MUSEUM OF SHAME

As a schoolboy, I went on a field trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York. It was full of exhibits that depicted past events frozen in the time that they occurred. One was of prehistoric homo sapiens preparing a meal in a cave. They looked like us, but we do not live like that anymore because we have evolved.

In high school I returned the same exhibit. It had not changed. Even though I had evolved in those few short years, those prehistoric humans had not. They were frozen in time.

 Now, fifty years later, if that same exhibit is still in the museum, it will not have changed since my childhood because it is a snapshot of the past, preserved for us to learn.

Moving from boyhood to manhood I did things of which I am now ashamed. Foolish and impetuous, I lacked character to resist temptation even though I knew they were wrong. At the time I did not know that my shameful actions would become frozen in my mind, like museum exhibits.

I stored those exhibits in a Museum of Shame in my mind. Like the exhibits in the history museum, they were depictions of a version of me that looked like me, but I do not live that way anymore because I have evolved.

Unlike the history museum, the purpose of my Museum of Shame was not for me to learn, but rather to burden me with guilt. While my museum was open, I would go there every day, looking through the dirty glass at the un-evolved me and conflating it with the current me.

Eventually, I realized that the Splitter, the enemy who separates me from God, was the curator of my Museum of Shame. He chose the exhibits to lock me into the prison of who I was to keep me from evolving into the present of who I was to be.

I also realized that the Splitter did not hold the keys to my Museum of Shame—I did. It was my choice to return there or to trust God’s promise through Christ that the way I was does not matter anymore.

It is a choice that I must make every day.