April 8, 2025 • 36 mins
Shame—is it Satan's tool or a divine signal pointing us toward right relationship with God and others? In this second episode of our three-part series with Jason Glenn, we wade into the controversial waters of modern debates around shame and guilt.
While American society increasingly views shame as the source of nearly all social ills, historical perspectives across cultures show shame serving both positive and negative functions throughout human history. This tension sets the stage for our exploration of how Enlightenment thinking and developmental psychology transformed our understanding of these complex emotions.
We dissect the crucial distinction many psychologists and theologians make: guilt says "I did something bad" while shame says "I am bad." But is this separation always helpful or even accurate? Through personal testimonies and theological reflection, Jason challenges the increasingly popular view that Christians should never feel shame, offering a powerful counterexample where shame led not to hiding but to contrition and reconciliation.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn when we consider influential Christian voices like Curt Thompson who literally "demonize" shame as Satan's tool in the Garden of Eden. This perspective has gained significant traction, yet raises troubling questions: Are we losing something vital when we attempt to eliminate shame entirely? Is there spiritual danger in disconnecting our actions from our identity?
As we wrestle with these questions, we discover unexpected insights from historical thinkers like Aquinas and Aristotle who viewed shame as living "in the imagination and potentiality of virtuous people." This perspective suggests shame might serve as a moral compass, helping us avoid becoming someone we don't want to be.
Join us for this thought-provoking exploration that challenges both secular and religious assumptions about emotions that profoundly shape our lives, relationships, and spiritual journeys. And don't miss our conclusion to this series next week, where we'll examine the contemporary problems arising from our culture's refusal to feel shame.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
All right, everyone Well welcome back to Psych and
Theo Glad, you're joining us foranother week and we are here
again with Jason Glenn talkingabout shame and guilt and the
controversies and currentarguments about this topic.
If you missed part one of thisseries, go back and listen to
that.
We cover a very broad base ofhistorical uses of shame,
(00:28):
historical understandings ofshame and to put that into
modern relevance.
You know our culture wants to.
By our culture I mean Americansociety tends to want to
downplay shame, get rid of shame, because they see shame as the
source of virtually all thesocial ills and evils that we
(00:50):
deal with.
And so if we could just dealget rid of shame, then we could
cure a lot of things that arewrong with with society.
But the reason we started withhistory is because we wanted to
show that this with history isbecause we wanted to show that
this idea of shame goes back way, way, way before.
Let me rephrase that it goesback.
(01:15):
It's virtually universal in allsocieties and all societies see
both a positive and a negativeuse of this shame concept.
It and a negative use of thisshame concept.
It's a negative feeling that wefeel, but there's, so it's some
sort of it's intrinsically evilbut it's extrinsically good in
(01:35):
some senses because it can beused to point us in the right
direction.
It can cause us to see that ourrelationship with God is not
right or our relationship withsociety is not right and to move
us into, uh, to doing things torectify that situation.
Uh, and so we covered a lot ofdifferent figures in history who
(01:55):
had different takes on thisidea of shame.
But, uh, the takeaway, the keytakeaway, is that, um, this is a
universal human condition, uh,experienced by everyone across
all of time is that this is auniversal human condition,
experienced by everyone acrossall of time.
So I'm really curious how themodern mind thinks that we can
extricate ourselves from shameand that will somehow solve a
(02:17):
problem for us.
So let's get into it.
All right, jason, we asked youat the end of the first episode
what was the central controversyaround guilt and shame.
So you want to start there andthen we'll get into maybe some
names and figures and people and, yeah, kinds of things yeah,
(02:39):
again, this is, you know, ourthird session.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
we can we can have a little bit of this conversation
as well, because it's all veryapplicable.
But when you start to get intoshame and the results of shame
throughout history, and then youget into the modern mind,
reflecting on what shame hasbeen in those cultures and what
(03:04):
it has done, so much of thisrevolves around what we would
refer to as the Enlightenmentand this self-awareness and this
idea that we are good innately,um, we are good innately, um.
(03:30):
So we, we get away a little bitfrom the Christian worldview in
order to get into a morethoroughgoing controversy, uh,
about the fact that shame is bad, is it's more holistically bad
than it is positive.
We've got to get into aworldview, if you will, is
positive.
We've got to get into aworldview, if you will, that
doesn't adhere to the bible, andthat's what we started to see,
you know, in the 19th, 18thcentury, even in 19th century,
(03:53):
for sure, um, and and when,again, the 20th century, uh, you
start to get into developmentalpsychology, and this is where
sam, of course, would be moreversed than myself, probably um,
but we, we get into an areawhere we see that shame is so
painful and it causes so muchinner turmoil that there's got
(04:17):
to be uh and it.
It gives the impression thatwe're bad, that we have that we
personally we've not just donesomething bad, we are bad.
And there was a shift multipleshifts, of course, in thinking,
(04:37):
if you will, especially in the19th century, coming out of
German idealism.
A lot of that came out ofEurope.
Postmodernism starts coming outof german idealism.
A lot of that coming out ofeurope post-modernism starts
coming out of that, this ideathat no, we're not innately bad,
uh, we're actually.
You know, christianity is notright, uh, it's actually really
harmful, uh, to say that we areinnately sinful and that we have
(04:59):
sinful desires from birth.
You know, you know from theearliest stages, and all that
does is cause this angst in usthat it actually does cause some
people to commit suicide.
And then drug addiction gotmuch more thoroughgoing
(05:24):
throughout the world, uh,thoroughgoing throughout the
world, um, and then peoplewanted to shame the drug
addiction, uh, the people withdrug addictions, as being
horrible people.
And then you, then you have uh,loosening sexual norms, uh, and
in, and we move away from aChristian society.
But we're still enough in aChristian society that the
(05:47):
Christians go, that person is asinful homosexual or that person
.
So there was just a lot ofthings and again we can kind of
get more of that in our thirdsession that caused
developmental psychology andpsychologists and counselors to
(06:09):
go.
There's got to be a better wayto address harmful behaviors and
so guilt guilt, for a lot ofthem became that way, guilt and
(06:29):
the.
You know, you see this in theuh 1950s, um, again, sam, you
know, if I, if I screw anythingup here immediately let me know.
But uh, eric erickson, ericerickson's uh, eight stages of
of psychosocial development, um,that was a big development.
Uh, where he's talking about um, shame is something that we
from the earliest age, from ageone to three, we feel um,
(06:51):
because, um, we don't get frommommy what we want to get,
sometimes, because our poo, poois bad, because we wet and we
make, we, we, we have thesethings that we do that are
rejected and um, therefore, wefeel ashamed about that.
