You’ve heard it said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Shame on you.”

Sadly, more than one parent has used shame and humiliation to try to change the behavior of their children.

We have a lot of them, cultural blunders.

Here are a few blunders, but there are thousands more.
– Walking around with your “fly” undone.
– Farting in an elevator.
– Talking loudly during a movie.
– Singing, loud, off key.
– Throwing a tantrum in public.
– Breaking something in a store.
– Dirtying, or staining, your good clothes.

Rules Change

We’ve had a garage sale at our house this week.

I’ve noticed two things that disturb me. 

First, far too many of the things in our house arrived in our house because of my greed. 

Second, I am not alone.  Many of our customers bought with greedy abandon.

“For the LOVE of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have … pierced themselves with many sorrows…

so run

from all these evil things.” *

Greed is enticing.
Greed is deceitful.
Greed is deceptive.
Greed is a trap.

Overcoming the fear of being exposed is one of the keys to breaking the bondage of the tricks and lies about cutting.

The Fear Of Exposure Perverts Our Thinking

“Psychologist Larry Crabb says that the primary motivation for all of our social behavior is a fear that if others really knew us as we are, they would reject us in disgust. This fear of exposure is rooted in our sense of the ugliness of our fallen natures as they have been perverted and corrupted by sin. Satan delights in inflaming this fear…”

Honesty is a culturally threatening virtue. So threatening that few people make it a constant choice. It’s counter-cultural to choose to be honest.

Cultural Corruption

People joked about cheating on their taxes – “it’s okay unless you get caught.” People make “little white lies.” They cover up the truth “to protect the other person.”

“Everyone lies” and “everyone lies some of the time” are routinely used to justify the choice to be dishonest. That’s if the choice to be dishonest is ever challenged.

“You love evil more than good and lies more than truth”, says the songwriter.