Religious Shame


The day I learned God’s Name
I also learned guilt, I also learned shame
Self-hate was the first messenger that came
See as a child no one told me that God and Punishment were not the same
The way I was raised placed even more seeds of fear into my faith
Preachers paved into my brain so many pathways of brimstone and hate
That the 1,000 sermons in my head
Eventually Braided into a single voice that said
You will never be forgiven you will never be saved
Before I could even Love God, I was already far too afraid
He would throw into an ocean of flames

Shame is a disease that seeps into my heart, vein deep,
but its more than this blood that I bleed it bleeds
into my self worth convincing me I am nothing more than my weight in dirt.

Shame is a cigarette bud in a forest of dry brush
It doesn’t take much to burn you up
And make you think you don’t deserve to be loved
I didn’t think I deserved to be loved
So it’s no surprise I couldn’t accept who I was?

It’s no surprise I tried to hide beneath the surface
Tried to convince the world and myself I was perfect, as I felt this person to be worthless.
I was a thousand different people
Each more broken than stained glass in cathedrals
Bingeing on shame in doses that were lethal

Until I was convinced that God’s Mercy must not exist
How could a loving God make you feel like this…Like you don’t deserve to live?
Shame must be the devil’s greatest trick
Because It placed a vast abyss between me and my God
Convincing me I was a fraud that I WAS my flaws
It took 10 years before I saw that I never felt like I belonged
Because my perception of God was wrong
I realize the real lie was to think I had to be perfect to come to faith
When its God who erases all our mistakes

I wish I could go back in the past and make that confused girl grasp the Infinite Mercy that God has
I wish someone would have been there to say, what I will say today
God’s love is not just based on how we behave
He is entirely independent from what He creates
His Love is unconditional it doesn’t just depend on our faith
Our actions and thoughts could never change the fact that God cares,
That His love is infinite and God shares
That His Mercy precedes His Wrath
That Love are the tiles that pave His path
That He doesn’t judge or condemn
Our filth or our sins
Only seeks for us to turn back to Him
So don’t be afraid to come with your shame,
God already knows everything anyways
Not returning to God because you’re too filthy
Is like not taking a shower because you’re too dirty
It makes no sense, Because if we didn’t make mistakes
God said He’d create another creation that did
Because He loves that much to Forgive

So this life is not about wrong versus right
It’s about reaching toward the light
It’s about knowing who YOU are
That you…are not defined by your scars
That you were chosen over the mountains and the stars
To be the carrier of God’s names in your heart
So next time shame tries to poke holes in your boat of faith
Next time you hear whispers that say you’ll never be saved
Look at the serpent straight in the eyes and tear off your human disguise
And blind the darkness with your infinite light
Tell the Devil that this time you won’t be tricked by His lies
That this time you see that You are a mirror for the Divine, so you are already perfect inside
Because perfection is not to be free from flaws or defects
It’s to never forget the Forgiving God that you reflect.

Written by A. Helwa
Author of Secret Of Divine Love


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