(07:11):
Uh, we have these desires thatare not um, reciprocated,
they're not given into, they'rerejected, uh, they're, they're
punished, if you will, sometimes.
And and so we, from theearliest age, we have this not
very developed emotionalresponse to the fact that we
(07:34):
don't like the way we are beingtreated and therefore there must
be something bad in us.
And then psychologists wouldsay that that develops
narcissism.
Uh, most of them would callthat primitive shame.
Um, but they would say thatthat causes narcissism in people
.
And then then then they'redealing with that narcissism the
(07:56):
rest of their life.
And then they but they say, thetrue development comes when you
get to guilt You're cognitivelyaware more so of actions and
your agency in those actions,and the hope is that you'll have
just enough correction to helpnurture you and form you into
(08:21):
right action.
But too much you know, too muchcorrection, too much discipline,
too much, too much saying no,no, no, no can cause you to feel
guilty all the time.
That's, we can get into theirony of that conversation
because because a part of the abigger part of the conversation
is is there a difference betweenshame and guilt, right?
(08:45):
Bigger part of the conversationis is there a difference between
shame and guilt, right?
And the guilt folks really wantto say yeah, guilt is that
feeling that you feel bad aboutsomething that you did.
That's not, that is not arepresentation of your identity.
It's not, it's not who you are,something you did and you and
you can correct it, or at leastyou can pay for it in some
(09:06):
fashion.
You can make it right, or youcan go to jail, or you can pay
the consequence and then it'sover.
But it's not part of yourcharacter, no-transcript, that
(09:47):
he becomes a gangster that justgoes around and kills people.
He's a psychotic.
Uh, so that's that's the ideaas to why guilt would be better
uh, in for human flourishingwould probably be the best way
to put it than shame, becausethey see that shame is just too
harmful to a person'sself-awareness jason, you hit on
really good good points thereand I think you you discern or
(10:08):
define them each well.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Where guilt is I did something bad, shame is I am bad
.
And that goes back to.
I'm really glad that you alsotouch on the young childhood
development, because for themwhen you say you did something
bad, they can't make sense ofthat because they're still small
, right.
So for them it's just they knowthat their body is experiencing
or feeling a certain way andthey don't know what to do with
(10:33):
that.
It's just here's how I feel andhere's the message that's being
attached that you're badbecause you know you did this,
because you threw that,therefore, therefore, you're bad
.
And so they kind of keep that,that idea of I feel this way and
here's what's associated withit.
Um, and then you have this nextstage, and I think you kind of
(10:54):
alluded to this as well.
They get into the teenage years, another form of development
where identity is thedevelopment, the psychosocial
stage.
There it's all about identity.
Who am I, who am I in thecontext of my friends, of my
parents, and so on?
yeah, all of those beliefs andexperience that they've had.
Now they're starting to makesense of it as adolescence,
which then moves into theiradulthood.
(11:14):
And, um, there's this aspect inthe research it's called shame
proneness, how some people arejust more prone to it because of
personality traits.
Um, but, yeah, I mean, youtouched on all of that I think
they're also called firstbornchildren, if I'm not mistaken
also right.
Exactly, they do experience thehighest levels of.
That's correct that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yes, so, if you don't mind, jason, just can recap.
You mentioned the Enlightenmentand I kind of want to retrace
for our audience how we mighthave got to this point from the
Enlightenment.
So the Enlightenment is thisperiod of time, like you
mentioned, in the 1700s, 1800sand on into the 1900s, where
(11:58):
there is this movement away fromtraditional religious beliefs.
If I could boil it down thatway, it's a movement toward.
It's essentially a movementabout how do we know things?
And the movement is away fromreligious dogma.
We don't know things becausethe Bible says so.
We don't know things becausereligious authorities tell us
(12:21):
what to know.
We know things because weobserve them.
We know things because we useour reason to deduce things and
infer things.
And so from this you getrationalism and empiricism,
which are philosophies that tryto get at the world and what we
can know, and then, stemmingfrom that, you get the
(12:42):
scientific method and what we'vereferred to a few times on the
show.
The scientific worldview, whichis everything that we can know,
comes to us through science.
And if we have that worldviewin our culture, the culture
becomes steeped in this ideathat all that we can know has to
be known through science.
And so when you plug that ideainto the mental health space or
(13:06):
psychology and psychiatry, thenthey, they, they, they then
start to look at well, what?
What is shame, what is guilt?
Where does shame come from?
Uh, and what is its uses?
So there's a very pragmaticapproach to shame and guilt.
Um, so is shame useful or not?
(13:26):
You know, along with theenlightenment came neo-darwinism
, which is the belief inevolution, and from that comes
evolutionary psychologypsychology, that's right yeah,
yeah, and so I I may be stealingyour thunder.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I hope I'm not no, no , you're not, please.
I like the fact that you didthat.
I didn't want to do that yeah,uh, so.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So a lot of modern behavioral psychologists uh, use
this they use in their paradigmis evolutionary psychology.
So they'll ask the questionwhere does shame come from?
Well, shame comes from someinnate evolutionary mechanism
meant to drive us to more socialcohesion or whatever, something
(14:11):
like that.
But if it becomes too extreme,then then it becomes
pathological or antisocial, andso we have to.
We have to treat it in a waythat we have to come up with
better treatments for it.
So there's never a question ofdoes shame actually point me to
some metaphysical realityoutside of myself, like like my
relationship with god?
(14:31):
Right, right, it's always likehow does this, how does shame
function in relation to me andmy tribe?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
yeah, yeah, how, yeah , how did my parents jack me up
and how am I going to jack mykids up?
That's what it comes down to andthat's really where they're
pointing at.
And yet, to get back to, kindof the overarching conversation
of the second session, you stillhave a theological debate,
right, bait, right, because youstill have those, let's say,
(15:02):
even in the health wealthtradition or charismatic
theology, right, the name itclaim it I am, you know, I am
God's child and, in the name ofJesus, all of this is mine,
right?
Let's give it the you know.
Let's give it the you know.
Let's give it.
It's just dues, for you knowthat they mean well, and and
(15:23):
they're, they're trying torightly discern from the word of
God.
And there's some meat there.
We are new in Christ Jesus.
We've been bought with a price.
We're not our own.
We we are, we've died withChrist, we've been raised to
life, a newness of life.
We are a new creation, right?
(15:45):
So there's certainly texts thatwe can point to and say I am
this new person and Jesus is myidentity.
And so you have Christians thatwill say shame, we have nothing
to do with shame.
Shame is satanic.
(16:07):
Shame is just Satan trying tomake you think that you're the
old guy and not the new guy andyou don't own that brother, you
can't own that.
