Shame and Guilt

Guilt is about what you do. Shame is about who you are. To feel guilty for something is to hate what you did. To be ashamed is to hate yourself. There are important differences. Certainly both are things we need to be freed from, and Christ's death deals with both. In Eastern Christianity, shame is more emphasized than guilt. In the west we care more about guilt than shame. Shame isn't even spoken of much, and it seems like it is constantly operating in the background, as if shame is a useful tool to correct human behavior. Bene Brown is a researcher who works on the psychology and sociology of guilt and shame. I highly recommend her work, especially her TED talk, available online (widely, just google "Bene Brown" and "TED").

Both guilt and shame can bind us to the past in a way that is unhealthy, but I think guilt is different in that there are times when we should, in fact, feel guilty. We do things that are wrong. We hate what we have done. Paul talks about this extensively in Romans 7. Freedom from guilt should only come after the guilt has, in fact, actually afflicted you.

Shame is different. Shame is insidious. If I hate WHO I am and not just WHAT I did, then my own negative self-image can actually reinforce negative action. If I hate myself, I may undertake actions that make me worthy of hating. This is an interesting effect of grief, sometimes. Bad things happen to people and they do bad things to convince themselves they actually deserved their pain. If I believe myself evil, I will also believe the lie that I cannot change, that I cannot be made new.

Christ's ability to free us from shame, to atone by overcoming our shame, is much easier to conceptualize than guilt-based theories of atonement. The need to atone for shame makes sense. My self-hate is, like guilt and sin, a wall between God and I. If I believe myself evil or worthy of hatred, then I will reject God's love or reject the idea that God even could love me. There is this moment on the DOCTOR WHO episode "Last of the Time Lords" where he forgives The Master, and the Master screams in pain at the gift. God embraces us but if we cannot accept that embrace we are still lost.

But if God was willing to die for us, to suffer as no other for us, that makes a statement about how valuable we really are. Seeing Christ, we see God's love for us, and we know that however much God may hate what we do, He cannot possible hate who we are. It is a simple, beautiful act that yet frees us from our shame.