Day 11: The Embarrassment Strategy

Pulpit Puppet Masters and the Curated Gospel Reclaiming the freedom to choose in an age of manufactured faith

Yesterday we saw the Table. The real bread broken, the true cup poured, the presence that fills the empty house and keeps the seven worse from returning. We saw the difference between consuming photographs of food and actually eating. The invitation was clear: step off the board, sit at the Table, let Christ fill what leaving Babylon emptied.

But something keeps people from responding. Something more effective than doctrine, more binding than theology, more paralyzing than any argument the system could construct.

Embarrassment.

The Invisible Fence

There’s a technique used to contain livestock called an invisible fence. The animal wears a collar. The boundary is unmarked, no posts, no wire, nothing visible. But when the animal approaches the edge, the collar delivers a shock. After a few shocks, the animal learns. It stops approaching the boundary. Eventually, you can remove the collar entirely. The animal has internalized the fence. It polices itself.

This is how social control works in compromised Christianity.

The boundary isn’t doctrinal. It’s not written in any statement of faith. No one will tell you explicitly what you cannot say, what questions you cannot ask, what observations you cannot make. But approach that invisible line and you’ll feel the shock. A shift in the room. A change in how people look at you. The sudden cooling of relationships you thought were solid.

After enough shocks, you learn. You stop approaching certain topics. You learn which questions make people uncomfortable. You discover what concerns are acceptable to voice and which ones mark you as a problem. Eventually, you don’t need the external pressure anymore. You’ve internalized the fence. You police yourself.

The collar is embarrassment. And most believers are wearing it without knowing it exists.

The Glory That Comes From Man

John recorded something devastating about the religious leaders of Jesus’s day:

“Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.” (John 12:42-43)

Read that again. Many of the authorities believed. They saw who Jesus was. They recognized the truth. And they said nothing.

Why? Fear of the Pharisees. Fear of being put out. Fear of losing their place, their position, their belonging. They loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

This is not a failure of intellect. This is not doctrinal confusion. This is not lack of evidence. They believed. They knew. And they stayed silent because the social cost was too high.

The glory that comes from man. That’s what the invisible fence protects. Your reputation. Your relationships. Your standing in the community. Your sense of belonging to something larger than yourself. The system doesn’t need to convince you the truth is false. It just needs to make speaking it expensive enough that you’ll stay quiet.

And it works. It worked on the authorities in Jesus’s day. It works on authorities in ours.

The Healed Man’s Choice

In John 9, Jesus heals a man born blind. The man can now see. This is not ambiguous. This is not a matter of interpretation. He was blind from birth. Now he sees. The evidence is standing in front of everyone, looking back at them with eyes that work.

And the Pharisees cannot accept it.

They interrogate the man. They interrogate his parents. They look for any explanation that doesn’t require acknowledging who Jesus is. They threaten. They pressure. They deploy every tool of social control available to them.

Watch what happens to the parents:

“His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age; ask him.'” (John 9:20-23)

The parents knew. Their son was blind. Now he sees. Someone did this. But they would not say who, because they feared being put out of the synagogue.

The synagogue was everything. Community. Identity. Belonging. Economic relationships. Social standing. Their entire world was built within those walls. And the threat of expulsion was enough to make them abandon their own son to the interrogation alone.

This is the embarrassment strategy. Not persecution. Not violence. Not martyrdom. Just the quiet threat of social exile. And it works.

But the healed man makes a different choice:

“The man answered, ‘Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.'” (John 9:30-33)

He speaks. He reasons. He states the obvious that everyone else is too afraid to say. And what happens?

“They answered him, ‘You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out.” (John 9:34)

Cast out. The thing his parents feared. The social death that keeps most people silent. It happened to him.

And then:

“Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.” (John 9:35-38)

Jesus found him. The one who was cast out for telling the truth, Jesus went looking for him specifically. The system expelled him. Christ received him.