And so when shame comes aknocking, you get out, you run,
you rebuke it, you reject it.
(16:27):
That is not your identity,right?
So that is most definitely astream of Christian theology
that is still very relevanttoday.
And then on the more academicside of that kind of that same
scenario and I'm going to namesome names here because it's
important is the Kurt Thompsoncamp.
(16:51):
The Soul of Shame is a book,and Kurt has interacted with
liberty and evangelical world ingeneral and in America and he's
his well-known name.
But he would say somethingessentially very similar and
that is that shame is innatelythe tool of Satan.
It was the tool of Satan in thegarden.
(17:11):
It was shame that Satan used tomake Eve fall, to make Eve do
what she did, and then, ofcourse, adam fell because of
that.
But it was shame that theserpent, he would say, it's
(17:34):
shame that the serpent used tomake Eve eat the apple, to make
eve eat the apple.
So that's first of all.
I'm like whoa, that's a, that'sa pretty big theological claim.
Um, in many ways, uh, you saidsomething, sam, you said
something in the last, I think,session that that I'm still
(17:58):
wrestling with personally, but Ithink it's legitimate.
I think it's true.
I don't think that shame wasthe first emotion felt.
I think pride was.
Shame is empowered by pride, andI would say that, there again,
it's that desire to see yourselfin a way that is positive, even
(18:25):
when it's not, even when thetruth is that it's not positive.
And so, in my opinion, pride isoften the instigator of the
feeling of shame, Because yourthoughts on your identity have
been violated, your positiveview of yourself has been
(18:48):
violated, and so this isactually, in some ways, kurt
wouldn't necessarily frame itthat way, frame it that way, but
he would say that satan usedshame to, uh, to shame eve into
thinking that she can be betterand someone better than she is,
(19:11):
and that god is keeping her fromher best self, and and so,
therefore, shame is inherentlyevil, it's inherently a tool of
Satan, it is, in its nature, atool of Satan.
I'm going to actually quote.
I have him right here.
Shame, therefore, is not simplyan unfortunate, random
(19:34):
emotional event that came withus out of the primordial
evolutionary soup, out of theprimordial evolutionary soup.
It is both a source and resultof evil's act of assault on
God's creation and a way forevil to try to hold out until
the new heaven and earth appearand the consumption of history.
So, yeah, he didn't have anypositive view of shame in that
(19:58):
sense.
So you still have this strugglein our Christian day and time,
where you have those that say noshame, like myself, I would say
.
Shame is actually an evidential,consequential testimony to the
fact that we're not right withGod, that a disunity took place
(20:22):
and that it needs to be maderight.
And shame doesn't make you hide.
There have been plenty ofpeople in this world that have
hidden, that have felt shame andnot hidden.
(20:43):
Think about that maybe on yourown terms sham and ten.
There have been an instance,certainly in my own life, when I
have felt shame and I haveresponded with contrition, with
a contrite heart.
(21:03):
I felt it, I saw what I did andI said wow, I saw who I was and
I said man, I don't want to bethat, I don't want to be that
person.
I was disobedient for three anda half years.
I was rebellious, sowing mywild oats.
In college at Texas A&M I wasin.
I was disobedient.
For three and a half years.
I was rebellious.
So in my wild oats in collegeat Texas A&M, I was in the Corps
(21:25):
of Cadets.
I was a drunkard, uh, I was anabusive individual, um, and I
was, uh, just ignoring God and II knew what I was doing.
I was a Christian.
I, yeah, I felt bad about it andI would even ask god to forgive
me periodically, but I washolistically being someone that
(21:46):
I was not supposed to be and Igot crushed by some instances in
my life.
My dad got cancer, I I got introuble in rotc.
I, yeah, I I was, you know,ROTC.
I was reprimanded, penalizedand all of these things came
crashing down and it put me in aspace where I finally saw.
(22:11):
In a moment, I saw myself in away that I had not seen myself
prior and I was ashamed and Icalled my parents and I started
bawling on the phone sayingplease forgive me for who I had
been over the past three and ahalf years.
(22:33):
I had, I have, I have um,slandered our name.
I, I have you shame, and Iresponded with contrition and I
have known a lot of individualsthat have responded.
So all that to say shamedoesn't always make you hide.
(22:54):
Hiding is just the easiestthing to do when shame comes
thing to do when shame comes.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I appreciate you sharing that part of your story,
jason.
I think one of the things thatcame up as you were sharing that
could it also have been theoverwhelming weight of guilt,
for I did these things wrong andI want to correct those things.
So guilt can lead to thisaspect of I know what I did was
(23:28):
wrong and I need to correct it.
Shame and and you've and youtouched on this right I didn't
like the person I was becomingor who I was at the time, so
that shame has that identityattached to it, right.
So how did you distinguishbetween one or the other?
Is it specifically the way yousaw yourself, or was it I did
these things?
Therefore, I am these things.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, I was being someone that I did not want to
be and that I knew that I wasnot in Christ Jesus.
And this, sam, this is where itgets.
This is where the shame, thisis where you and I may have to
battle it out.
Shame has to do innately withidentity.
Our relationship with JesusChrist has to do innately with
(24:12):
our identity, who we are inChrist.
Yes, we are a new creation.
Yes, the old is gone, the newhas come.
And yet Paul says what I stilldo, what I don't want to do and
what I want to do I don't wantto do.
And Paul says to theCorinthians you should feel
(24:33):
ashamed for what you've beendoing, but you don't.
So Paul is recognizing that theChristians in Corinth he names
them as Christians their conductis shameful and yet they are
(24:55):
not having a contrite spirit, acontrite spirit.
And yet there are moments thatwe can point to in the text
where we do see a person that iscontrite, that has been doing,
being, and this is the othercomplexity, and it gets back to
(25:16):
that larger conversation of thedifference in guilt and shame
and whether there is adifference.
Like I said, my buddy that justwrote the book on the Hebrew
culture and Old Testament, hewould say that guilt is a status
before God, it's not an emotion.
And just to clarify, the Greeksdidn't have a differentiation
(25:37):
between guilt and shame, and soa lot of what we would reference
as guilt they use the termshame for in addition to the
other references to shame, andso it was over to get to, should
they get to, tim's point.
It's not until we get to thisenlightenment bred, uh,
(25:58):
evolutionary psychology that westart even trying to
differentiate between what guiltand shame is.
We're having this conversationright now because of secular
psychology.
I'm not saying that there's notmeat to it.
I personally agree that thereis an emotion.
I lost my dad's letter jacketand I felt so guilty about it.
(26:19):
I didn't attach it to myidentity letter jacket and I
felt so guilty about it.
I didn't attach it to myidentity, but, man, I felt
guilty about it.
