Ashamed of Jesus: How Knowing God Ends the Fear of Man

Editor’s note – Shame over Christ rarely shows up as open denial; it shows up in sweaty palms at a flagpole, or in a quiet lie about why you’re sitting out of gym class. The author traces his own shame back to its real root: not fear of other people, but a God he hadn’t yet trusted with his actual life. Sadly, so many of us have made the same trade, swapping the security of being loved by God for the shakier comfort of being approved by everyone else.

I wasn’t ashamed of Jesus all the time.

Not when I was in church or when I was around someone who clearly loved Jesus. And not when I was alone.

The sense of deep discomfort would only come when it was costly to be identified with Christ.

I felt a little guilty for my shame over the One who was supposedly the center of my faith and life. But that clear sense that something was wrong wasn’t enough to counter my shame.

A Time to Stand for Jesus

I remember one of the first times I had the opportunity to truly “stand for Jesus.”

I was in high school and it was the “global day of student prayer.” It was a time for students to meet before school, form a circle around the flagpole, and pray.

I didn’t want to be there. But I was, nominally at least, a Christian. And some other Christians were going and had asked me to go too.

My motives were cowardly in every way.

In a school where it seemed uncool to be a Christian, I was afraid of the judgment and sense of “otherness” that I was sure would come from identifying with Christ. Yet I was also afraid of the judgment of my fellow Christians who were going and who had asked me to go.

And so I went and I stood. Cheeks burning, shoulders slumping, and palms sweating and feeling painfully self-conscious. I imagined the shocked expressions on the faces of other kids who were heading in to school and looking at us.

Who knows if anyone on those buses even cared, but it sure felt like they did.

It’s a good thing I didn’t know much of my Bible then, or I might have known Jesus’ warning about those who are ashamed of Him.

Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. [Luke 9:26]

Then I would have had fear to add to the shame cocktail I was chugging down before the start of that school day.

Editor’s note – Jesus doesn’t soften the warning in Luke 9:26; He states it plainly. That should unsettle us, but it should also point us somewhere useful: shame over Christ is usually a symptom, not the actual disease. The next section gets at what was underneath it.

Fitting In

You won’t be shocked to hear that I didn’t feel like I fit in all that well in high school.

I had friends and was involved in groups, but I was perpetually aware of a low- grade sense of not being fully comfortable.

Not that I didn’t try.

I was subconsciously on the lookout for sources of validation to convince myself that I was ok. That I was worthy of being and feeling accepted. Most of the time I tried to chase that fleeting sense of worthiness through academic or athletic performance.

Athletics were limited to golf.

I wished I was playing basketball or soccer (or both). That had previously been the venue where I felt most comfortable and most alive, but those options had been discontinued in middle school when a genetic heart condition cut my athletic career short.

A new treatment protocol from my cardiologist meant that I couldn’t play basketball any longer. I was also restricted from participating in gym class. So, I went to gym class and sat on the sidelines and felt like I was dying inside.

And instead of telling people the truth about why I was no longer doing the one thing in life I loved the most, I lied.

The thought of saying something like, “I have a heart condition and my parents and doctor won’t allow me to play sports any longer because they think it’s unsafe” seemed impossible.

I felt different. Out of place. Unworthy. In a word, it felt too shameful to talk about.

So I continued to lie about what was actually going on while I hoped and prayed for a miracle.

Editor’s note – Notice what he’s describing here: a search for worth through performance, dressed up as ordinary teenage striving. That search never actually ends once you win; it just moves to the next contest. Scripture calls this seeking to establish your own righteousness, and it never holds.

Back to the Flagpole

So why was I ashamed standing there around the flagpole feeling hyperaware of my cheeks and sweaty hands?

One reason is that once again, I felt different. And different felt shameful. But I now see there was a bigger reason.

I didn’t really know God.

For years I had prayed that God would heal my heart condition. I had prayed that if He didn’t want to do that, He could simply change my parents’ minds so I could play sports again.

But there were never any answers.

The implication hanging in the silence led me to believe that God, even if He was real, wasn’t real for me.

How could God love me enough to die for me, if He didn’t love me enough to even let me play sports again?

And since I didn’t know Him as the center of my identity, my sense of self was based on what I thought, and others thought, about me. It would stay that way for the next ten years.

At the Heart of Things

After a college career of mostly trying to ignore God, He called me back to regular church attendance. I settled into a routine of regular attendance and was involved in Bible studies and various church roles.

Later, He helped me see He is truly real.

I knew that I would never be able to doubt His reality. I only wondered if it was good news or bad news. It felt both wonderful and terrifying at the same time.

