Shame

For some time now, I have been involved in a debate with one of my peers centered on the theme of shame. He suggests that the feeling/emotion/experience of shame might have some role to play as one grows in the spiritual life. I completely disagree. I contend that there is no place for shame in the life of the Christian. Growth in holiness is conversely proportional to the the eradication of shame.

This topic arises in my mind today as a result of our current topic in our Ministry to Families course. We are discussing addiction. Recent field visits have included stops at an addiction rehabilitation facility. Our assigned reading comes from Vernon E. Johnson's classic treatment of the topic, I'll Quit Tomorrow: Revised Edition (New York: HarperCollins. 1980). In the book, as the author describes forgiveness, he offers an interesting take on the Prodigal Son, commenting about his return to the father:

Far from bringing him relief, his father's greeting is a most searingly painful experience. The overwhelming shame, the remorse of his soul-searching, and the torture of the self-judgment that followed, put together, could not touch the pain of the moment when his father's arms went around his neck. This reception, one sees, is as impossible to accept as it was to imagine or foresee. He had come home immersed in his feeling of degradation. His need to be punished is not being met; if his father would not do it for him, he would punish himself! [. . .]

If only his father had come out whip in hand! If only his father had beaten the living daylights out of him! At the very least, if only he had made him a hired servant - that at least would have been understandable. But more than that, and here is that basic problem, it would have allowed the son to evade what he unconsciously wants to evade: his final act of accepting himself as he is.

He is coming to his father specifically to disclaim what he is - a son. He is bent on being someone other than himself - a hired servant. Even if he were beaten, he could hang onto this aim. his false pride would be served if he could lift his head and claim that he had "taken his just deserts like a man" . . . He could evade what the arms around his neck demand of him: that he accept himself as himself. (117-18)

I believe there to be great truth in what Johnson describes. Shame desires at once to hide and to be known to all. Shame leads one to wear a mask, to pretend to be something one is not, while at the same time begging someone to know the truth and offer forgiveness. The shameful person is afraid that he cannot be forgiven, and pride tells him that his sins are greater than those of any other. As a result, the shameful person at once desires God and pushes Him away in fear. The shameful person leads two lives, pretending all is well on the outside, while writhing with fear on the inside. Oscar Wilde seems to summarize the experience well in his poem, Ballad of Reading Gaol. The following is a tiny excerpt:

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.