My dad came up behind me inhigh school, grabbed me by the
neck and did the neck pinch whenhe was, like you know, 55 years
old, and I stomped on his footand broke it.
I felt so guilty about that.
(26:41):
I felt so guilty about that,you know, and every now and then
I still I mean really guilty,especially when he ended up
dying of bone cancer.
So I'm like, oh, freaking crap,did I kill my dad?
But the point is is that Idon't attach that to my identity
.
I feel guilty about it, mm-hmm,in terms of the fact that guilt
(27:18):
, at least in that worldview,has to do with our status,
judicial status before God.
Are we guilty or are we not?
And shame happens within themotion of shame happens within
that's how he would articulatewithin that status.
You know something more to feedon there?
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
So here's a question, for I think both of you guys
could be, and Tim and I havetalked about this where, because
we live in a shameless culture,there are Christians or people
who proclaim Christianity andthey do things that do not align
with scripture and they don'tfeel any shame about it.
They don't, they don't attachtheir identity to that bad
(28:00):
behavior and so on.
But what does seem to be commonis that there isn't an
acknowledgement, or not even anacknowledgement of something
that they did that was wrong orsinful.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So so they, if give me a give me a verbal kind of uh
example of that.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah like, for example, someone who's sleeping
with their boyfriend orgirlfriend, right, okay, yeah,
and.
And they're identifyingthemselves as christian and they
say, well, this is fine,because you know it's modern
times.
This is just what people do and, yeah, they don't feel any
shame or guilt about thatbecause somewhere in their mind,
they've made peace with thatnot being part of their identity
and do not see it as somethingthat's wrong or that.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
But the christian then shows up.
But they are christian, let'ssay, they go to church and they
slept with their girlfriend,have been sleeping with their
girlfriend for for months, eventhey've been.
They've been, of course,looking at pornography for years
.
Uh, and they?
You're saying that that personis more prone to simply say,
(29:02):
yeah, I did, I did something badagain.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
That they want to attach their identity, their
Christian identity, to whatthey're actually doing, their
sin.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
And this we're jumping in maybe into the third
session material here.
But the difference I think Iwould have to push back a little
(29:46):
bit on that because havingworked with guys and in my own
life struggling with pornographyin the past there's they see
themselves as less as anindividual because of their
addiction.
I run into that countless,countless times.
So even in the midst of ourshameless culture, there is an
extremely shameful substream ofactivity that has attached
itself to, I would say, peopleeven outside of the Christian
worldview, but definitely withpeople within the Christian
(30:09):
worldview.
That's a good point.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah, I want to bring it back to something, jason,
you brought up a little bit ago.
Kirk Thompson, yeah, and hisview about, and I think he's
probably endemic of oremblematic of a wider array of
(30:32):
Christian thought that is toliterally demonize shame.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, literally yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, literally demonize it, make it it's part
of the demonic realm, it's partof the satanic realm.
Yeah, that's true, a Christianshould not feel shame at all.
And to Sam's point, I thinkthat's.
I think what Sam was getting atis that there are some
Christians who buy into thatideology to think I shouldn't
feel, I don't need to feel shameabout what I've done.
I just acknowledge that it'swrong and I just don't do it.
(31:03):
But quote, unquote, it's notwho I am, you know, and so I I.
I observed this attitudesometimes where, um, uh, it's
almost like this attempt I thinkit's, I would, I would call it
a form of self-deception whereit's an attempt to separate
(31:24):
myself from my actions.
Um, so I did something wrong,but that's not me, it's just
something I did.
I think the careful thinker andthis is where shame gets
demonized is that a carefulthinker, a deep thinker, will
look at this and say you knowwhat?
The reason I did that wrongthing is because of who I am.
(31:49):
Like I'm a sinner and I dosinful things because I'm a
sinner.
Yeah, put it in theologicallanguage.
But I think a lot of peoplewant to separate, it's like.
It's like disassociating theiractions from their identity.
Now, sam and I have talkedabout this.
(32:11):
There's a danger in thinkingthat, like we're children oh
child, you did a bad thing thing, therefore you're a bad kid
yeah then a child you know, achild can can learn to just beat
themselves over the head likethat.
That's right.
But the, the seems the oppositeextreme is someone who refuses
(32:31):
to acknowledge the connectionbetween their identity and the
the guilty or wrong things thatthey do.
And the guilty or wrong thingsthat they do yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, I think, yeah, what informs that?
And I think this is where welook at it from that perspective
of how do you arrive to ahealthy view of shame like we're
talking about here?
Because I do think it does havean essential use in our lives,
but it's how the parents havetreated that child right?
(33:01):
And I think, if I remembercorrectly, kirk thompson, I
think, if correct me, if I'mwrong his father, I think, was
an alcoholic and I think he wasabusive towards him, so the
shame messages that he received,he grew up with that.
So he's trying to over correcton on the other side, like he
sees its use, he knows that itcould be healthy, but he's
(33:21):
trying to protect someone fromreceiving that end of it.
So there's this overcorrectionthat's happening.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
No, I agree yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, and you guys have kind of mentioned this
aspect of the evolutionarypsychologist.
They will look at it and say,well, what's the purpose of
shame?
At it and say, well, what's thepurpose of shame?
And the purpose of shame and oror hiding from, uh from shame
is to maintain face right, tomaintain status.
So that's why shame isessential, or it's useful if it
(33:50):
can help me uh with myrelationships, cause if I share
this with this person in mychurch, they're going to push me
away, I'm going to be seen in anegative light, I won't have
relationships.
God's going to push.
So all of these things.
So the usefulness of shame isto hopefully at some point be
able to be in a space where youfeel safe and vulnerable to
(34:11):
share.
You know what's really going on.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Yeah, in line with that, shame would also then
serve.
And this is, you know, aquinasgets into this.
They do say that shame lives inthe and this Aristotle gets at
(34:34):
it too shame lives in theimagination and the potentiality
of virtuous people.
Hmm, because you are projectingwhat would happen if you did
something.
You would feel a great sense ofshame.
I have had dreams where I'vecheated on my wife and I have
had thoughts about, wow, what itwould, what would it be like if
(34:55):
I cheated on my wife, whatwould it be like if I cheated on
my life?
And in those thoughts it wasnot about guilt, it was about
what type of person would I bebeing if I went and did this?
And man, I would feel naked, Iwould feel wretched, I would
(35:16):
feel like a being that I did notwant to be.
And so, again, that gets backto Aquinas' and Aristotle's
statement that virtuous people,their relationship with shame,
is in potentialities only,because they're projecting
forward and going no, that's notwho I want to be, and that's in
(35:37):
a virtue ethics that hasnothing to I want to be, and
that's that's an, a virtueethics.
