Return to Innocence
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therefore without some capacity to feel guilt.”3Guilt can become patho
logical when people cling to their own sinful ways, ignoring the offer
of grace, and becoming hardened and unrepentant (see Neh. 9:16-17).
SHAME
We saw that guilt arises from an action against moral value or mor
al law, that sanction for transgression is punishment, and that forgive
ness is available for justification of the repentant sinner. Shame, on the
other hand, “arises from the failure to live up to an internal ideal image
of oneself. Its sanction is rejection or abandonment.”4 In the words of
Bonhoeffer, “Shame is man’s ineffaceable recollection of the origin; it
is grief for this estrangement, and the powerless longing to return to
unity with the origin. Man is ashamed because he has lost something
which is essential to his original character, to himself as a whole; he is
ashamed of his nakedness.”5
Both guilt and shame are negative judgments, but while guilt con
cerns an act (sin), shame “is a judgement against the self, a feeling
that one is bad, defective, incompetent, inadequate, weak, unworthy,
unlovable, stupid, or disgusting. Normal shame is a painful, but pass
ing experience. Shame becomes pathological when it is internalized,
when one identifies oneself, in essence, as permanently and totally
flawed as a human being.”6
But guilt and shame can serve a good purpose as well. Not unlike
physical pain, they sound an alarm and warn us of danger—they call
us to watchfulness over our ways of being and doing. This is especially
important when the two—guilt and shame—occur together or trigger
each other. In David’s prayer following his sin with Bathsheba, record
ed in Psalm 51, we readily perceive a virulent blend of guilt and shame
driving the king into despair. To ignore the warnings from guilt and
shame, he sinks even deeper into feelings of rejection, discouragement,
and humiliation.
In
time he sees no other solution but to carry on as if
everything
is normal,
yet he knows that such an attitude will lead him
into shameless
behavior. But
David refuses to capitulate—to internalize