I became interested in the question of shame both theologically and pastorally about six months ago when I realized that although meditating on the doctrine of justification by faith basically comforted any distress I personally experienced concerning sin and guilt for those sins, it did not do much to shift or neutralize feelings of shame related to sin. I began meditating on 2 Corinthians, especially 3:4-6, and seeing how meditating on the New Creation (that's us, in Christ) might answer some of the difficulties in dealing with inadequacy and shame. I think it does help to some degree, but I am not yet satisfied with any of my own answers on the question.
The part that makes this question weighted for me is that I think in any contest--shame vs. guilt--shame will win out as a more powerful motivator. I think shame is scarier than guilt is to the human mind, and a whole lot more deceptive. Guilt says, "I have done something wrong", and shame says, "I am something wrong." It isn't that guilt isn't powerful--there are many things that we do that require healing and forgiveness in order for us to be and to feel at peace with God and our neighbor--but guilt isn't about identity, necessarily. I am wondering whether shame has more to do with being wounded and in need of healing in respect to our identities, who God made us to be, and how we find peace with who we are only in believing what God has to say about who we are, who he made us to be, what he destined us for, and how he means to get us there. Maybe we experience the most defeat-by-shame when we give up on this quest to find ourselves in God (or to be found by him) and settle for identifying ourselves too closely with our pet idol or most devastating failure or any manner of brokenness in-between.
It
is one thing to feel guilty for one's sins—I am coming to realize more and more that
I don’t tend to feel particularly guilty for many of my most seriously recurring sins.
It’s not that I feel I have done something wrong with, say, chronic over-eating or failure to be financially responsible (or responsible in general)—I just feel
inadequate. It is both a combination of
not caring about the sin aspect—not quite viewing things in a moral light and being haunted by the feeling of inadequacy, of not
measuring up, of not being good enough
because I am bad at these things and because I am a sinner in this way. My hunch is that one of the problems with
shame is that it actually masks the problem of guilt, and quite effectively. Does our shame-based culture in
fact make us less liable to understand our sin?
It is not immediately obvious to me how shame fits into the story of Adam and Eve, though it certainly present. To me, shame seems present as a kind of falsehood. Adam and Eve are
distracted by their shame and so do not even see their guilt. They work to try to hide their shame but in
no way do they work to confess their sin.
Shame seems to be the enemy of a good conscience in that story—and to present a kind of distorted picture of the fact that they had done something shameful
and wrong. Their reaction to their nakedness rightfully involved an appropriate sort of horror. Humanity was, after all, meant to be clothed with the glory of God, not left naked. By way of sinning, they lost their covering. Human beings were not supposed to be naked in
that way, though there was nothing wrong with their physical nakedness per se. But now their sin had put them at such odds
with each other and with themselves, they found themselves in need of shelter
and escape from one another—and from God—by making clothes for themselves. But human beings aren’t capable of clothing
themselves, and they were never meant to be. So God has to make clothes for them and makes sacrifices for them in
order to do so.
To that end, I wonder if part of our generation's problem with identity--in finding our identity in various and sundry things that do not deserve it--has to do, at the end of the day, with the problem of shame. Do we find ourselves preoccupied with anxiously wrapping up our identity in this or that sub-human, sub-divine thing simply because we are oppressed by overwhelming feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness and emptiness? The apostle Paul spoke to a religious climate (both pagan and Jewish) overwhelmed by the impending judgment of God--they knew judgement was coming and they knew they needed to make sacrifice for sins, and they were anxious about it. The Reformers seemed to speak into an age of heightened religious anxiety as well--old structures did not seem to adequately address the desires of many to feel confident in their salvation and the love of God apart from an elaborate system of penances which was the means by which people managed their religious anxieties. Now-a-days people manage their religious anxieties by avoiding them entirely: perhaps they reject religious systems before the religious systems have a chance to pronounce them worthless and inadequate, or so they fear. I am curious as to whether the rising generation of Americans are really as indifferent to the problem of sin as we think they are--or whether they have reacted in the most human, most original way possible and traded knowledge of personal sin (guilt) for shame and blaming other people, institutions, and structures for their own sense of nakedness and inadequacy before God and others.
There is one way I can think of that shame plays on our appropriate sense of our own inadequacy: it properly perceives that we are creatures, not the Creator, and thus inadequate without him. We were never made to stand alone independent of God in any respect. However, that sense of inadequacy is complicated by how our sin alienates us from God--we are made to feel our inadequacy painfully and there is no easy resolution to it until we perfectly find ourselves in him.
The other problem with shame I think is that it does tend to mask the problem of actual sin and sinning by conflating our sin with our identity (that in turn most probably being a form of despair). In other words, our sense of shame distracts us from a sense of proper guilt or contrition over the actual sins we have committed or things we have done wrong, drives us to despair and over-identification with our sin, and thus drives us into hiding, blaming, and other ways of coping with shame. So we are rendered incapable of dealing with our sin, which leads to further shame, which leads to further incapacitation in a vicious sort of hermenuetical circle--exactly the sort you see in Genesis 3-11.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the only sort of cure I see for this is confession (I would like to learn of others). Real confession to God and real confession to one's brothers or sisters in Christ. And by confession I don't particularly mean confession of sin, although that is part of it, I more mean the type of dialogue with God that allows him to work in reconstituting one's identity. I've been learning a lot about Anglican sacramental theology in the last few months, and have learned a couple of handy things about the ways in which Anglicans (among others) think about the way Baptism and Eucharist are related. For Anglicans and many others, Baptism is about being incorporated--made a part of--the living, mystical Body of Christ. That is, we have real unity with Jesus and that is the source of our life in this world. Baptism is what buries us to our old sin and self and raises us to new life in Christ, and it literally is new life in Christ. In Baptism, you receive a new faith, a new name, a new life, a new hope. Eucharist--the eating and drinking of the Body of Christ--however, is about a regular sort of reconstitution in Christ. We have been made alive in Christ, but we still need to be sustained in him, and in fact, we need to be regularly reconstituted as his body. I think what happens in Baptism and Eucharist applies to our identities. In Jesus, you have been given a new name and a new hope and a new identity--not one destined to be eternally broken by sin, but one destined to have eternal life and glory in God--in Baptism. But we need that regular reconstitution of our identity as in Eucharist--we need to continually be reshaped and reformed in our identity in Christ so we take on his image and the hope he has for us, not the idols we settle for or despair in.
I speak of Baptism and Eucharist in this way by means of an analogy. I am sure that Jesus really does remake and reconstitute our identity in him in Baptism and in Eucharist by means of sign and the power to effect what is signified, but I also think there is more to this aspect of our life in Christ than that. Along with our sacramental practice, at the very least, must be the knowledge and intention of what we are doing and what God is trying to do with us. And I do think confession and prayer and that daily sort of transformation by the renewal of one's mind is the only sort of thing that will get us on the same page with God about who we are and who we are meant to be. As the Apostle did say: "But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." (2nd Cor. 3:16-18) God does not destine us to shame, but to glory.