This is the pattern. The embarrassment strategy works by threatening expulsion from the human community. But expulsion from Babylon is the doorway to encounter with Christ.

What Embarrassment Replaces

In the early church, the cost of following Jesus was clear. Persecution. Prison. Death. The threat was external and obvious. You knew what you were risking when you confessed Christ.

In comfortable Christianity, persecution has been replaced by embarrassment.

No one will kill you for speaking truth in most Western churches. No one will imprison you. No one will take your property or threaten your family. But they will look at you differently. They will whisper about you. They will stop inviting you. They will reframe your concerns as bitterness, your questions as pride, your observations as divisiveness.

“I’m concerned about you.” “I think you might be in a hard season.” “Have you talked to someone about why you’re so negative?”

The language is pastoral. The effect is silencing. Your concerns aren’t engaged. They’re pathologized. You’re not wrong; you’re wounded. You’re not seeing clearly; you’re processing trauma. You don’t have a point; you have a problem.

This is cheaper than persecution and often more effective. Martyrdom creates witnesses. Social exclusion creates silence. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, but the embarrassment of the questioner just makes people keep their heads down and comply.

The Fear Beneath the Fear

Why does embarrassment work so well? Because it threatens something we need at a primal level: belonging.

We were made for community. We were designed for connection. The Table we discussed yesterday isn’t just about bread and cup; it’s about eating together, being known, being part of something. The isolated believer, as we saw in Day 7, is vulnerable. We need the Body.

The embarrassment strategy exploits this God-given need. It says: speak up and lose your community. Ask questions and lose your friends. Name what you see and lose your place at the table.

And here’s the cruelty of it: the table they’re threatening to remove you from is Babylon’s table. It’s the photograph of bread. It’s the counterfeit community that was never actually nourishing you. But it felt like belonging. It looked like connection. And the threat of losing even a counterfeit can be enough to keep you silent.

The fear beneath the fear of embarrassment is the fear of being alone. And the enemy knows that isolated sheep are easier to destroy than those in a flock.

So he offers you a choice: stay in the false flock and stay silent, or speak and be expelled into what feels like wilderness.

What he doesn’t tell you is that the Shepherd is waiting in that wilderness. That Jesus specifically goes looking for the ones who get cast out. That expulsion from Babylon is the first step toward the true Table.

The Reproach of Christ

The writer of Hebrews understood this dynamic:

“Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.” (Hebrews 13:13-14)

Outside the camp. Where the unclean were sent. Where the rejected belonged. Where Jesus Himself was crucified, outside the walls, outside the system, outside the respectable religious establishment.

The reproach He endured. Jesus was embarrassed. Publicly. Deliberately. Mocked. Stripped. Displayed. The crucifixion wasn’t just execution; it was humiliation. The system didn’t just kill Him; it shamed Him.

And we are called to go to Him there. Not to avoid the reproach but to share it. Not to find a way to follow Christ that preserves our reputation but to bear the embarrassment that comes with belonging to Him rather than to Babylon.

Here we have no lasting city. This is the release from the fear. The community that threatens to expel you is not your permanent home. The belonging you’re afraid to lose was never the belonging you were made for. You’re seeking a city to come, a Table that cannot be threatened, a community that no human system can expel you from.

The Silence of the Knowers

How many people in your church know something is wrong?

Not suspect. Know. They see the board. They recognize the game. They feel the manipulation, sense the control, notice the gap between what’s preached and what’s practiced.

And they say nothing.

Not because they’ve been convinced the problems aren’t real. Not because they lack the words to articulate what they see. But because they’ve calculated the cost and decided silence is cheaper.

They’ve learned where the invisible fence is. They’ve felt the shock enough times to know which topics to avoid. They’ve watched what happened to others who spoke up, how quickly “beloved member” became “divisive influence,” how fast “valued voice” became “bitter critic.”

So they stay silent. They nod along. They sing the songs and attend the services and write the checks and keep their observations to themselves. They know. And they say nothing.

