Thou Shalt Forget the Shame of Thy Youth Is Said to a City

The first four seconds of a room are where it lives.

Not the conversation afterward, which is usually fine. Not the drive home. Four seconds at a doorway, where a man comes in and watches a room adjust, and can see it happening in the faces even when nobody does anything wrong at all.

A woman described it to me as watching people remember. She said she can see it move across a room like weather, and that most people manage it well, and that the managing is itself the thing she cannot bear.

She said: they are being kind at me.

Her thing was public and it was about eight years ago and she still goes to that church, which I think is the bravest thing about her and which she does not consider brave. She considers it stubbornness.

There is a chapter in Isaiah written to a whole people who had been publicly humiliated, and the promise in it is not what anybody expects.

The promise is about carrying, not about other people

Here is the verse.

Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth. (Isaiah 54:4, King James Version)

Thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth.

Notice who is doing the forgetting. It is not the neighbors. It is not the city. It is the person being addressed, and the promise is about what they carry rather than about what anybody else retains.

That is not a small distinction and it is not a disappointment. Nobody can be promised that other people will forget, because other people are free. What can be promised is that the thing stops being the load bearing fact of a life.

And the next verse gives the reason, and it is a change of identity rather than a change of memory: For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name. The people are being told who they now belong to, and the forgetting follows from that rather than from time passing.

You are promised a forgetting that happens in you rather than in a room. Isaiah 54:4 puts the forgetting on the side of the person addressed. It is His Spirit, Romans 8:16 bearing witness with our spirit, who supplies an identity that a room's memory cannot amend.

The psalm about the lifting of a head

There is a line David writes while people are actively saying things about him, and the picture in it is physical.

But thou, O LORD, art a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of mine head. (Psalm 3:3)

The lifter up of mine head. He is describing a posture. A person in that state walks with their head down, and he is not asking for the talking to stop, he is describing Somebody putting a hand under his chin.

Read the superscription on that psalm. It was written while he was fleeing from his own son, in the most publicly humiliating episode of his reign, with a man walking alongside him throwing stones and shouting his history at him.

He does not ask for the man to be silenced. In the story he specifically refuses to let anybody deal with him. What he asks for, and what he says he has, is somebody lifting his head while the shouting continues.

You have Somebody described as the lifter up of your head while the room is still doing what it does. Psalm 3:3 names Him as the lifter up of mine head in the middle of a public humiliation, and it is the Holy Spirit, Ephesians 3:16 strengthening with might in the inner man, who does the strengthening while nothing outside changes.

And if walking into rooms has begun to cost you more than you can carry, say it out loud to a person: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Public shame is one of the things that takes people quietly, and the four seconds should not be faced alone every week.

What Jesus is described as doing with shame

There is a phrase in Hebrews about Jesus and the cross that is very precise about how He handled the public part.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Despising the shame. The word does not mean He hated it or resented it. It means He thought little of it, disregarded it, treated it as not weighing what it claimed to weigh.

Crucifixion was designed to be a public humiliation as much as an execution. It was done beside a road on purpose so that people would look.

And the sentence says He looked past it at something else, and the something else is named: the joy that was set before him. He did not deny the shame, and He did not pretend the road was empty. He assessed it as smaller than what was on the other side of it.

You are following Somebody who assessed public shame as weighing less than it claimed. Hebrews 12:2 says despising the shame, which is a valuation rather than a denial. It is the same Spirit, Hebrews 9:14 saying He through the eternal Spirit offered himself, who is named inside that endurance.

The father runs in public

And there is one detail in the parable that I think about every time somebody describes a doorway.

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20)

And ran.

In that culture, an older man of standing did not run. It required him to gather up his robes, and it was undignified, and everybody in the village would have seen it and would have talked about it.

He does it anyway, and the reason he does it is generally understood to be that he wanted to reach his son before the village did.

That is a father taking the public cost onto himself so that a returning man would not have to walk the last of it alone. And it is the picture Jesus chose when He was asked what God is like.

You are being run toward by Somebody willing to look undignified in front of a whole village. Luke 15:20 has the father running while the son is yet a great way off. It is the Spirit of God, Galatians 4:6 crying Abba in a person, who makes that picture land as something about you rather than as a story about somebody else.