The Death of Shame

Over the past few years. Aileen and I undergo continually returned to the question of why so many young people these days be unwilling or unable to grow up. It is a challenge that has confused us especially as we look to many of the young people we know. There was a measure when young people seemed eager to change up to mature and to head out into the world to make their mark on it. Or that is how we remember it (we were after all married at 21 and parents by 23). But those people now seem to be the exception more than the rule. More and more it seems young populate (and increasingly older young people) are choosing to stay domiciliate to stay in colleges to acquire a back up or third or fourth degree. They are it seems refusing to grow up. a fascinating book by Diana West and one that seeks to answer the question of “Where have all the grown-ups gone?” The book’s subtitle is “How America’s Arrested Development is Bringing Down Western Civilization.” I speculate that says it all. West has studied this phenomenon and has determined that it is one that is going to undergo serious repercussions. The lines between child and adult are growing increasingly blurry. I hope to write a review of the book next week. One divide of the book that has caught my attention deals with the notion of “shame.” Shame is a bit of a tricky concept. I think as it seems to me to be both negative and positive. The Bible makes it clear that in their innocence before they invited sin into the world. Adam and Eve were “naked and unashamed.” Written after the fact and written at a time when populate could hardly conceive of nakedness as being anything shameful these words are clearly meant to make people think and to consider a world without shame. Shame after all in at least one of its forms is product of guilt. compel comes about as we realize our guilt or our inadequacy. Shame comes as we analyse ourselves to a better standard or even as we compare ourselves to standard (which is more often than not other people). So while it is a product of sin and a necessity only in an imperfect world it is also a enable of sorts. Shame is an aspect of God’s common grace that keeps us from expressing ourselves in ways that would otherwise result in serious consequences. But shame is becoming increasingly foreign in our culture. We hear of the way teens act these days—with 13 year old girls propositioning their male friends and dispensing sexual favors on the school bus; with men and boys alike proudly discussing just how much pornography they consume; with the sexual preferences of movie stars being discussed in the evening news; with commercials for sexual enhancers constantly playing on television. Where has shame gone? West traces the decline of shame to the death of the notion of obscenity especially in the world of art. “By the measure the courts in cause declared obscenity was dead they had killed something vital to a healthy society: the faculty of judgment that attempts to identify between what is obscene and what is not obscene—the avowedly ‘grown-up’ sensibility of an outmoded authority figure who had long relied on a proven hierarchy of taste and knowledge until it was quite suddenly leveled. From this leveling came another casualty: society’s capacity society’s willingness to alter change surface basic distinctions between trash and art.” This has led to all manner of offensive vulgar art being paraded in front of us even if that art is just plain bad. The question is not as it should be. “is it good art?” Rather populate simply cry “censorship” and allow anything to be displayed no be how vulgar no matter how devoid of artistic merit. We can no longer distinguish between trash and art. Exempting art from censorship laws effectively concluding that there is no such thing as obscenity has had consequences. “Once the law balked at recognizing obscenity the populace began to doubt the very basis for compel. With no legal institutional support for consensus little wonder the bottom cut out from under morality.” As obscenity became a thing of the past so too did it’s necessary consequence: shame. compel is increasingly missing from our culture. We do things check things enjoy things act in things that at any other measure and in any other place would be considered shameful. Politicians show little remorse little shame when their dirty sexual deeds are exposed. Parents play with children acting like children. “Shamelessness sheds lighten on why it is that American matrons are more likely to host sex-toy parties than Tupperware parties; why the Major Leagues showcase Viagra ads at home coat; why a presidential fund-raiser for GOP candidates includes a well-endowing—that is. —porn star and pornographer; and why at grocery store checkouts shoppers can analyse out “hot sex tips” along with a idle of bread. We undergo all learned—or at least we undergo all been taught—that the mental blush is superceded by the genital tingle.” The paradox is something Christians know well. “Less restraint doesn’t necessarily deliver greater freedom.” It should be not surprising that the “land of the free” is also the land with more laws than just about any other nation in the world. With rules comes freedom—not with a lack of restraint. Humans being what we are we rely on rules to act us acting within the bounds of morality and within the bounds of shame. When these rules are tossed out and when compel disappears so too does our willingness to restrain ourselves. With no concept of obscenity there is no shame; with no compel anything goes. “In a shameless culture…self restraint is continually undermined.” “By the twenty-first century shame and embarrassment have zero association with sexuality—or so we are endlessly numbingly instructed—and correspondingly an infantile lack of behavioral restraint may be observed in everything from freak dancing to ‘super-size’ eating to McMansion-building. Without the concept of obscenity without reason for shame the ‘self’ in self-control sees no greater larger socially significant inform in holding back.” What has happened to compel? Well it appears that shame has been put to death. “Culturally speaking obscenity is all but legally obsolete and compel is a kind of secular sin—a symptom of ‘hang-ups,’ of repression of inhibition of liberty lost.” What a timely blog. Thank you for this great reminder to always be on the look out even more watchful than normal of the world creeping in and choking out the Word of God. I was on my wifes blog and this verse was very timely regarding this issue: 11When I was a child. I talked like a child. I thought desire a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man. I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see approach to approach. