The Gospel, Guilt, and Shame
In evangelicalism, the gospel is characteristically presented as God’s solution through Jesus to “the human problem”—which, in turn, is the sinful state of humanity. Namely, that every person who is beyond the age of moral accountability has wilfully said and done things that are morally flawed from God’s perspective, making us guilty before him and leading to a relational breakdown.
Biblically-speaking there is no set age of moral accountability, though in Jewish thought it is represented by the age of 13, corresponding to Bar Mitzvah/Bat Mitzvah. Human societies apply a similar concept in setting an age at which a person can vote, drive a car, marry, purchase alcohol or cigarettes, and so on.
The question of how Jesus is God’s solution is answered by the doctrine of atonement—the ways in which, through Jesus’ incarnation, life, death, resurrection, and ascension, we are made “at one” with God; brought into a state of “at-one-ment.” Evangelical doctrines of atonement tend to centre on the cross, and in particular, they conceive what happened at the cross as “substitutionary”—Jesus was “taking our place,” as our “substitute.”
Conservative evangelicals will typically insist that although Scripture speaks of multiple ways in which Jesus’ atoning work can be understood, the principal way—and, they will often insist, the necessary way—is that on the cross Jesus took the punishment that we deserve for our sins. This is called the “penal substitutionary” doctrine of the atonement (or, “PSA” for short).
PSA also implies the nature of the punishment that those who have not responded to the gospel in this life will suffer; hence, conservative evangelicals will invariably also believe in a literal hell as a place of eternal punishment (known as “eternal conscious torment,” or “ECT” for short). In that sense, the two doctrines and their three-letter acronyms go hand-in-glove: Jesus took the punishment that will otherwise be coming the way of those who “don’t know Jesus.”
The example of PSA illustrates that how we understand “the solution” in Christ will directly correspond to how we understand “the problem” in humanity. If the perceived problem is a legal one—judicial guilt before God—then the perceived solution will lie in God through Christ averting the judicial consequences: namely, our sentence in the heavenly courtroom.
However, it comes as a surprise to some Christians to learn that the law court-centered approach of PSA is by no means the only way Christ’s atoning work is explained in Scripture. Through the centuries, in different times and places, Christians have chosen to emphasize different biblical understandings of “the problem” and “the solution”—in each case, focusing on the metaphors and picture language that will best help people to be able to say “I get that! That makes sense!” For more on that, see my small book, Telling the Old, Old Story (available at https://tinyurl.com/3m9vdera).
All of this, however, is by way of background. This article is not so much about the doctrine of atonement as it is about guilt—or more particularly, the difference between guilt and shame. It’s one thing to frame the problem and its solution around guilt (as PSA does), but how do we frame it around shame? Evangelicals often speak of guilt and shame together, as if they amount to the same thing, but although they are both problems, they are not the same problem. It’s been said that guilt and shame are twins—but they’re not identical twins.
So what’s the difference? And how can we explain it simply?
Guilt comes from something that I do. It relates to an action or event that is separate from me. Shame may begin from something that I have done, but it extends beyond it. Shame is not about something that I do it’s about something that I am. Shame relates to me as a person—it’s intrinsic to me.
Guilt is a wound, but shame is a scar. Guilt says “What you did was not good.” Shame says, “Who you are is not good.” Guilt brings with it fear of punishment. Shame brings with it fear of rejection, isolation, and marginalization.
No one shares in our guilt, but others can share in our shame. Just as we may feel justifiable pride in belonging to a certain group or being associated with a certain individual, so too the opposite can occur—we can feel shame/ashamed because of it. For example, the children of high-ranking Nazis implicated in the holocaust bore no legal guilt for their parents’ actions, but they suffered the shame of it. A person who is the victim of another’s actions—such as someone who has suffered sexual abuse—may feel deep shame, even though they bear no guilt.
As Daniel DeWitt observes, “Shame is far less logical than guilt. Guilt is connected to events that can be defined in objective journalistic categories: who, what, where, when, and why. But shame is far less concerned with details.”
