only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we are not allowed to eat. God said, ‘You must not eat it or even touch it; if you do, you will die.’”

“You won’t die!” the serpent replied to the woman. “God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it, and you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.”

The serpent hit Eve with two ideas that had not occurred to her beforehand.

To begin with he looked all innocent simply by asking a question. I wonder if it is universal; that we like to be asked questions we know the answer to? Because Eve appeared to be quite happy to answer the serpent, and she knew how to set the serpent right (although if you noticed, God never told them they couldn’t touch it).

What the serpent said though, was that she will be like God, which implied she should be like God and wasn’t. She was introduced to the idea that she was not enough as she was. She was given the indication that there was something not right about her.

Additionally he quickly proceeded by spelling out to her what she needed to do in order to get what she now knew she lacked. He essentially said that she couldn’t be like God unless she could judge, and the only way to gain that kind of knowledge was by choosing to eat the forbidden fruit.

“You don’t know how to judge now, but the tree will make you able to judge.”

He also told her she wouldn’t die. She didn’t die in the sense that she understood. But even this first act of deciding she needed this fruit, was proving that she did not have what she needed to make an informed decision. She didn’t realize there are spiritual and relational deaths, not just physical ones.

Judgment is a form of accusation. In this case the judgment was “you are not like God”. It’s both an observation and an accusation. There was also another, implied accusations which was that God is only a judge and only concerned with judgment, he’s neither loving nor relational and only judges us whether we are good or bad.

Satan convinced Eve that eating the fruit was a good and beneficial thing to do. If she ate the fruit, she would judge well, because it was going to give her the ability to know good from evil, and he implied this was a good thing. She was sold on gaining wisdom. The enemy also sold her on the idea that she couldn’t ask God for it, that she had to get it herself.

We know from James 1:5 that anyone who lacks wisdom is instructed to ask God and promised that he will give it generously. I wonder what made her think she couldn’t just ask God about it. Either way, the fact that she didn’t ask him, speaks of her probably believing that God wouldn’t give her good things, or that she had to make it happen herself, not in connection with him, maybe even that he wouldn’t give her good things unless she was good, and she already believed by this time that there was something very bad about her.

The woman was convinced. She saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

Immediately they knew they were naked. Immediately they were ashamed of it. Immediately they began the process of hiding.

The nakedness represents our nature. Nakedness is us being on the journey of growth, making mistakes, learning from mistakes, etc. It is a normal part of our growth. I realize that was the plan from the beginning, because why would they be called “very good” if they were perfect already? What was a normal part of life now suddenly became judged in value, because by eating this fruit they had entered a relationship with self-judgment. They disconnect with God and they enter a relationship with fear. Afraid to be seen in their process. Afraid to be judged. Needing to hide so the others wouldn’t know.

When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the Lord God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the Lord God among the trees. Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.” “Who told you that you were naked?” the Lord God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it.” Then the Lord God asked the woman, “What have you done?” “The serpent deceived me,” she replied. “That’s why I ate it.”

Abi and Justin made a great observation here. Many people assume God came after them with an accusatory tone. But they are suggesting, and I agree, that God simply came and asked “where are you” as a way of inviting them to relationship with him. After all, God knew exactly where they were. He knew exactly what they had done. When he asks questions, it’s never for his benefit. Rather he asked as an invitation for them to share what had happened. But they already self-judged that they were bad, and that he was coming in judgment.

If we think this call was an angry call rather than an extension for relationship, then we probably are carrying shame. I share this just because personally I found shame the most well hidden in my life. Or maybe I did not understand the definition properly.

Abi also shared that the “where are you” has prophetic weight to it. A promise that he will come find us, come pursue us, find us in our hiddenness.

As I mentioned earlier, they didn’t die an immediate physical death, but the process of spiritual and relational death had been set in motion. They unplugged from unconditional love and plugged into self-judgment.