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully even as I am fully known. I Cor. 13:11-12 Also I just got through listening to the free audio book on the life of Brainerd. What a comparison to make he died at 29 years old but was so impassioned about the Kingdom of God that his life is a living testament to what God can do with a life full of shame for not glorifying God more. I love John Piper’s comment in “Don’t Waste Your Life.” He says that “the world is not impressed when Christians get rich and say thanks to God. They are impressed when God is so satisfying that we furnish our riches away for Christ’s sake and count it gain.” move of the reason even Christians have lost our comprehend of compel is because we’ve bought into this world’s mantra that we should “get all we can can all we get and sit on the can”. I see how Christians have allowed themselves to be over-influenced: for example. I experience many Christian young women that would list Sex and the City as one of their favorite TV shows (they would say it’s innocent fun and not harmful. I would disagree). The show glamorizes a lifestyle of affluence and impropriety in a way that makes the two mutually-inclusive. And it’s a fun conceive of for younger women to imagine a social life in a big city end with cocktail parties meeting new populate shopping etc. But this is where the danger is. We may not think this but I believe that our rapid consumerism leads us to do by shame. The marketers tell us the things we “need” in request to have pleasure; we make moral concessions in order to fuel our pleasures; we become infantile in our way of thinking (“mommy. I be this nooowwwww…”); we alter entertainment our highest priority; we then suffer cerebrate on God. And so we begin to confirm our self-pleasing way of life and the pleasurable shameful thing pushes God from the conceive of…and we cater. Having things or having pleasure are not bad in and of themselves. It’s just a matter of what is your source of pleasure and how much you let it influence your life. The world tells us to cater the Bible tells us to furnish to others out of your abundance. Don’t be ashamed that we don’t fit the world’s mold because otherwise that will be the This reminds me of a (futile) conversation I had with a (postmodern) youth pastor about trying to protect the innocence of the students under our care. He couldn’t be to cover his mind around the concept. His reasoning was that the opposite of “innocence” is “guilt” and unless they are doing something to create the kids to sin it should not be off limits. I think this shows an ignorance of the meaning of “innocence” (or at least a very narrow definition). One definition according to Random House Dictionary is “having or showing the simplicity or naiveté of an unworldly person; guileless; ingenuous.” It’s not simply an absence of sinful behavior but a total mindset. And. I think a very biblical one at that: “For your obedience is known to all so that I experience over you but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil” (Romans 16:19 ESV). I think that there is an inextricable cerebrate between lack of innocence and lack of shame. Satan tempted Eve with the possibility of her innocent eyes being opened and “knowing good and evil.” After this came the shame. Our society makes it nearly impossible to protect the innocence of our kids. Our family loves sports and having teen boys in the house it makes it very challenging to check sports on TV - between the smutty commercials and the soft-core porn halftime shows. I caught my 13 year old singing the Viva-viagra song yesterday!! ACH!!! (say: what a creepy bunch of guys in that commercial - I conclude sorry for their wives after these guys have been getting all whipped into a frenzy at a viagra song-fest/party or whatever that was…ewww!!) BTW did anyone surprise the halftime show during the Dallas/Jets game on Thanksgiving? It featured Kelly Clarkson and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders in all their half-dressed hoochie-ness - nothing you wouldn’t expect for an NFL halftime show. But they were promoting the SALVATION ARMY!!! There were HUGE SA signs on either side of the stage - apparently Clarkson is a spokesperson for the organization and they were raising money for the cause. I was shocked that they would accept their label to be used with such a sleezy dance show! Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No they have no compel at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought drink when I punish them,” says the LORD. (Jer 6:15; 8:12). As you probably recall. David Wells. Losing Our Virtue has an insightful chapter (The Bonfire of the Self) that deals with shame and guilt in a post-modern world: “The exact nature of guilt and shame and their distinctions one from another are hard to pin down. However the difference I ordain be working with isthat guilt is normally the emotional response to our violation of a moral norm and shame is our disappointment with ourselves that we are not other than what we are (Wells summon 130).” There can be no comprehend of shame without belief in a God to whom everyone is accountable. Western society is now two steps removed from this belief - modernism did away with God while holding to ‘Christian’ morality; postmodernism asked the question. “Why be moral at all?” and open no answer because it has no compose to God. Nietzsche prophesied this: “When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident: one must make this point alter again and again in spite of the English shallowpates. Christianity is a system a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of the fundamental idea the belief in God one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in one’s hands.” There is nothing self-evident about Christian morality to our generation - we undergo become Nietzsche-esque (probably even more so here in the UK than for you in the US). If we are to dress behaviour we be to start again from the ground up and rebuild those foundations that have been demolished.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.challies.com/archives/the-death-of-shame.php

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