20 Quotes from Mark Baker's book on (Good) Guilt and (Bad) Shame

Don’t be ashamed. But do feel some guilt.

Are you guilt-ridden or shame-prone?  Do you struggle to forgive yourself and hold on to your fails too long? Isn’t there a godly sorrow that leads to repentance?  Is that the same as guilt? And is guilt the same as shame?  More important still, is any of these good?

Dr. Mark Baker’s new book, Overcoming Shame: Let Go of Others’ Expectations and Embrace God’s Acceptance, takes these issues head-on and explains how healing for soul-crippling shame comes through courage, vulnerability and grace.

These quotes caught my eye. I hope they encourage your heart.

20 Quotes From Overcoming Shame

1. Guilt and shame are not the same. Guilt is the bad feeling you have for having gone too far. You did something you should not have done, and now you regret it. Shame is the feeling you get for not going far enough. You feel regret for being inadequate.  (12-13)

2. Healthy guilt is the capacity to feel bad when you have hurt someone else, God, or even yourself. Healthy guilt is motivated by love…Guilt comes from doing something wrong, so it is corrected by doing something right. Healthy guilt comes from having a conscience, and that in itself is a good thing. God created guilt to guide us toward restoring our relationships with him, but it works as a guide for restoring relationships with one another too (2 Corinthians 7:9-11). (13)

3. Neurotic guilt is not about making amends or figuring out the loving thing to do to make things right in your relationships. Neurotic guilt is about self-preservation and the fear of getting caught. If your guilt is focused on you taking care of yourself, it rarely produces anything good. (13)

4. Shame motivates us to want to keep secrets. And the toxic power of shame only grows stronger in the dark. (16)

5. It is only when we are most vulnerable that we can experience the connection with God and others that we were designed for, but is also exactly when we are most vulnerable that we can get hurt the most. Vulnerability is a two edged sword that can cut both ways. It can surgically heal you of your deepest shame or cut out your heart. (42)

6. Jesus taught a lot about joy and love, but he never taught his followers to avoid pain. Quite the opposite, it was central to Jesus’s teachings that facing suffering well is a crucial element in developing a mature character and that our vulnerability to suffering is not only not a bad thing but is the best path to finding a clear picture of who God really is. To Jesus, vulnerability was certainly not a weakness but was actually a sign of spiritual strength. (44-45)

7. Shame is a painful feeling that directs your attention onto yourself in ways that make it difficult for you to care about what other people are feeling around you…Shame-prone people tend to respond to fear by either trying to hide or trying forcefully to overcome it. The best response to fear is to face it, with vulnerability. (47)

8. The solution to the fear of vulnerability is healthy dependence. Psychologists call it secure attachment. People who live with secure attachments view vulnerability as a powerful means for connection, and they experience their dependence on others as a natural part of the give-and-take of healthy interdependence…People with secure attachments are generally grateful people. (54)

9. People with secure attachments are not looking for the easy way out…If you are comfortable, you probably aren’t learning anything. Growth stretches us, and that means we need to believe discomfort is simply a part of a normal life. (55)

10. The best life isn’t about getting onto easy street, it’s about being connected to God and others no matter where you live. The goal isn’t to be better than everyone else by invulnerably rising about them; it’s to figure out how to have a healthy dependence on God and others to find joy. (55)

11. [S]hame-free guilt…actually helps people to be more empathic, to deal with their anger in more constructive ways, and to have more benevolent interpersonal relationships…Shame on the other hand, causes people to focus on their worthlessness, which makes them defensive and more likely to fly off the handle in destructive ways. (68-69)

12. Shame-free guilt produces humility. Feeling bad about what you did motivates you to restore any broken relationship that resulted from it…You don’t have to be defensive because you don’t have anything to hide, as you would if you felt shame. (69)

13. [T]he truly confident person who has a secure sense of love and belonging is free to be humble; and all those who live this way are the ones that have a lasting impact on others. They will be the ones that others respect and look up to because they are living the the way God created us to be. (72)

14. Envy is the hatred you feel toward another person who reminds you of what you are not. This is a two-person dynamic between you and one other person. With envy, you see qualities in someone else that trigger feelings of shame in you. (107)

15. An attitude of scarcity fuels envy and jealousy because scarcity is the enemy of connection and belonging. It is based on the notion that you must defeat competitors to survive. Scarcity cause you to feel that losing means you are a loser, because the attitude of scarcity is motivated by shame. (118)

16. An attitude of scarcity is often a spiritual problem. If it is rooted in the belief that you are not enough, it will cause you to compete with others for what you believe are limited resources for your survival. But to thrive in life, you must see others as a needed resource for your survival, not a threat to it. This comes through the spiritual attitude of plenty (Matthew 10:29-31). (118)

17. Shame doesn’t make us want to be good; love does…[W]e have the most effective delivery system on the planet for the prevention of crime in even the most crime-ridden areas of society. Do you know what that delivery system is? The Christian church. (136)

18. Perfectionism is the attempt to hide your fear that you are not enough by getting everything just right. If you are good at it, you will only succeed at covering over your fear, never dispelling it. As soon as you have completed whatever it is that you are doing, you have to start over again immediately trying to do things perfectly to avoid your shame. (139)

19. To overcome shame a person must experience acceptance at a time when they don’t deserve it but need it more than anything else. Shame-proneness can be healed only by the renewing of your mind, and that can happen only by experiencing acceptance of the unacceptable…The grace we extend toward one another has the power to heal shame. (179)

20 The point is, grace heals shame. Whether grace knocked you down and blinded you with its impact or snuck up on you over time, the experience of acceptance changes you. If you are willing to live a life of courage, vulnerability, and grace, you will be healing shame in your life and the lives of those around you. Jesus has paved the way before us. (188)

“Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith,

who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews 12:1b-2

Related:

Access John Piper’s “Battling Misplaced Shame” sermon here. (Instead of guilt and shame, Piper uses the terms well-placed shame and misplaced shame, and explains that biblically, the criterion well-placed shame versus misplaced shame is not how foolish or how bad you look to men, but whether you in fact bring honor to God.)

Listen to Dr. Baker’s hour-long interview with Janet Parshall here. 

Read how purging these 4 words can strangle misplaced shame here.