Shame

And my people shall never again be put to shame.

  - From Joel 2

Do you hesitate to share your innermost, precious thoughts, to others? Even when it's your closest and most long-term friends and family members - do you hold back? Does it create nervousness, anxiety, and even sadness, for you not to just share your hopes, fears, frustrations, concerns, and dreams? 

Is the reason that you refrain from expressing your viewpoints because you have been made to feel shame for having them in the first place? Have you become what the Bible calls a wanderer, an alien in your own land and country, and among your own people?

Has the frustration compounded, so that now you are a like a pressure-cooker that needs a valve released, to prevent a dangerous explosion?

This is not the way our culture should be. Nobody advises troubled marriages to bottle up their deepest emotions. No one thinks it's a good idea for corporate teams to divide themselves into warring tribes. No expert actually believes it was a bad idea for the American experiment not to have freedom of conscience and speech as the centerpiece of a historic reform movement. 

The phrase "shut up" is now verboten in our culture. It is considered rude and insulting. But the thing most objectionable about it, and everybody knows it, is the idea that one person can tell another person what to say, and what not to say. "Shut up" is almost as bad as the "f word." We frown upon its use. 

But in practice, we are telling people to "shut up" all the time, in our cancel culture and codified political correctness.

The anti-freedom of speech crowd - the true tyrants themselves - have apparently succeeded in making people feel shame, simply for having thoughts and perspectives that, frankly, they have little control over. As Matt Hook has said: "You can outlaw certain behaviors and call it hate. But you can never make a person not hate another." 

It is all accomplished via the use of shame. 

Hundreds of years before Christ, the prophet told about a time when we will no longer be ashamed. 

You know . . . that future day when you can have your own thoughts. Express your own views. Be yourself, your real self! 

And no one will shame you. They won't guilt you. And they won't even want to.