Psalm 31:17-18: “Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee. Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous.”
The United States has tried its hardest to be an “anything goes” nation. This slogan embodies the priority liberals give to individual choice. It embodies pluralism, which says that any belief system, if you really stop and think about it, is just as good as any other belief system. “Anything goes” also encapsulates democracy, which claims that every voice deserves to be taken seriously. If we all just accepted everyone else’s opinions and life choices, and if we would pass laws and design social spaces to accommodate those people, we would incidentally create the perfect society.
What the liberal-democratic-pluralists don’t say—mainly because they don’t recognize it themselves—is that the purpose of flattening beliefs is to gain control of shame. Culture says that no behavior can be outlawed, no lifestyle is disgusting, and no religion is obviously bad for people to believe. Shame, a sensation a person feels when people around him react with disdain and disapproval at something he does, is considered inappropriate in a society as advanced and tolerant as ours. However, ambitious sinners recognize that shame is a powerful weapon. It leverages the power of consensus to communicate that something ought not to be done or even tolerated. Often, there are social consequences visited on a person who does something shameful. Think of a man with his head and hands in stocks in the town square, or recall the early American practice of tarring and feathering. Anyone familiar with the struggle sessions of the Chinese communist revolution knows how powerful shaming rituals are. The purpose of such punishments is to humiliate the perpetrator. Shame is the mechanism a society uses to enforce its moral boundaries and discourage citizens from violating them. The humiliation ensures others do not engage in the same transgressive behavior.
You probably have an instinctive internal revulsion toward treating a person that way. However, that instinct means that our culture has accomplished at least two goals. First, it has successfully taught us to forget how bad some behaviors are. In Ephesians 5, Paul warns the church that would read his letter to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them; for it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret” (Eph. 5:11-12). The apostle asserts that some sins should not be topics of conversation; we should be embarrassed even to talk about them. Americans have been trained to nod and smile no matter how obviously gross or contrary-to-nature people behave. Other cultures do not do that. In a podcast interview, the Qatari prime minister casually mentioned that their country does not have nursing homes. If a family neglected the care of elderly parents or grandparents, the family members would be publicly shamed. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul rebuked the church in Corinth because they had not already put out a church member living in open sexual sin. When a professing believer commits certain sins (including those listed in 5:11), the church should “put away from among yourselves that wicked person” (v. 13) and should not share a meal with him (v. 11). Despite what the liberal order demands, Christians are commanded to draw clear moral boundary lines, and to have a category of sins we actively and vocally oppose.
Second, by indoctrinating us to think shame is always inappropriate, culture has arranged for Christians to be the targets of shame. The following forgotten point is extremely important: it is impossible to dispose of shame. In God’s world, shame can only be reassigned; it cannot be eliminated. In a liberal-democratic-pluralistic world, the intolerant are shamed. While anyone with a fixed standard is fair game, culture especially hates those who proclaim the righteousness of the living and true Creator God. The atheistic argument against God and Christians is not that we are wrong, but that we are evil. Anyone who is evil can, of course, be shamed with a clear conscience. The LGBTQ fight is not about love; it’s a desperate king-of-the-hill battle for the moral high ground. Atop that mountain, the righteous can pronounce judgment on the inferiors. This battle of shame between the righteous and the unrighteous is not new. Consider the verses in the first paragraph. Here they are again. “Let me not be ashamed, O LORD; for I have called upon thee: let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in the grave. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous” (Psalm 31:17-18). Notice the presence of shame in David’s prayer. Who will be vindicated: the one who prays to the Lord, or the lying schemers? Because the fight is over what kind of world they will live in, the winner lives and the loser is cast out of the world in social, physical, and spiritual death.
Understanding shame makes sense of the mental battle that accompanies evangelism, the fight for media control, the brutality of politics, skirmishes over terminology, and many, many other aspects of culture. There is more to be said, including how the gospel solves the problem of shame. However, recall the old saying: you must understand the problem before you can appreciate the solution.
Believers who confidently profess Christ should interact with this present world aware of the ways wicked people try to leverage shame against the people of God. We should learn to anticipate our internal vulnerability to shame and purposefully reject it as the weakness of our flesh toward the devil’s attack through the world, and stand for Christ, who himself “despised the shame” on his way to accomplishing salvation and ascending to victory and authority at the Father’s right hand (Hebrews 12:2).
The above article was written by Jonathan Kyser. He is a pastoral assistant at NorthStone Baptist Church in Pensacola, FL. To offer him your feedback, comment below or email us at strengthforlife461@gmail.com.
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