That's has nothing to do withthe do, the, the, the, the needs
the guilt actions.
That's talking about being anidentity.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
All right, guys, I'd love to keep this going, but we
need to wrap up part two and goon to part three, and something
that you said, jason, a coupleof minutes ago I think was and
go on to part three and uh,something that you said, jason,
a couple minutes ago I think wasa good segue into part three,
and that was the danger thatcomes from the refusal to feel
shame, or the inability to feelshame, and the types of uh
(36:14):
spiritual danger that maybecomes from that.
So I think that's a good segueinto part three and dealing with
the contemporary problems ofour culture and the refusal to
feel shame.
Yeah, so let's wrap it up thereand then we will see you all
next week for part three.
All right, everyone Well welcome back to Psych and
Theo Glad, you're joining us foranother week and we are here
again with Jason Glenn talkingabout shame and guilt and the
controversies and currentarguments about this topic.
If you missed part one of thisseries, go back and listen to
that.
We cover a very broad base ofhistorical uses of shame,
(00:28):
historical understandings ofshame and to put that into
modern relevance.
You know our culture wants to.
By our culture I mean Americansociety tends to want to
downplay shame, get rid of shame, because they see shame as the
source of virtually all thesocial ills and evils that we
(00:50):
deal with.
And so if we could just dealget rid of shame, then we could
cure a lot of things that arewrong with with society.
But the reason we started withhistory is because we wanted to
show that this with history isbecause we wanted to show that
this idea of shame goes back way, way, way before.
Let me rephrase that it goesback.
(01:15):
It's virtually universal in allsocieties and all societies see
both a positive and a negativeuse of this shame concept.
It and a negative use of thisshame concept.
It's a negative feeling that wefeel, but there's, so it's some
sort of it's intrinsically evilbut it's extrinsically good in
(01:35):
some senses because it can beused to point us in the right
direction.
It can cause us to see that ourrelationship with God is not
right or our relationship withsociety is not right and to move
us into, uh, to doing things torectify that situation.
Uh, and so we covered a lot ofdifferent figures in history who
(01:55):
had different takes on thisidea of shame.
But, uh, the takeaway, the keytakeaway, is that, um, this is a
universal human condition, uh,experienced by everyone across
all of time is that this is auniversal human condition,
experienced by everyone acrossall of time.
So I'm really curious how themodern mind thinks that we can
extricate ourselves from shameand that will somehow solve a
(02:17):
problem for us.
So let's get into it.
All right, jason, we asked youat the end of the first episode
what was the central controversyaround guilt and shame.
So you want to start there andthen we'll get into maybe some
names and figures and people and, yeah, kinds of things yeah,
(02:39):
again, this is, you know, ourthird session.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
we can we can have a little bit of this conversation
as well, because it's all veryapplicable.
But when you start to get intoshame and the results of shame
throughout history, and then youget into the modern mind,
reflecting on what shame hasbeen in those cultures and what
(03:04):
it has done, so much of thisrevolves around what we would
refer to as the Enlightenmentand this self-awareness and this
idea that we are good innately,um, we are good innately, um.
(03:30):
So we, we get away a little bitfrom the Christian worldview in
order to get into a morethoroughgoing controversy, uh,
about the fact that shame is bad, is it's more holistically bad
than it is positive.
We've got to get into aworldview, if you will, is
positive.
We've got to get into aworldview, if you will, that
doesn't adhere to the bible, andthat's what we started to see,
you know, in the 19th, 18thcentury, even in 19th century,
(03:53):
for sure, um, and and when,again, the 20th century, uh, you
start to get into developmentalpsychology, and this is where
sam, of course, would be moreversed than myself, probably um,
but we, we get into an areawhere we see that shame is so
painful and it causes so muchinner turmoil that there's got
(04:17):
to be uh and it.
It gives the impression thatwe're bad, that we have that we
personally we've not just donesomething bad, we are bad.
And there was a shift multipleshifts, of course, in thinking,
(04:37):
if you will, especially in the19th century, coming out of
German idealism.
A lot of that came out ofEurope.
Postmodernism starts coming outof german idealism.
A lot of that coming out ofeurope post-modernism starts
coming out of that, this ideathat no, we're not innately bad,
uh, we're actually.
You know, christianity is notright, uh, it's actually really
harmful, uh, to say that we areinnately sinful and that we have
(04:59):
sinful desires from birth.
You know, you know from theearliest stages, and all that
does is cause this angst in usthat it actually does cause some
people to commit suicide.
And then drug addiction gotmuch more thoroughgoing
(05:24):
throughout the world, uh,thoroughgoing throughout the
world, um, and then peoplewanted to shame the drug
addiction, uh, the people withdrug addictions, as being
horrible people.
And then you, then you have uh,loosening sexual norms, uh, and
in, and we move away from aChristian society.
But we're still enough in aChristian society that the
(05:47):
Christians go, that person is asinful homosexual or that person
.
So there was just a lot ofthings and again we can kind of
get more of that in our thirdsession that caused
developmental psychology andpsychologists and counselors to
(06:09):
go.
There's got to be a better wayto address harmful behaviors and
so guilt guilt, for a lot ofthem became that way, guilt and
(06:29):
the.
You know, you see this in theuh 1950s, um, again, sam, you
know, if I, if I screw anythingup here immediately let me know.
But uh, eric erickson, ericerickson's uh, eight stages of
of psychosocial development, um,that was a big development.
Uh, where he's talking about um, shame is something that we
from the earliest age, from ageone to three, we feel um,
(06:51):
because, um, we don't get frommommy what we want to get,
sometimes, because our poo, poois bad, because we wet and we
make, we, we, we have thesethings that we do that are
rejected and um, therefore, wefeel ashamed about that.
(07:11):
Uh, we have these desires thatare not um, reciprocated,
they're not given into, they'rerejected, uh, they're, they're
punished, if you will, sometimes.
And and so we, from theearliest age, we have this not
very developed emotionalresponse to the fact that we
(07:34):
don't like the way we are beingtreated and therefore there must
be something bad in us.
And then psychologists wouldsay that that develops
narcissism.
Uh, most of them would callthat primitive shame.
Um, but they would say thatthat causes narcissism in people
.
And then then then they'redealing with that narcissism the
(07:56):
rest of their life.
And then they but they say, thetrue development comes when you
get to guilt You're cognitivelyaware more so of actions and
your agency in those actions,and the hope is that you'll have
just enough correction to helpnurture you and form you into
(08:21):
right action.
But too much you know, too muchcorrection, too much discipline,
too much, too much saying no,no, no, no can cause you to feel
guilty all the time.