The Stumvolls were also pointing out that God was not asking questions in a mean way, he was simply investigating to help them figure out what had just happened. They drew the parallel to being a good counselor, who asks good questions instead of assuming. As life consultants we will need to get really good about investigative questions like him, too. (I plan on writing a post about asking good questions sometime after the class is finished.)

It became clear rapidly that the blaming answers gave evidence of where they were at. Blaming comes from shame, fear and self-judgment because we switch to self-protection mode to shelter ourselves. To do that we begin the process of accusation. God came to understand, he came to give them a chance to share but, in their shame, they tried to protect themselves from the beginning. When we are in shame, we are not looking to be understood, nor are we looking to understand, we are just looking to avoid condemnation.

Then the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all animals, domestic and wild. You will crawl on your belly, groveling in the dust as long as you live. And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”

In case you missed it, this is a promise of hope for them. He’s telling them there is already a plan in place and I believe it was to give them hope.

Then he said to the woman, “I will sharpen the pain of your pregnancy, and in pain you will give birth. And you will desire to control your husband, but he will rule over you.”

Many people look at this scene and wonder why God cursed them. Is it possible to think that he was saying, “I am not condemning you. This is a natural consequence of your choice to go after judgment. It results in us being disconnected. You will miss the connection and try to find it and your value by turning to relationships. Unfortunately it will hurt and not satisfy you.”

And to the man he said, “Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit, I commanded you not to eat, the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made. For you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.”

God basically told Adam, “everything you make yourself isn’t going to be satisfactory”. Men often turn to what they can produce and build themselves, but the toil is not just externally but also in the soul, in the attempt to produce something that will nourish them. But God said it’s going to be thorns and thistles. There is a consistent dissatisfaction as long as they live in judgment, fear and shame rather than in unconditional love. They had refused unconditional love by immediately entering the blaming game. I have seen this playing out in real life. The men I have watched are usually all about their work, and it never seems to be enough. As a result they work harder but are always feeling unfulfilled. This may be an over generalization. It also can’t be universal because some of the humans alive today have reconnected with God so deeply that this striving is no longer driving them.

The comment about returning to dust has a ‘rebirth’ connotation attached to it. After all, when he was dust, God breathed into him and he became a living being fully connected to God’s unconditional love. Then that love was disconnected at the tree, after which the striving began. Being New Testament Christians, we know this cannot be undone except through Jesus at the cross, canceling the curse and we have to die with him to get back to square one. In more specific terms for us, this means we need to let go of judgment, fear, shame and return to God’s unconditional love, believing what he says about us rather than what we think we see so clearly but is just bad judgment. He needs to become our foundation for value again.

It’s important to note that this was never God’s plan. It was never his aim for them to feel inadequate and lacking. Since he is the creator of everything, obviously he knew the disastrous and painful consequences they would reap if they began judging themselves and others, which is why he instructed them to leave this tree alone. What parent ever wants their children to sit there and look at themselves feeling like who they are is not cutting it? He told them the fruit would bring death to them. Judging is too heavy a burden for us to carry, we are not created to be judges.

When we feel disconnected from unconditional love, the natural reaction is to hide, so others can’t see, otherwise we will be seen in our nakedness and judged. It’s a protection from the fear of being rejected by God and others. We know we fall short; therefore we reason something is terribly wrong with us, therefore we must hide it at all cost so others won’t see it too. As a consequence of not being able to connect with unconditional love, self-destructive pain cycles begin. Without unconditional love we can’t be vulnerable, without vulnerability we are not able to be known, and when we don’t feel known we feel pain, abandonment, fear, insecurity. Only with unconditional love and acceptance is there a deep place of safety.

Rejection did not come from God in these instances in the garden. He tried to connect with them. Invited them back into relationship. He does not accuse them. He announced a redemption plan right off the bat. He promised that he would reconnect the disconnect. The kindness of God is clearly visible here if we will just think about it.

Before you move on to the next post, consider spending some quiet time with God, asking him to show you where you have been hiding from him because you believed he would reject or punish you. Let him speak to you about what you are feeling and give God back the judge’s robe, allowing him to bear that burden while you get to just grow surrounded by his unconditional love.