The Guilt and Shame That Don’t Go Away

Guilt and shame are life-controlling emotions. Psychologist John Bradshaw warned:

• The internalized feeling of being flawed and defective as a human being…shame [or guilt] which should be a healthy signal of limits, becomes an overwhelming state of being, an identity if you will. Once toxically shamed, a person loses contact with his authentic self. What follows is a chronic mourning for the lost self.

However, few find their way free from this emotional bondage. Why? We tend to regard guilt and shame as no more than feelings that should be either denied, justified or medicated away.  We convince ourselves that once we get rid of these feelings, we will be free.

However, it might be more realistic to regard guilt and shame as truth-tellers or even fire-alarms. We would certainly laugh at the idea of a drug that promised to remove all sensory discomfort. We need to feel pain! Without this sensory feedback, we would pick our pimples until they became infected, or maybe we would take our time before removing our hand from a hot stove.

Instead, we need to regard pain as necessary – something that gives us essential feedback about reality. Likewise, a fire-alarm is not simply a disturbing noise. Rather, it is a necessary noise alerting us to a reality that requires appropriate action.

Perhaps guilt alerts us to a reality that requires our attention. However, this idea is contrary to the way we tend to think.  The late Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, wrote:

• The specific evil of the modern history of thought…is the fact that modern man does not understand guilt, that the problem of guilt hardly interests him, with the exception perhaps of the guilt of war, that is, where he is not guilty himself. (The Scandal of Christianity, (91)

Consequently, the revelation of the Cross of Christ and its promise to eradicate our very real guilt is offensive to humankind. It informs us that we are objectively guilty, deserve condemnation, and require the forgiveness of the Savior. Many therefore find it more comfortable to regard guilt as no more than an annoying feeling. Brunner writes:

• Goethe…says that he does not want to hear of the cross; it is just ugly…It is his moral self-esteem which revolts against the cross. He does not want to hear that this had to be done for him…he does not want to bend his head beneath this yoke by complete humiliation. He does not want to receive, he is too proud to receive divine mercy. (92)

Goethe regarded guilt as no more than a pesky feeling. Sometimes we are unable to find the right answer because we are unwilling to ask the right question! What happens when we regard our guilt and shame as objectively reflective of our moral plight before God? We can turn to the right Person to find relief!

Thinking about Human Dignity

Ultimately, the way we think about humanity is the way we will treat humanity. The late and renowned Swiss theologian, Emil Brunner, affirmed the impactfulness of our worldview:

• The recent terrible years of the world war and of the preceding totalitarian revolutions have shown us that the understanding of man is the basis of all social order and of all culture…The denial of this dignity is equivalent to the total abandonment of man to the power of the state…The totalitarian state can arise, and is bound to arise, whenever the idea of human dignity has been lost. The idea of human dignity, however, is historically and, in principle, none other than the idea of man’s being created in the image of God. (The Scandal of Christianity, 69-71)

Most embrace an idealistic concept of the dignity of humanity and also acknowledge that, without such a concept, humanity is no more than an animal to be manipulated and used. But are there necessary preconditions for such an idealistic and dignified view of humanity? Brunner thought that there were:

• [The] time of idealism has always been followed by one of materialism in which human dignity was denied. Such was the case after the idealist tide of the nineteenth century, which was followed by a terrible ebb of crudest materialism, which had nothing else to say of man but that he was the most differentiated and developed animal.

Sheer secular humanism cannot long retain this idealism. It lacks the necessary presuppositional underpinning and, therefore, belief in human dignity will eventually erode. If the human is no more than a sophisticated bio-chemical robot, eventually he will be treated in this manner. Robots are esteemed as long as they serve a purpose, and then are thrown on the junk heap.

Brunner concludes:

• [The Christian] doctrine of man, which acknowledges the image of God as well as the depth of sin, is able to create a social order which has room for the dignity of man and at the same time provides for the necessary precautions against the terrible forces of evil which are slumbering in man.

These forces seem now to have been revived with renewed “progressive” vigor.