That's, we can get into theirony of that conversation
because because a part of the abigger part of the conversation
is is there a difference betweenshame and guilt, right?
(08:45):
Bigger part of the conversationis is there a difference between
shame and guilt, right?
And the guilt folks really wantto say yeah, guilt is that
feeling that you feel bad aboutsomething that you did.
That's not, that is not arepresentation of your identity.
It's not, it's not who you are,something you did and you and
you can correct it, or at leastyou can pay for it in some
(09:06):
fashion.
You can make it right, or youcan go to jail, or you can pay
the consequence and then it'sover.
But it's not part of yourcharacter, no-transcript, that
(09:47):
he becomes a gangster that justgoes around and kills people.
He's a psychotic.
Uh, so that's that's the ideaas to why guilt would be better
uh, in for human flourishingwould probably be the best way
to put it than shame, becausethey see that shame is just too
harmful to a person'sself-awareness jason, you hit on
really good good points thereand I think you you discern or
(10:08):
define them each well.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Where guilt is I did something bad, shame is I am bad
.
And that goes back to.
I'm really glad that you alsotouch on the young childhood
development, because for themwhen you say you did something
bad, they can't make sense ofthat because they're still small
, right.
So for them it's just they knowthat their body is experiencing
or feeling a certain way andthey don't know what to do with
(10:33):
that.
It's just here's how I feel andhere's the message that's being
attached that you're badbecause you know you did this,
because you threw that,therefore, therefore, you're bad
.
And so they kind of keep that,that idea of I feel this way and
here's what's associated withit.
Um, and then you have this nextstage, and I think you kind of
(10:54):
alluded to this as well.
They get into the teenage years, another form of development
where identity is thedevelopment, the psychosocial
stage.
There it's all about identity.
Who am I, who am I in thecontext of my friends, of my
parents, and so on?
yeah, all of those beliefs andexperience that they've had.
Now they're starting to makesense of it as adolescence,
which then moves into theiradulthood.
(11:14):
And, um, there's this aspect inthe research it's called shame
proneness, how some people arejust more prone to it because of
personality traits.
Um, but, yeah, I mean, youtouched on all of that I think
they're also called firstbornchildren, if I'm not mistaken
also right.
Exactly, they do experience thehighest levels of.
That's correct that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yes, so, if you don't mind, jason, just can recap.
You mentioned the Enlightenmentand I kind of want to retrace
for our audience how we mighthave got to this point from the
Enlightenment.
So the Enlightenment is thisperiod of time, like you
mentioned, in the 1700s, 1800sand on into the 1900s, where
(11:58):
there is this movement away fromtraditional religious beliefs.
If I could boil it down thatway, it's a movement toward.
It's essentially a movementabout how do we know things?
And the movement is away fromreligious dogma.
We don't know things becausethe Bible says so.
We don't know things becausereligious authorities tell us
(12:21):
what to know.
We know things because weobserve them.
We know things because we useour reason to deduce things and
infer things.
And so from this you getrationalism and empiricism,
which are philosophies that tryto get at the world and what we
can know, and then, stemmingfrom that, you get the
(12:42):
scientific method and what we'vereferred to a few times on the
show.
The scientific worldview, whichis everything that we can know,
comes to us through science.
And if we have that worldviewin our culture, the culture
becomes steeped in this ideathat all that we can know has to
be known through science.
And so when you plug that ideainto the mental health space or
(13:06):
psychology and psychiatry, thenthey, they, they, they then
start to look at well, what?
What is shame, what is guilt?
Where does shame come from?
Uh, and what is its uses?
So there's a very pragmaticapproach to shame and guilt.
Um, so is shame useful or not?
(13:26):
You know, along with theenlightenment came neo-darwinism
, which is the belief inevolution, and from that comes
evolutionary psychologypsychology, that's right yeah,
yeah, and so I I may be stealingyour thunder.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I hope I'm not no, no , you're not, please.
I like the fact that you didthat.
I didn't want to do that yeah,uh, so.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
So a lot of modern behavioral psychologists uh, use
this they use in their paradigmis evolutionary psychology.
So they'll ask the questionwhere does shame come from?
Well, shame comes from someinnate evolutionary mechanism
meant to drive us to more socialcohesion or whatever, something
(14:11):
like that.
But if it becomes too extreme,then then it becomes
pathological or antisocial, andso we have to.
We have to treat it in a waythat we have to come up with
better treatments for it.
So there's never a question ofdoes shame actually point me to
some metaphysical realityoutside of myself, like like my
relationship with god?
(14:31):
Right, right, it's always likehow does this, how does shame
function in relation to me andmy tribe?
Speaker 2 (14:38):
yeah, yeah, how, yeah , how did my parents jack me up
and how am I going to jack mykids up?
That's what it comes down to andthat's really where they're
pointing at.
And yet, to get back to, kindof the overarching conversation
of the second session, you stillhave a theological debate,
right, bait, right, because youstill have those, let's say,
(15:02):
even in the health wealthtradition or charismatic
theology, right, the name itclaim it I am, you know, I am
God's child and, in the name ofJesus, all of this is mine,
right?
Let's give it the you know.
Let's give it the you know.
Let's give it.
It's just dues, for you knowthat they mean well, and and
(15:23):
they're, they're trying torightly discern from the word of
God.
And there's some meat there.
We are new in Christ Jesus.
We've been bought with a price.
We're not our own.
We we are, we've died withChrist, we've been raised to
life, a newness of life.
We are a new creation, right?
(15:45):
So there's certainly texts thatwe can point to and say I am
this new person and Jesus is myidentity.
And so you have Christians thatwill say shame, we have nothing
to do with shame.
Shame is satanic.
(16:07):
Shame is just Satan trying tomake you think that you're the
old guy and not the new guy andyou don't own that brother, you
can't own that.
And so when shame comes aknocking, you get out, you run,
you rebuke it, you reject it.
(16:27):
That is not your identity,right?
So that is most definitely astream of Christian theology
that is still very relevanttoday.
And then on the more academicside of that kind of that same
scenario and I'm going to namesome names here because it's
important is the Kurt Thompsoncamp.
(16:51):
The Soul of Shame is a book,and Kurt has interacted with
liberty and evangelical world ingeneral and in America and he's
his well-known name.
But he would say somethingessentially very similar and
that is that shame is innatelythe tool of Satan.
It was the tool of Satan in thegarden.
(17:11):
It was shame that Satan used tomake Eve fall, to make Eve do
what she did, and then, ofcourse, adam fell because of
that.
But it was shame that theserpent, he would say, it's
(17:34):
shame that the serpent used tomake Eve eat the apple, to make
eve eat the apple.
