For Shame!

The Biblical concept of shame is, in my own opinion, one that is sorely needed for today’s cultural milieu. In the Pilgrim’s Progress the character Faithful encounters a peculiar man wrongly named Shame. In the discourse they share after Faithful’s conversion, Shame says this to him:

“He said that a tender conscience was an unmanly thing; and that for a man to watch over his words and ways, so as to tie himself up from that hectoring liberty that the brave spirits of the times accustom themselves unto, would make him the ridicule of the times. He also said religion made a man grow strange to the great, because of a few vices (which he called by finer names), and made him own and respect the base, because of the same religious fraternity.”

Christian and Faithful rightly deduced that this man would properly have been named Shameless, since he lacked the quality. But what is shame? More appropriately, what is shame as the Bible defines it? Oxford defines the word as, “a feeling of embarrassment or distress arising from being aware that you have done something wrong or foolish.” Strong’s Concordance defines shame in numerous ways, depending upon the context in which it is used. One English word became an umbrella for several Hebrew terms, all with similar definitions. One is “kalam,” which means to figuratively wound, or to taunt or insult. Synonymous terms for shame in OT Scripture include, “lightly esteem, despised, base, disgrace, dishonor, reproach, to feel worthless.”

In Proverbs we read, “When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom,” Proverbs 11:2. Similar Scripture paints a picture of shame that strongly suggests its intended functionality in daily human existence. Pain, for example, is a response mechanism for the body. When you or I do something that harms our body, it responds with pain to inform us, so we may make a quick and radical decision to cease whatever activity we were engaged in that caused said damage. Pain exists as a messenger to inform us that certain things can be detrimental to our safety. 

Shame is similar in functionality, except spiritually or morally rather than physically. When we engage in something that is contrary to God’s intention for us and the moral order He constructed, shame is supposed to be the result. When we lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, murder, etc., shame is the intended result. Like pain, shame is a vehicle of information; it was designed to make us aware that we are engaging in something that is not right; it will result in damage. Unlike pain, however, we may feel shame for what we have done to others; it is not restricted to informing us about events simply impacting us. Shame, then, is the spirit’s response to involving ourselves in something morally harmful.

For instance, Solomon wrote in Proverbs that pride’s presence precedes shame. Like touching a hot burner results in pain, the intrusion of pride results in shame. The hot burner wounds the part of the body it touches; pain itself is not the injury, it is a response or damage report received from the circumstance we involve ourselves in. It is the vehicle God designed for the body to notice damage, contemplate a solution, and institute a resolution. Sin, so to speak, is the burner. Shame is the response mechanism built into us that informs us we are being burned.

Going back to Shame, he argued with Faithful that shame (aka a tender conscience) was an unmanly thing. Feeling shame for boldly trailblazing in the spirit of the times was not a shameful but celebratory thing. In short, Shame championed what we would modernly refer to as progressive thinking. His wording was strangely modern as well. Shame suggested that the bold accustomed themselves to pioneering their thinking. To accustom means to make oneself used to something, inferring that such new thinking was something formerly unacceptable in society. We see this in our own culture with the advance of abortion rights, homosexual marriage, trans rights, confusing and/or creating new genders, et al. While certain ideological arguments want to advance progressive notions, the same circles want to make the concept of shame into something shameful. Feeling shame for whatever immoral or unethical thing people espouse is the only truly shameful thing. Shame is the poster child for this generation, who pervert the intended nature of this spiritual reflex action.

Shame is a God given response to spiritual evil, in the same vein that pain is the God given response to physical harm. To ignore it is to incur very similar danger, but to a much more permanent degree. Physical pain will abate, either through natural healing or physical death. But shame unrepented of will hound the afflicted soul into the life hereafter. It is not an optional feeling we may dismiss at our liberty. And to dismiss it as some archaic throw back to a societal norm progressive mankind has outgrown is to completely misunderstand its importance and function. Now we are teaching our children to be proud of our evil choices. Pride is being celebrated in modernity. Pride was Satan’s sin, the first sin, and it admits no shame. So the damage accrues individually, collectively, and culturally both within and without the church as we permit the wisdom of fallible men to define what the norm is while abandoning God’s word. This keeps in the modern tone of shamefully exchanging, “the truth of God for the lie, worship[ing] the…creature rather than the Creator,” Romans 1:25.