This is the victory of the embarrassment strategy. Not to change minds but to close mouths. Not to convince but to silence. The system doesn’t need you to believe the lie. It just needs you to stop telling the truth.

“For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:20-21)

The light exposes. That’s why it’s resisted. Not because people love darkness in the abstract but because they fear what light reveals. And the embarrassment strategy works by making the cost of bringing things to light higher than most people are willing to pay.

What Are You Protecting?

Here’s the question the embarrassment strategy doesn’t want you to ask: What exactly are you protecting by staying silent?

Your reputation? With whom? With people who would reject you for telling the truth? Is that reputation worth having?

Your relationships? Which ones? The ones that require you to be silent about what you see? Are those relationships or performances?

Your belonging? To what? To Babylon’s table where you’ve been eating photographs of bread? To a community that would expel you for following Jesus the way the healed man did?

The glory that comes from man. That’s what you’re protecting. And the authorities in John 12 protected it too. They believed in Jesus. They saw who He was. And they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

What about you?

The Other Side of Embarrassment

The healed man was cast out. And Jesus found him.

The pattern repeats throughout Scripture. Those who were rejected by the religious system were received by Christ. Those who lost their place at Babylon’s table were invited to the true Table. Those who bore the reproach found themselves in the company of the One who bore it first.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12)

Blessed. Not merely endured. Blessed. The embarrassment that feels like death is actually the doorway to life. The expulsion that feels like exile is actually the path to home.

The prophets knew this. They were mocked, rejected, cast out, killed. And they are honored in heaven while their respectable critics are forgotten.

The disciples knew this. They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name (Acts 5:41). Shame. The very thing the embarrassment strategy uses as a threat, they received as an honor.

There is a glory that comes from God that makes the glory that comes from man look like the cheap counterfeit it is. But you cannot have both. The invisible fence exists precisely to keep you from discovering this.

Damascus Road Moment

The fence is invisible, but it’s real. The collar has been delivering shocks for so long you may have forgotten what it feels like to approach the boundary. The embarrassment strategy has been working on you, perhaps for years, keeping you silent, keeping you compliant, keeping you at Babylon’s table when the true Table has been set all along.

STOP

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the LORD is safe.” (Proverbs 29:25)

Stop letting the fear of man determine what you say and don’t say. Stop calculating social cost before speaking truth. Stop wearing the invisible collar that shocks you every time you approach honesty. The snare is real, but it only catches those who keep fearing.

“Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)

Stop trying to please man. Paul understood that servant of Christ and pleaser of man are mutually exclusive categories. Which one are you?

LOOK

Look at what you’ve been protecting. Look at who you’ve been silent for. Look at the glory you’ve been loving more than the glory that comes from God. The authorities believed and said nothing. Is that you?

“And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him…” (John 9:34-35)

Look at what happens to those who speak anyway. Cast out by the system. Found by Jesus. Which outcome are you actually afraid of?

LISTEN

“Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured.” (Hebrews 13:13)

Listen to the invitation. Not to avoid embarrassment but to share it. Not to preserve your place at Babylon’s table but to go outside the camp where Jesus is. The reproach He endured is the reproach He calls you to bear. Can you hear Him calling you out?

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” (Matthew 5:11)

Listen to what He calls blessed. Not comfort. Not acceptance. Not the glory that comes from man. Reviled. Persecuted. Slandered. These are the blessed ones. Is this the blessing you’ve been avoiding?

LIVE

“But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” (John 3:21)

Today, identify one truth you’ve been afraid to speak. One observation you’ve kept silent because the social cost felt too high. One question you’ve swallowed because you didn’t want to be “that person.” Ask the Spirit whether the silence is wisdom or fear. And if it’s fear, ask for the courage to come to the light.

The invisible fence only has power while you believe in it. The collar only shocks if you’re still wearing it. The embarrassment strategy only works on those who love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.

Which glory do you love?