A few days ago I made a bad decision. It was the kind of thing that gnawed at me immediately, and continued to weigh on me in the days following. In a week where (hearkening back to questions I posed in a previous newsletter) I was thinking particularly about the idea of shame and how we talk about it, deal with it, view it, and define it, I couldn’t help but feel the reality of it hitting home, directly where I sat.
Then, the internet broke with news of a man in Atlanta who shot 8 people, several of them Asian women, in what he claimed was an attempt to rid himself of sexual temptation. This sparked conversation about both racial hate crimes against Asians as well as renewed criticism about purity culture in the American evangelical church. David French’s Sunday essay was dedicated to this topic and he did an excellent job of addressing the issue of shame and how false teaching about sin in our lives leads to destructive ends. In some ways, his conclusion is the very one I’m about to make myself, and better written. So do go read it.
Guilt and shame have been a part of the human experience from the beginning. And humans have been trying to figure out how to deal with it ever since. In our current cultural moment, shame is talked about as something that is destructive to living out our authentic selves, but is regularly used with abandon against others especially in the public sphere and on social media. I recently saw a quote from Elizabeth Bruenig at the New York Times where she noted how we have no process for dealing with our wrongdoing in the public sphere. People are accused and publicly shamed (and may even confess and apologize), but there is no path to restoration or restitution. There is no recovery plan.
The same could be said for our private lives and the ways we experience and then deal with the guilt and shame we feel on a daily basis. The millions of people who reach for and rely on the teaching of influencers like Brené Brown and others seems to reveal that we are a people who want to be eased of the pain of our various forms of shame, and know not how to do so. A recently published article in the New York Times about the Empty Religions of Instagram reveals a fascinating and insightful look at how these new “self-care gospels” are ultimately leaving even the non-religious empty and wanting for something more.
“There is a chasm between the vast scope of our needs and what influencers can provide. We’re looking for guidance in the wrong places. Instead of helping us to engage with our most important questions, our screens might be distracting us from them. Maybe we actually need to go to something like church?”
The article poignantly reveals, from a self-proclaimed “secular liberal” how the self-love therapeutic messages of our age are ultimately unsatisfying. And yet, it is not just the non-religious “nones” who are living under these teachings. I see countless Christian friends who follow hard after the likes of Glennon Doyle and Brené Brown, soaking up their self-help talk and advice on how to rid yourself of shame, be your authentic self, and live out your best life now.
In contrast, it makes me think of how Jesus dealt with those who were all over the place on the shame spectrum. With the Samaritan woman at the well, he treats her with respect and dignity, while being frank and honest about her sin, before inviting her into the source of fulfillment (himself) that will never run dry like the empty pursuits she has been running after. With Nicodemus, who perhaps thinks himself as devout and educated, Jesus carefully shows him how he knows nothing and is again in need of a radical transformation— one no less than being born again— a completely confusing idea to the upstanding Nicodemus.
It is Jesus himself, his life in place of theirs, his life as the source of their life, that is the antidote for their guilt and shame.
In the parable of the prodigal, the Father offers mercy and full restoration to the shame-ridden son, while to the self-satisfied and judgmental elder brother he invites him to remember how much he has been given and how none of it is deserved. The elder brother is invited to come into the banquet newly aware of his undeserved but beloved place as a son and brother, if he will but see it.
In the end, it is the Father himself who, for both sons, must cover and absorb their guilt and shame.
But in our modern age, we believe the problem is not us. The problem, we’re told, is that society and cultural forces (the church, social morés, etc) corrupts and defiles our true self, sending messages that make us feel unworthy, unloved, undesirable. And the remedy is to throw off these false narratives and listen to the inner voice of our authentic self. This is the neo-gospel of the Insta-influencer, or maybe even just your online friends, who pat you on the back when you’re struggling with feeling bad and tell you, you are enough just the way you are.
Carl Trueman, in his brilliant work, “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self,” writes, “This idea is perhaps one of the most dominant social and political assumptions today. That society, or nurture, is to blame for the problems individuals have in this world, not the individuals themselves considered in abstraction from their social environment, is virtually an unquestioned orthdoxy, and it influences everything, from philosophies of education to debates about crime and punishment.”