So that's first of all.
I'm like whoa, that's a, that'sa pretty big theological claim.
Um, in many ways, uh, you saidsomething, sam, you said
something in the last, I think,session that that I'm still
(17:58):
wrestling with personally, but Ithink it's legitimate.
I think it's true.
I don't think that shame wasthe first emotion felt.
I think pride was.
Shame is empowered by pride, andI would say that, there again,
it's that desire to see yourselfin a way that is positive, even
(18:25):
when it's not, even when thetruth is that it's not positive.
And so, in my opinion, pride isoften the instigator of the
feeling of shame, Because yourthoughts on your identity have
been violated, your positiveview of yourself has been
(18:48):
violated, and so this isactually, in some ways, kurt
wouldn't necessarily frame itthat way, frame it that way, but
he would say that satan usedshame to, uh, to shame eve into
thinking that she can be betterand someone better than she is,
(19:11):
and that god is keeping her fromher best self, and and so,
therefore, shame is inherentlyevil, it's inherently a tool of
Satan, it is, in its nature, atool of Satan.
I'm going to actually quote.
I have him right here.
Shame, therefore, is not simplyan unfortunate, random
(19:34):
emotional event that came withus out of the primordial
evolutionary soup, out of theprimordial evolutionary soup.
It is both a source and resultof evil's act of assault on
God's creation and a way forevil to try to hold out until
the new heaven and earth appearand the consumption of history.
So, yeah, he didn't have anypositive view of shame in that
(19:58):
sense.
So you still have this strugglein our Christian day and time,
where you have those that say noshame, like myself, I would say
.
Shame is actually an evidential,consequential testimony to the
fact that we're not right withGod, that a disunity took place
(20:22):
and that it needs to be maderight.
And shame doesn't make you hide.
There have been plenty ofpeople in this world that have
hidden, that have felt shame andnot hidden.
(20:43):
Think about that maybe on yourown terms sham and ten.
There have been an instance,certainly in my own life, when I
have felt shame and I haveresponded with contrition, with
a contrite heart.
(21:03):
I felt it, I saw what I did andI said wow, I saw who I was and
I said man, I don't want to bethat, I don't want to be that
person.
I was disobedient for three anda half years.
I was rebellious, sowing mywild oats.
In college at Texas A&M I wasin.
I was disobedient.
For three and a half years.
I was rebellious.
So in my wild oats in collegeat Texas A&M, I was in the Corps
(21:25):
of Cadets.
I was a drunkard, uh, I was anabusive individual, um, and I
was, uh, just ignoring God and II knew what I was doing.
I was a Christian.
I, yeah, I felt bad about it andI would even ask god to forgive
me periodically, but I washolistically being someone that
(21:46):
I was not supposed to be and Igot crushed by some instances in
my life.
My dad got cancer, I I got introuble in rotc.
I, yeah, I I was, you know,ROTC.
I was reprimanded, penalizedand all of these things came
crashing down and it put me in aspace where I finally saw.
(22:11):
In a moment, I saw myself in away that I had not seen myself
prior and I was ashamed and Icalled my parents and I started
bawling on the phone sayingplease forgive me for who I had
been over the past three and ahalf years.
(22:33):
I had, I have, I have um,slandered our name.
I, I have you shame, and Iresponded with contrition and I
have known a lot of individualsthat have responded.
So all that to say shamedoesn't always make you hide.
(22:54):
Hiding is just the easiestthing to do when shame comes
thing to do when shame comes.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
I appreciate you sharing that part of your story,
jason.
I think one of the things thatcame up as you were sharing that
could it also have been theoverwhelming weight of guilt,
for I did these things wrong andI want to correct those things.
So guilt can lead to thisaspect of I know what I did was
(23:28):
wrong and I need to correct it.
Shame and and you've and youtouched on this right I didn't
like the person I was becomingor who I was at the time, so
that shame has that identityattached to it, right.
So how did you distinguishbetween one or the other?
Is it specifically the way yousaw yourself, or was it I did
these things?
Therefore, I am these things.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah, I was being someone that I did not want to
be and that I knew that I wasnot in Christ Jesus.
And this, sam, this is where itgets.
This is where the shame, thisis where you and I may have to
battle it out.
Shame has to do innately withidentity.
Our relationship with JesusChrist has to do innately with
(24:12):
our identity, who we are inChrist.
Yes, we are a new creation.
Yes, the old is gone, the newhas come.
And yet Paul says what I stilldo, what I don't want to do and
what I want to do I don't wantto do.
And Paul says to theCorinthians you should feel
(24:33):
ashamed for what you've beendoing, but you don't.
So Paul is recognizing that theChristians in Corinth he names
them as Christians their conductis shameful and yet they are
(24:55):
not having a contrite spirit, acontrite spirit.
And yet there are moments thatwe can point to in the text
where we do see a person that iscontrite, that has been doing,
being, and this is the othercomplexity, and it gets back to
(25:16):
that larger conversation of thedifference in guilt and shame
and whether there is adifference.
Like I said, my buddy that justwrote the book on the Hebrew
culture and Old Testament, hewould say that guilt is a status
before God, it's not an emotion.
And just to clarify, the Greeksdidn't have a differentiation
(25:37):
between guilt and shame, and soa lot of what we would reference
as guilt they use the termshame for in addition to the
other references to shame, andso it was over to get to, should
they get to, tim's point.
It's not until we get to thisenlightenment bred, uh,
(25:58):
evolutionary psychology that westart even trying to
differentiate between what guiltand shame is.
We're having this conversationright now because of secular
psychology.
I'm not saying that there's notmeat to it.
I personally agree that thereis an emotion.
I lost my dad's letter jacketand I felt so guilty about it.
(26:19):
I didn't attach it to myidentity letter jacket and I
felt so guilty about it.
I didn't attach it to myidentity, but, man, I felt
guilty about it.
My dad came up behind me inhigh school, grabbed me by the
neck and did the neck pinch whenhe was, like you know, 55 years
old, and I stomped on his footand broke it.
I felt so guilty about that.
(26:41):
I felt so guilty about that,you know, and every now and then
I still I mean really guilty,especially when he ended up
dying of bone cancer.
So I'm like, oh, freaking crap,did I kill my dad?
But the point is is that Idon't attach that to my identity
.
I feel guilty about it, mm-hmm,in terms of the fact that guilt
(27:18):
, at least in that worldview,has to do with our status,
judicial status before God.
Are we guilty or are we not?
And shame happens within themotion of shame happens within
that's how he would articulatewithin that status.
You know something more to feedon there?
