It's a God-given emotion. But is it being properly expressed?
Our family moved some twenty-three years ago to a rural village of some fifteen hundred inhabitants. At the time, the `village gossip' was that a young local woman had moved away. Why? Because she was pregnant - and unmarried. Today the village teems with unmarried mothers. The shame has gone.
But that's great, isn't it? Haven't we matured in our attitude to such matters?
My dictionary defines shame as `the feeling of humiliation excited by consciousness of guilt or shortcoming, of having made oneself, or been made, ridiculous, or of having offended against propriety, modesty or decency'. That was published in 1964. Thirty-seven years on a man insists - and is permitted- to appear in a staid English court in his own defence - stark naked. `Propriety, modesty and decency' are now passé. Anything goes.
There's no national shame that young women parade themselves in public almost naked and often drunk, that many of our streets are nightly littered with tattooed drunken louts, that over the past century crime has multiplied, that multiple thousands of unborn babies are brutally dismembered mostly for convenience, that teenagers are mothers at thirteen, that a full quarter of British families are headed by single mothers - most abandoned by feckless young males. There's no shame that bed-hopping is a national pastime, resulting in an epidemic of divorce.
There's no shame that two men, two women, can blatantly parade their perversion on our streets, and their sympathizers can mount vast public `pink parades' encouraged by civic authorities and big business and watched by shameless thousands - as if it is `normal'. Much of the media is little less than a moral cess-pit. Lack of shame permits national leaders to behave like amoral alley cats.
Bad Fruit
It's not that these practices have improved our condition in any way. Rather the opposite.
Promiscuity - especially at a young age - is now proven to sow the seed for cervical cancer. It doesn't `just happen', for the virus thus sown in multiple sexual encounters can lie dormant for many years and start its evil cancerous work only in middle age. Indeed the incidence of sexually-transmitted diseases in general is at an all-time high. Visits to genito-urinary clinics in Britain, for example, have doubled - to over a million - in the last decade.
AIDS is a case in point - a deadly scourge sweeping the planet. Weak government simply mouths the `safe sex' slogan, knowing that dignified self-restraint coupled with moral strength is the only sure answer.
Clearly, our educators - religious and secular - have failed us. Vile behavior has always been with us. But it has never in modern history been paraded so shamelessly by so many. Increasingly, even civilized men and women fail to maintain their human dignity.
Why Shame?
Our first parents happily and with no sense of shame lived and worked in Eden. Nakedness was for them no cause for shame (Genesis 2:25). And why should it be? Adam and Eve were in perfect harmony with their environment - and with their God, the Creator of the universe. Shame was foreign to them - for they were created, and were living, in the very image of God.
Sadly our first parents abandoned that image and chose to follow their own desires contrary to the perfect divine will. The result? Shame. Their dignity as the pinnacle of creation stripped away and they felt the urgent need to `cover up' - to hide themselves from their Creator. This, and not simply their nakedness, was the cause of their shame. No longer were they in accord with the divine image, and all mankind has ever since been a shattered image of the divine. In our imperfect `fallen' state the blatant parading of public nakedness highlights our lack of shame.
Only to the degree that we can maintain God's image - that is, walk according to His instruction manual, the Bible - will we retain our dignity. It's a historical fact that human behavior improves as it is exposed to that `Manual'. The barbarism of medieval civilization was sweetened only by the Biblical preaching of men like John Wesley in 18th century England. "Wesley's prayer saved England from revolution," wrote Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881). The Bible - the very Word of God - became the cornerstone of western civilization. Its influence restored human dignity wherever it reached.
That influence has dissipated. Self-serving religious leadership has undermined God's Manual, and politicians who once legislated by the Bible have completely abandoned it. The result - the crass decline of society.
Bring Back Shame
Shame, however, is positive emotion. Wrote the influential English statesman Edmund Burke (1729-1797): "While shame keeps its watch virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart". As long as the flame of human dignity continues to burn in an individual conscience then behavior tends to reflect in some degree God's image in us. God says, "Don't commit adultery" - for there's a natural penalty. God says, "Respect the divine purpose for the sexes" - confusion will generate misery and disease and early death. God says, "Don't publicly flaunt nakedness" - it besmirches your human dignity.
Isn't it interesting that lack of shame is so firmly linked with the defilement of human sexuality, the very heart and core of our humanity! Human degradation is paraded in the "adult" magazines, on the big and on the small screen, in the vile pornographic web-sites and pedophile rings, in the sexual abuse of children and the sordid predatory activity of perverts. If shame reigned such behavior would fade.
But you can't just legislate shame. There's no magic wand that will instil it in the human heart. Willing submission to the rule of the Creator will, however, re-kindle it. With a conscience sensitized by the Word of God, you personally can protect yourself from the ravages of shameless behavior.
Make A Difference
Immerse yourself in God's instruction manual, the Bible. Apply it daily, and teach its precepts to your children so that the next generation may avoid the degrading spectacle of shameless behavior. Shameless behavior calls down God's coming righteous judgment on all who despise the dignity He has bestowed on humanity. For there is coming on all of us a judgment day when we must each give account.
Living as all mankind does with our fallen sinful selves, the restoration of the God-given emotion of shame is a way to avert inevitable judgment - as a species, as a nation, in your community and upon you personally.
If you are sensitized to wholesome behavior through willing submission to the precepts of the Word of God, the positive light you shed on your neighbors may shame them into following your example.
You can make a difference.
There is a way of escape from the coming judgment - for you, your family and for your community! See "What Do You Mean -'Repent'? and Coming To Baptism
To comment on this article or request more information, please contact James McBride by e-mail at the comment form below.
For PDF or mailed copy, see CGOM. Excerpt from New Horizons Vol. 5 No. 2, March-April, 2001. Edited by James McBride of the Churches of God, United Kingdom.
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