Eventually, He spoke to my heart about all those unanswered prayer requests from childhood.

He showed me that if He had answered my prayers for the resumption of my young athletic career, it would have been one more reason why I thought I didn’t need God.

He allowed me to see that I never wanted to play sports with God as my companion and for His glory. I never wanted to need or trust God. Instead, I wanted a God to solve my problems. I wanted to trust myself for my own sense of self-worth.

I was all too often like one of those whom the Apostle Paul says seek, to establish their own righteousness.

Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. [Romans 10:3]

I had tried other paths towards self-salvation when basketball and soccer were taken away.

In high school it was academic success and doing well on the golf team. Later it was romantic relationships and fully enjoying (so I thought) the college scene. After college it was my career. One after another, they all started with great promise before eventually imploding.

Even the early years of my marriage had turned into a massive struggle as I had laid on it the weight of my soul’s longing for fulfillment.

Fortunately, I failed in all my attempts to manufacture my own worthiness. I was never able to establish any sense of lasting righteousness and peace.

God gave me time to fail again and again under my own power so I could see how much I need the righteousness only He can give.

Editor’s note – This is the hinge of the whole piece. God didn’t remove the author’s suffering so much as He used it to strip away every other place he might have anchored his identity. That’s a hard mercy, but it’s mercy all the same.

The Power of Caring What God Thinks

Some people come to Christ and their lives are deeply, instantly, and permanently changed in a moment. They give all of themselves to Him and are overwhelmed by His extravagant love.

Some of us have more of a superficial initial conversion and we slowly give more and more of ourselves to Him over time. We grow in the reality that we worship a God who truly sees us and loves us more than we could imagine.

Either way, knowing that you are beloved by God changes everything.

It produces a security that destroys shame. It crushes the desire to be approved by others. It even changes the need to be approved by your own self. Instead, you grow in wanting to please the One who has given you everything.

Here’s how Paul describes that phenomenon in his first letter to the church in Corinth.

I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. [1 Corinthians 4:3-4]

We are certainly not Paul, but this is the challenging and inexorable direction of the Christian life as we follow Jesus.

And it is the only way we can be free to love people. To learn to be radically giving of ourselves to others while not being shackled by needing their approval.

Today, I would be proud to stand for Jesus.

Not because Jesus makes me proud but because I know Him and He is worthy. And because I have finally come to see that there is truly nothing good in me apart from Him.

God is good and He is patient. He saw me being ashamed of Him back in high school and He stuck with me. He didn’t cast me out. He took the little I was willing to give, and He has faithfully grown it.

Wrapping Up

If you are someone like me who has struggled with caring about what others think, I’d encourage you to do three things:

• Recognize that the Christian life is ultimately about aligning with Jesus, and that following Him isn’t an easy road. He was always talking about things like counting the cost of following Him, carrying crosses, and expecting to be persecuted. So count the cost and set your expectations accordingly.
• Take a moment to rest in the fact that God doesn’t choose you because of your performance. Jesus doesn’t look for perfect people. He takes broken people and makes us whole. If you’ve been ashamed of Him as I had, tell God. He already knows anyway. Repent and tell Him you want to be loyal.
• Ask God to draw you closer to Him. Ask Him if there is a place in your life that you are hiding from Him. Many of us have places of shame or pain that we keep tucked away. Jesus can transform them into springs of new life, but we must be willing to offer them to Him.

As you do, you will see fear begin to lose its grip.

Because the same God who saves cowards, criminals, liars, atheists, satanists, 90’s hip hop megastars, tarot card influencers, and hypocrites, continues to desire us and transform our hearts.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed - a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith." [Romans 1:16-17]

Thanks for reading. God bless you.

A Word from the Editor
Shame keeps its power only as long as our sense of worth depends on who’s watching. The gospel breaks that dependence at the root: “The righteous will live by faith” (Romans 1:17), not by performance, and not by anyone’s applause. If you’ve ever stood somewhere – a flagpole, a family gathering, a coworker’s question – wishing you could disappear rather than name Christ, take heart. The God who stayed patient with a nervous teenager stands ready to do the same for you.

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Editor Comment: Thank you for illustrating that shame fades when a believer's identity is grounded in God's love, not in approval or performance, reflecting the righteousness by faith Paul discusses in Romans. Tracing the flagpole story all the way back to the unanswered prayers of your childhood heart condition gives readers a clear picture of how God patiently reshapes a proud, self-reliant heart.

This article appeared on Medium and is reprinted with modifications and by permission.