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
So here's a question, for I think both of you guys
could be, and Tim and I havetalked about this where, because
we live in a shameless culture,there are Christians or people
who proclaim Christianity andthey do things that do not align
with scripture and they don'tfeel any shame about it.
They don't, they don't attachtheir identity to that bad
(28:00):
behavior and so on.
But what does seem to be commonis that there isn't an
acknowledgement, or not even anacknowledgement of something
that they did that was wrong orsinful.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So so they, if give me a give me a verbal kind of uh
example of that.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Yeah like, for example, someone who's sleeping
with their boyfriend orgirlfriend, right, okay, yeah,
and.
And they're identifyingthemselves as christian and they
say, well, this is fine,because you know it's modern
times.
This is just what people do and, yeah, they don't feel any
shame or guilt about thatbecause somewhere in their mind,
they've made peace with thatnot being part of their identity
and do not see it as somethingthat's wrong or that.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
But the christian then shows up.
But they are christian, let'ssay, they go to church and they
slept with their girlfriend,have been sleeping with their
girlfriend for for months, eventhey've been.
They've been, of course,looking at pornography for years
.
Uh, and they?
You're saying that that personis more prone to simply say,
(29:02):
yeah, I did, I did something badagain.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
That they want to attach their identity, their
Christian identity, to whatthey're actually doing, their
sin.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
And this we're jumping in maybe into the third
session material here.
But the difference I think Iwould have to push back a little
(29:46):
bit on that because havingworked with guys and in my own
life struggling with pornographyin the past there's they see
themselves as less as anindividual because of their
addiction.
I run into that countless,countless times.
So even in the midst of ourshameless culture, there is an
extremely shameful substream ofactivity that has attached
itself to, I would say, peopleeven outside of the Christian
worldview, but definitely withpeople within the Christian
(30:09):
worldview.
That's a good point.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah, I want to bring it back to something, jason,
you brought up a little bit ago.
Kirk Thompson, yeah, and hisview about, and I think he's
probably endemic of oremblematic of a wider array of
(30:32):
Christian thought that is toliterally demonize shame.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, literally yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Yeah, literally demonize it, make it it's part
of the demonic realm, it's partof the satanic realm.
Yeah, that's true, a Christianshould not feel shame at all.
And to Sam's point, I thinkthat's.
I think what Sam was getting atis that there are some
Christians who buy into thatideology to think I shouldn't
feel, I don't need to feel shameabout what I've done.
I just acknowledge that it'swrong and I just don't do it.
(31:03):
But quote, unquote, it's notwho I am, you know, and so I I.
I observed this attitudesometimes where, um, uh, it's
almost like this attempt I thinkit's, I would, I would call it
a form of self-deception whereit's an attempt to separate
(31:24):
myself from my actions.
Um, so I did something wrong,but that's not me, it's just
something I did.
I think the careful thinker andthis is where shame gets
demonized is that a carefulthinker, a deep thinker, will
look at this and say you knowwhat?
The reason I did that wrongthing is because of who I am.
(31:49):
Like I'm a sinner and I dosinful things because I'm a
sinner.
Yeah, put it in theologicallanguage.
But I think a lot of peoplewant to separate, it's like.
It's like disassociating theiractions from their identity.
Now, sam and I have talkedabout this.
(32:11):
There's a danger in thinkingthat, like we're children oh
child, you did a bad thing thing, therefore you're a bad kid
yeah then a child you know, achild can can learn to just beat
themselves over the head likethat.
That's right.
But the, the seems the oppositeextreme is someone who refuses
(32:31):
to acknowledge the connectionbetween their identity and the
the guilty or wrong things thatthey do.
And the guilty or wrong thingsthat they do yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah, I think, yeah, what informs that?
And I think this is where welook at it from that perspective
of how do you arrive to ahealthy view of shame like we're
talking about here?
Because I do think it does havean essential use in our lives,
but it's how the parents havetreated that child right?
(33:01):
And I think, if I remembercorrectly, kirk thompson, I
think, if correct me, if I'mwrong his father, I think, was
an alcoholic and I think he wasabusive towards him, so the
shame messages that he received,he grew up with that.
So he's trying to over correcton on the other side, like he
sees its use, he knows that itcould be healthy, but he's
(33:21):
trying to protect someone fromreceiving that end of it.
So there's this overcorrectionthat's happening.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
No, I agree yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yeah, and you guys have kind of mentioned this
aspect of the evolutionarypsychologist.
They will look at it and say,well, what's the purpose of
shame?
At it and say, well, what's thepurpose of shame?
And the purpose of shame and oror hiding from, uh from shame
is to maintain face right, tomaintain status.
So that's why shame isessential, or it's useful if it
(33:50):
can help me uh with myrelationships, cause if I share
this with this person in mychurch, they're going to push me
away, I'm going to be seen in anegative light, I won't have
relationships.
God's going to push.
So all of these things.
So the usefulness of shame isto hopefully at some point be
able to be in a space where youfeel safe and vulnerable to
(34:11):
share.
You know what's really going on.
Speaker 2 (34:14):
Yeah, in line with that, shame would also then
serve.
And this is, you know, aquinasgets into this.
They do say that shame lives inthe and this Aristotle gets at
(34:34):
it too shame lives in theimagination and the potentiality
of virtuous people.
Hmm, because you are projectingwhat would happen if you did
something.
You would feel a great sense ofshame.
I have had dreams where I'vecheated on my wife and I have
had thoughts about, wow, what itwould, what would it be like if
(34:55):
I cheated on my wife, whatwould it be like if I cheated on
my life?
And in those thoughts it wasnot about guilt, it was about
what type of person would I bebeing if I went and did this?
And man, I would feel naked, Iwould feel wretched, I would
(35:16):
feel like a being that I did notwant to be.
And so, again, that gets backto Aquinas' and Aristotle's
statement that virtuous people,their relationship with shame,
is in potentialities only,because they're projecting
forward and going no, that's notwho I want to be, and that's in
(35:37):
a virtue ethics that hasnothing to I want to be, and
that's that's an, a virtueethics.
That's has nothing to do withthe do, the, the, the, the needs
the guilt actions.
That's talking about being anidentity.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
All right, guys, I'd love to keep this going, but we
need to wrap up part two and goon to part three, and something
that you said, jason, a coupleof minutes ago I think was and
go on to part three and uh,something that you said, jason,
a couple minutes ago I think wasa good segue into part three,
and that was the danger thatcomes from the refusal to feel
shame, or the inability to feelshame, and the types of uh
(36:14):
spiritual danger that maybecomes from that.
So I think that's a good segueinto part three and dealing with
the contemporary problems ofour culture and the refusal to
feel shame.
Yeah, so let's wrap it up thereand then we will see you all
next week for part three.
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