To be underprivileged and dependent, to lack power and choices in life, or to be part of a minority of persons who are different to a society’s customary norms—whether socially, economically, physically, racially or sexually—are not things that lead to guilt, but they are highly likely to lead to shame. Shame involves a chronic lack of self-worth and self-esteem, caused or contributed to by others (wittingly or otherwise). Shame is not about humility but humiliation.
Shame is a very real feature of the human problem, but when it comes to the solution in Christ, the standard evangelical “gospel” approach framed around sin and guilt does not “work” in the same way. Even where guilty actions are an initial trigger for shame, resolving shame is not so easily accomplished as resolving guilt.
Evangelicals see forgiveness consequent on repentance as the solution for guilt because a person’s sinful actions are “separate” from them. They are what I did—which Jesus “took from me” at the cross. But forgiveness and repentance are not the route to the solution when it comes to shame. My shame is part of me—it’s who I am. I am easily separated from my guilt—I am not so easily separated from my shame.
Guilt is transactionally centred; it’s a legal motif. Shame is relationally centred; it’s an interpersonal motif. Guilt is between me and the law that I have breached; it’s impersonal. Shame is between me and other people; it’s very personal. The consequence of guilt is punishment, which can be averted and we move on. The consequence of shame is isolation, exclusion, and shaming, which are not so easily averted or moved on from.
In today’s Postmodern culture, we need a broader, deeper, and more nuanced understanding of the human problem as it is reflected in shame. For example, being “cancelled” is a shaming experience. I am deeply saddened when I see Christians who say their calling is to stand against the contemporary culture deploying the weapons of the contemporary culture in that way.
We do not need “a new gospel” to address shame as an element of the human problem; the one we already have is broad enough and deep enough. What is needed is for evangelicalism to recognize that—to be more nuanced in its ways of understanding and explaining it, drawing from the wide range of biblical metaphors and picture language for what Jesus has done for us. This involves being more culturally-aware, and more biblically-aware.
A sin-and-guilt-based understanding and explanation “worked” in the era of Modernity (i.e., from the Enlightenment through to the mid-late twentieth century). It will still work amongst those—especially older people—who continue to think in Modern categories (hence older evangelicals will want to still hear that language used for the gospel). But it is increasingly not working amongst younger people who think in Postmodern categories—even when it comes to guilt. PSA, for example, as a child of Modern thinking, is increasingly “unsaleable” (it “makes no sense” to people).
Our evangelical options are therefore: (1) keep understanding and explaining it in the way that worked in Modernity, as “timeless biblical truth” that people today simply need to accept, or (2) consider what other aspects of the atoning work of Christ found in Scripture will speak most powerfully and start from those instead. The choice is between “they need to change their thinking” (to Modern categories) and “we need to change our thinking (from Modern categories).
This is not about ignoring or denying the extent to which the cross was a judicial event, explainable in justice-centred categories (it is and can still be). The point is that it’s not the only way to explain it, biblically, and it may not be the best starting point for the culture within which we’re working.
The cross was a shaming event as well as a judicial event. Hebrews 12:2 speaks of the Jesus who “endured the cross, scorning its shame.” Eleonore Stump writes, “When, voluntarily, out of love for humankind, Christ dies by torture naked on the cross, in the view of his friends and disciples, he joins the shame and suffering of humanity.” On the cross, Jesus took the sin of the world upon himself; taking away not just the human problem that leads to guilt, as a legal remedy, but the human problem that leads to shame, as a healing remedy.
In John 10:10, Jesus tells us, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” Shame is a weapon of the thief—in both human form and satanic form—employing it to steal life from people, kill life in people, and destroy the lives of people. Not just physically but emotionally and psychologically, as well. The gospel is the good news of God’s desire through Christ to restore what enemies have stolen, to heal that which has been damaged, and to bring newness of life in all its fullness.