The “long answers” for all of these questions are obviously tied to the book itself. The reason I included the questions at all is that some of the content can be “slippery.” The words sound familiar, and that familiarity can make it easy to rush past the question with tired answers, and to miss what might be new to those of us who adopted tired answers too easily before, and could stand to think about things in fresh ways – to find love in new ways.
Questions from The Poseur
1. Who taught you how to experience shame?
I used to have a list of people and institutions that I’d point to in answer to this question, but something’s changed. Now I am more likely to say something like shame is the first experience that rushes in to fill an experiential vacuum. When I don’t get the response or the plan I want, a question arises in me about why I’m not getting my way. The easiest emotional assumption is that there must be something wrong with me (because otherwise I’d be getting just what I want, from others, myself, or circumstances). Shame feels like the default to me, remedied only by a new heart with new desires and new management.
2. How has shame worked to protect you or serve you in your life?
Shame has given me a sense of permission to hold back from intimacy or risk. Shame has also been part of how I keep from giving permission or control to God – because as long as I know that I suck and that I need to not suck so much, I retain control and keep flopping and failing. And even this lousy state is still less frightening than truly risking myself to God. This is changing, but it hasn’t been easy, and it’s definitely one of those topics that has a lot of “onion layer” experiences to it – every time I think I’ve gotten somewhere, I have another layer to go. This is a good thing, by the way, because each layer increases intimacy with God, and my experience of life – good bad and ugly – as a gift intended to for delight.
3. What has shame cost you in your life?
Shame has made me a bully. It has cost me relationships. It has made me fearful and cost me opportunities. It has guided me down a path that has been painful heading in, and is painful heading out. But most of all, shame has gotten in the way of me experiencing God’s goodness and delight.
4. How have you stolen revenge for the failures of other people?
This question has to do with the idea that shame comes as a way to fill the vacuum a heart experiences when a person doesn’t get their way. Revenge is selfishness without courage.
5. How have you perpetuated the failures that hurt you?
Ask my wife or any person who’s ever been burned by the weird panicky sorts of choices shame produces. It’s ugly stuff.
Go to previous chapter discussion questions here.
Go to next chapter discussion questions here.
