Your Shame-storage System

Here's a prediction. I predict that soon scientists will discover the exact size of the areas of the brain that handle different kinds of memories. Here's what they'll find:

Memories of academic subjects 0.0001% Total Brain Mass
Mental recordings of annoying songs 5.0% TBM
Memories of embarrassing things happen to me 94.9999% TBM

This will explain why, for instance, I no longer even vaguely remember what a "quadratic equation" is. But I can tell you exactly what color shirt Mr. Falkner, who taught us about quadratic equations, was wearing as he stood and watched me back over three orange cones on the driver's ed. course (it was a short-sleeve Oxford with cranberry pinstripes).

Little Embarrassments-and Big Ones

It's amazing how long life's little embarrassments stick with us. Think of how much worse life's big embarrassments can be. I'm talking about things that go way beyond the little awkwardnesses that get us laughed at. I'm talking about things that completely rob people of their human dignity, so that everyone's natural reaction is to turn away in disgust.

Job's Shame

Think about Job, for example. Job was hit with a wasting disease that made his skin crack and ooze and his breath stink. Read his book sometime. You'll notice that in the beginning, Job complains a lot about his pain. But as the book moves on, Job talks less and less about his physical discomfort, and more and more about something else: his shame. Every shred of dignity he once had is gone. People who once looked up to him now will have nothing to do with him. That hurts a lot more, he says, than the pain of his disease. It's a different kind of wound--a kind that's a lot harder to heal.

The shame of the cross

It's a kind of wound the Lord Jesus knows all about. There's a dimension to the story of the cross--the shame dimension--that we sometimes miss. We shouldn't. As he hung there on the cross, not only was Jesus bereft of the glory that was his as true God. He'd even been robbed of the basic dignity of a human being. Jesus died by a process of execution that was carefully designed to humiliate the victim as much as possible. He did it anyway. He loved us that much. A friend of mine, a former missionary, used to talk about what it was like to tell the story of the cross to the Japanese. When he would tell about the pain Jesus endured, they wouldn't even flinch. Men are supposed to endure pain, after all. But when my friend talked about Jesus' shame, instantly he had their attention. "Somebody would go through that for me?" they thought.

Jesus' Shame Cancels Ours

Jesus went through that for you - and now "the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame" (1 Peter 2:6). I guess some humiliations are worth remembering.

Kenneth Cherney serves the Savior as a professor at Martin Luther College in New Ulm, MN.