Shame immunity

You’ve been around here long enough, you will realize I get a kick out of random connections.  On a good day, they are connections that have deep meaning.

Here’s today’s…

I have been reading a book on being a parent of a teenage daughter – “The Curse of the Good Girl.”  It’s been an interesting book – thinking about what I can apply to young people in my life, and thinking through how these ideas of social pressures on girls might have affected my life and decisions.  One of the major themes of the book is that girls are driven by relationships. They value friendship above all, being seen as “nice,” “smart,” “humble.” Death to a girl is taking a risk that might be perceived as conceited or weird.

And then I trip over Richard Beck’s post about liking pink. And his interest in how “weird” that makes him, and how interesting that social perception is.  And then the spiritual connection:

Most people wouldn’t ever cross a social boundary like this (e.g., getting a black and pink iPhone), even at the expense of their own preferences. The shame, the "sticking out" it just too heavy a burden to bear.
But I wonder. If Christians are supposed to be a "peculiar people" we might need to learn to inoculate ourselves against social shaming. We might need to practice, on a regular basis, small acts of social non-conformity. We need to get used to not caring what people think. We need to become immune to shame.

Oh, that’s a touch headwind to lean into.

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