The problem, we’re told, is that society and cultural forces (the church, social morés, etc) corrupts and defiles our sense of self, sending messages that make us feel unworthy, unloved, undesirable. And the remedy is to throw off these false narratives and listen to the inner voice of our authentic self. This is the neo-gospel of the Insta-influencer, or maybe even just your online friends, who pat you on the back when you’re struggling with feeling bad about yourself and tell you you are enough just the way you are.
I’ve thought about this a lot as it relates to parenting and being a mom. When I am discouraged about how I’m performing, of course I want to be encouraged. And if I’m not careful, I can surround myself with accounts and feeds that tell me just what I think I need to hear.
But I don’t want a false encouragement. I don’t want to feel better about myself if what I really need to hear is some helpful critique. Like “the faithful wounds of a friend” in Proverbs 27:6, I crave trustworthy feedback even if it’s painful to hear, rather than a pat on the back that falsely appeases my ego.
This is the danger of so much easy access to online advice that will feed us what we want to hear on any given day. The social media messages know no context and are unaware of my particular situation. They cannot cut to the heart because they don’t know my heart. Maybe I need to get off my phone and do the laundry. Maybe I need to make some hard choices during a certain season of life that requires laying down a particular desire instead of trying to do it all.
This is why dealing with my shame and guilt about everything from my role as a parent, a friend, a spouse, a daughter, a citizen, a child of God must start with someone who knows me intimately. The Word of God and the Spirit of God are given as just such guides. And beyond that, we need each other— a gift also given by the One who knows us best. We need people in our lives who walk with us, pray with us, know our failures and weaknesses, and can remind us of truth while also telling us the truth when we’ve gone astray.
It takes bravery to face our guilt and shame. If we want to be covered, we have to step out from behind the bushes and face the One who calls us and clothes us.
There is a part in C.S. Lewis’s, The Great Divorce where the narrator, on a journey through heaven and hell, sees a shadow of a woman being offered the chance to become Solid, like one of the Shining Ones made whole and vibrant in the afterlife. One particular Shining One is trying to convince the shadow woman to step out of her hiding place in the trees and come to the mountain with him. He promises her that in doing so, she’ll become solid too. “You can lean on me all the way,” he offers. But she is horrified, offended at what he is suggesting.
“Can’t you understand anything? Do you really suppose I’m going out there among all those people, like this?… How can I go out like this among a lot of people with real solid bodies? It’s far worse than going out with nothing on would have been on Earth. Have everyone staring through me.” The Shining One assures her it will wear off if she will just come with him. But she is obsessed with the shame of being seen in her state.
Again, the Shining One tries to help her.
“An hour hence and you will not care. A day hence and you will laugh at it. Don’t you remember on earth— there were things too hot to touch with your finger but you could drink them all right? Shame is like that. If you will accept it— if you will drink the cup to the bottom— you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.”
Almost, the shadow woman obeys. But suddenly she cries out,
“I tell you I can’t. For a moment, while you were talking, I almost thought… but when it comes to the point… You’ve no right to ask me to do a thing like that. It’s disgusting. I should never forgive myself if I did. Never, never. And it’s not fair. They ought to have warned us. I’d never have come. And now—please, please go away!”
“Friend,” said the Spirit. “Could you, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not yourself?”
I wonder if it is possible that guilt and shame continue to “scald us” because we are trying to do “anything else with it” other than what we were intended to. That we are telling ourselves a story that doesn’t solve our problem in the end.
There are so many nuances to our guilt and shame, so many varied reasons why we may experience it. My thoughts here are not meant as a one size fits all answer to the range of situations people deal with regarding shame. Especially for those who have real trauma from harm done to them and the shame that accompanies that, obviously there is need for careful treatment both medically and spiritually.
But for most of us, most of the time, we are dealing with guilt and shame on a level that is not trauma-induced. And for that, we need to hear the clear message of the gospel— that our hope for ourselves is not found inside ourselves. That our problem does lie merely outside ourselves. That we can come daily, hourly, to Jesus who sits at the well ready to talk with us, to show us who we really are, and to fill us with living water that will never run dry.