Stigma is a community problem that requires everyone’s effort to truly address. Each of us have already experienced so much isolation because of the pandemic, but add a diagnosis of COVID to that isolation, and you’ll discover individuals choosing to disappear and withdraw from their communities. For them, the only solution for stigma is to turn to even more isolation.
Yet I’d like to recommend an alternative path for us to take: Lifting stigma in our churches can only come as we, all together, lift our heads to see Christ and to seek his kingdom once again. But that must can only begin as we display the heart of Christ in our relationships. So I’d like to recommend four steps to guide how we can work together to remove the stigma of COVID from our churches and our relationships.
1. Understand Their Experience
If you are unsure if someone who contracted COVID is carrying stigma and shame during this pandemic, you could ask them questions like, “Do you feel the need to hide your thoughts, opinions, and actions from those you care about? What do you feel unable to share with those you love? Has anyone blamed you for things during this pandemic?”
Someone stigmatized likely feels rejected, exposed, and unclean. So it’s unlikely they will just pour out their heart to you until you move toward them and demonstrate that you will handle their life with gentleness and wisdom. Then once they begin to share this pain with you, realize they are trusting you to handle their life carefully. But it is vital that they share this burden with you, because the act of sharing it will shatter the myth that it had to stay hidden all along, that they had to stay hidden all along.
The shaming voices in our community, our culture, and in our heads might sound like this: “You are a coward,” “You are worthless,” “This is your fault,” and “You should’ve been more careful.” They might ask: “How could you have been so careless?”, “How could you be so stupid?”, “How could you be so naïve?”
Shame uses the power of its demeaning voice to place something other than God at the center. When that happens, the one listening moves from being dependent on God to being dependent on those voices to tell them who they are, what they should do, and even what is real.
If you have experienced any of this, please talk to someone. There is great benefit of putting the experiences that have shamed you into words and actually speaking those words to someone you absolutely trust to care for your soul and point you back to Christ.
2. Encourage Their Faith
Because the voice of shame amplifies and centralizes the oppressive voices in our culture, it is important for us to amplify the voice of our Savior to those who’ve been stigmatized. Initially, this type of encouragement might most effectively be done through prayer.
It could sound like this, “Father, you have said, ‘If you are for us, who can be against us?’ Yet it daily feels like so many things are against us, so many voices accuse us. But Father, we know that there is a greater story of redemption you are telling where you take every unkind word, every angry outburst, every trial we go through and use it for us not against us.”
As we pray prayers that encourage faith, their eyes will be lifted to see the love of God and hear his voice. Slowly, the condemning and accusing voices around them will be turned down and replaced by the loving voice of our Lord.
Then, if you are able to study Scripture with this friend, consider studying Hagar in Genesis 16 and 21 or the Samaritan Woman in John 4. They both beautifully show our God who draws near and attends to the stigmatized and the outcast. Make observations about the stigma and shame they both experienced, make observations about the God who took interest and attended to them, and consider how the Spirit might be using those passages to turn your heart toward your Lord.
3. Help Them Love Their Enemies
Once the shaming voices have quieted and the voice of Christ is more central, then it is important to consider with them how to love their enemies. They might need help knowing how to love someone who has been blaming and accusing them. Consider where they are and what steps of love they are ready to take. Here are three examples:
- Can they have a heart of forgiveness toward those who have sinned against them? Forgiveness cancels a debt, so can they forgive knowing that it means they will not use someone’s sin against them to hurt or punish them?
- Can they pray for their enemies? Underneath the gossip, the accusations, the blaming, the slander, and the sarcastic put-downs are hearts of fear and idolatry. Can those who have been sinned against not only forgive their enemies but also pray for the deeper wrongs in their hearts?
- Can they candidly confront in love? Can someone who has been sinned against openly state the problem and explain what has made the relationship with them difficult? For example could he or she say, “I love you and I want to care for you, but part of that love is being more candid with the difficulties I see. Here is the problem: In your anger, you have ridiculed me in private and embarrassed me or even slandered me in public. If we spend time together, certain things must change and there are certain things that I will call you out on because I love you.”
4. Identify Other Sources of Stigma
One frequent source of stigma in our community is the online world. So consider for yourself and for others: What online voices are allowed entry into our world that promote stigma through calling names, demeaning others, making fun of, ridiculing, threatening, or accusing?
What can make these voices difficult to detect is if we in some way agree with some of their points or if we share similar frustrations. So as we personally do an inventory of the company we keep online, let’s consider the words of Psalm 1:1-2: “not to walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but to delight in God’s word, to delight in his voice alone.”
Much of what is said online seeks to make its point through mocking and demeaning language that stigmatizes. Therefore, as we care for one another we must also consider the seat of the scoffer that we can be tempted to make room for in our lives.
Love One Another
COVID has already removed so many of our support networks and each of us has faced so much isolation and separation. Because of all that’s transpired this past year, it can be very tempting to not reach out to others even when we know someone is in need (or we ourselves are in need). Yet we must remember that when we bring Christ’s shame-lifting love to those weighed down with stigma we are also proclaiming the hope of the Gospel and showing that his support in our lives will never fade away.
Finally, whether we come alongside to help someone weighed down with shame or we help confront the sources of stigma in our community, our great motive must be to fix our eyes more fervently onto Christ. Let’s take these steps to love and care for one another. As we do this, we will not only bring healing but also help to establish the loving voice of our Lord as the central voice guiding us.