Embarrassment - An insidious tool of the devil - Part 1

"It was so embarrassing!"

I hear those words almost daily from one of my children, and every time they are uttered, it is rarely because a child has done something to be ashamed of. In other words, the embarrassment they feel isn't due to their sinful behavior, which would be an  appropriate response to sin. (We should all be embarrassed and ashamed of our sins.) The embarrassment I'm referring to emanates from an entirely different place. It causes tears to flow, souls to be wounded, and teaches lessons that rarely lead to truth. After one such incident a month ago with my daughter, I decided to wage a spiritual war and tackle this issue head on, because the fear of embarrassment is a powerful tool the devil uses to paralyze our teens (and sometimes even adults) and stop them from doing what is right.

In this post, I am going to cover the first of three steps people can take to remove the insidious nature of embarrassment and reclaim emotional and spiritual peace. That doesn't mean we will never feel embarrassed again, but it should take away the power of embarrassment in our lives.

First - When we feel embarrassed, we need to identify and articulate the thoughts in our head.

One day, my daughter came home after school in tears because someone had said something about her that simply wasn't true, and the class laughed. For the sake of this post, let's pretend they called her stupid. These are the questions I asked her so that we could begin to pinpoint the source of her embarrassment.

1. Are you stupid? In other words, is your embarrassment based upon truth? Evaluating truthfulness is an extremely important life skill that all discerning Christians must learn to practice daily. I encourage my children to speak the truth (even if only internally at school) and say, "I am not stupid," because the voice inside of our children must always be louder than the external voices of society. If their embarrassment is not based upon truthfulness, it must be coming from a different place, so we move on to the next question. 
2. Would you still feel embarrassed if your little brother called you stupid at home? What if he did it at school? These questions help us identify whose opinion we really care about. If people are not speaking the truth about us, who are we worried will believe and perpetuate the lies?
3. Which people specifically do you want to think highly of you? The next part of the conversation needs to revolve around why we care about certain people's opinions. We all want to be liked, but when we pursue people-pleasing and popularity above all else, it will always lead to insecurity and dissatisfaction. It is good to want godly people to think highly of us, but what about the school bully? Do we really care what the school bully thinks of us? Remember, if you wouldn't seek advice from someone, why would you accept their criticism of you?
4. Finally, when you felt embarrassed, what were the thoughts in your head? Close your eyes, put yourself back in that situation, what did you say to yourself?  We all need to learn to think and not simply feel. It is easy to remember emotion. Our bodies often have a visceral reaction at the onset of embarrassment, but our thoughts fuel our emotions. We don't have to follow our emotions down the path to emotional devastation Just as we need to evaluate the truthfulness of what other say, we need to evaluate the truthfulness of what we say to ourselves. 

Galatians 1:10 reminds teaches us that we cannot live to please God and man. Paul writes, 

"Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ."

To recap, the first step in combatting embarrassment is to: 

discern what is true, 

determine who we are trying to please,

describe our inner monologue.

In the next post, we will move onto step 2 - combating embarrassment by challenging our thought process with biblical truth.