‘Let me make it up to you….’

So it’s satisfactorily repairing a wrong. It’s making amends. It’s making up for something.

We understand this. It’s what we naturally want to to do when we hear we have offended or hurt someone. We immediately want to make it right. The other day, someone at work told me I had caused offence by something I had said on Facebook. I immediately felt terrible, apologised profusely and agonised over it until I could go on my break and look at my phone to see exactly what I’d said. I was all for posting a public Facebook apology – I really wanted to repair this wrong. I didn’t post anything in the end – sometimes posting on FB just serves to exaggerate things and blow things up out of all proportion (ever noticed that lol?). I will just be much more careful in future how I phrase things……

Sometimes we find it hard to let it go. We constantly apologise. We send flowers and cute cards and little gifts. We think that whilst we still feel the guilt deep inside, then we still have reparations to make. And actually all we need to do sometimes is make reparations and then let it go and move on in our friendship, relationship etc.

The Day of Atonement as spelt out in Leviticus 16 was a one-off day. The most important of all the holy days and offerings set out in this book. On this day annually, atonement was made for ALL the sins of ALL the people of Israel. This wasn’t a day of feasting and celebration like all the other festivals – quite the opposite. The phrase ‘humble yourselves’, (in the NIV that I use, it says ‘deny yourselves’ – v29) according to the commentary, refers to fasting – going without food for a day – because the Israelites struggled with arrogant self-sufficiency (remember the issues with water and food in the desert in Exodus?) and going without food was a sign of their trust and dependency on God. This is the holy day still remembered annually by the Jewish nation in Yom Kippur.

On the Day of Atonement, the High Priest Aaron could enter the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and sprinkle the mercy seat with the blood of sin offerings. On this day, the High Priest would symbolically transfer the sins of the people onto a goat, which would then be led into the wilderness and abandoned to die. Hence the concept of the scapegoat. The death and blood of an innocent animal covers the sin and enables God to be ‘at one’ with His people again.

After all this has taken place, and only then –

Hear that? Then they will be clean from ALL their sins.

But only if they have followed God’s regulations and done everything just so. Leviticus 17 goes on to remind them of the punishments for sacrificing at the wrong time and in the wrong place, eating blood and eating anything found dead (roadkill basically). Do it right and you will be clean from ALL your sin.

I’m emphasising the ALL because let’s face it, some of us struggle to ever feel really clean. We are not living in those times, but we are living in a time when Jesus has atoned in full for our sin and been the scapegoat for all that we have done. And yet we live with a cloud of guilt hanging over us all the time and shame in our hearts. Actually, there is a difference between guilt and shame, I believe. Guilt is good. We feel wrong for what we have done and guilt prompts us to make amends. But guilt does not linger. That’s shame. Shame takes a root in our hearts and cannot be shifted by apologising and flowers and cute cards and little gifts. Shame feeds the sense that we are not good enough; we will never be good enough; if people really knew us, then they would not like us any more. That we are by nature bad, unlovable, dirty……

I have lived with this. I grew up in a Christian environment where (in good faith – no harm was intended) we were encouraged to see ourselves as worthless. We were not good enough for God. We would never be good enough (in our own strength) for God – or our parents. We had fallen short (even as children) of what was expected. I grew up on the verse –

without discovering that there was a second half to that sentence until I was married and reading Romans through for the first time (and what a revelation that was!) –

I tried so hard to be good and nice (the perfect Christian daughter) but I was so not that person and ended up hating myself for never measuring up and for being a constant disappointment. I remember my Dad thanking my friend for being a friend to me – imagine how that made me feel! Then, when I lived with my aunt and uncle in my sixth form because my mum and dad moved to Nottingham, he arranged for me to be somewhere else at weekends so that they could have a break from me – again, probably with all the best intentions, but damaging to my already fragile sense of self-worth. I can vividly recall going to see the film ‘Gandhi’ at the cinema and crying because I wanted to be a missionary but knowing that no agency would ever consider me if they knew what I was really like inside.  I wrote a poem when I was 15 about feeling like a lovely pond scene with a beautiful dragonfly flitting over the surface of the water – and underneath was a stench of pond slime and dirt and muddy unclean water…….that is shame.

Those of you that know me now and have only known me now may struggle to recognise that person. I have worked hard to face my shame and deal with it and move on from it. But that vulnerable young person with an overdeveloped sense of shame and underdeveloped sense of self-worth is still in there and is crying right now for a lost childhood. I now am totally convinced that God loves me and accepts me for who I am. I have wonderful friends and family members who love and accept me for who I am. I have a faithful, committed husband who loves and accepts me for who I am. And on a good day, the whole part of me loves and accepts myself for who I am.

So think about it……Guilt is good. Shame is bad. Guilt prompts us to action that then enables us to move on and make a fresh start in a situation or relationship (just like atonement). Shame lingers and affects our lives and relationships in a toxic, damaging way. Shame has nothing to do with the God who made us and loves us and accepts all that we are.