Guilt and Shame – Peculiar Faith

Called to Life, Tempted by Shame

Mythologies often tell the truth better than facts—at least about the stuff that matters most: who we are, how to live and love, why we exist.

The Bible is brimming with truer-than-fact stories, and many of us heard a classic one from the first book of the Bible yesterday, on the first Sunday in Lent, and it even featured the fabled forbidden fruit.

As I pondered why it should matter to tell stories like these when the world swirls with chaos and pain, I stumbled upon a wonderful retrospective essay on Toni Morrison and her socially transformative work—perfect for Black History Month!

Most people probably don’t think of Morrison as a Black activist; she was a novelist. What does storytelling have to do with changing the world?

Ah! That’s exactly the connection to notice: the best stories are always world-changing, even if the “world” is one’s own interior landscape.

The essayist noted, for example, that Morrison’s novel Beloved is deliberately “fragmented,” and that she invented a kind of narrative language to evoke the unspeakable horrors of slavery and its brutalities, but also the resilience, the courage, the beauty of those who had been enslaved. For Morrison, stories matter because, at least in part, they can contain what our minds cannot confront.

Stories, fables, and mythologies often tell the truest things about us, even when we don’t want to know them. We tell stories to navigate the world, to pass along vital information, and to create places of meaning and purpose for ourselves in the unfolding evolution of the Universe. We also tell stories when we just can’t bear reality any other way.

Among the most important (and nearly entirely caricatured) sets of such mission-critical stories sits nestled in the first three chapters of Genesis, brilliantly stitched together from a variety of ancient mythologies by an ancient storyteller who is wrestling with what it means to be human. As we heard in church yesterday (if we could manage not to hear what isn’t in that story and turn down the volume on all the messages most of us heard from childhood and 1970s television ), this biblical storyteller struggles with the human condition because of a key conviction: we are not yet embracing the kind of life for which God made us (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7).

In the same way that Toni Morrison understood the power of stories to contain what our minds cannot confront, this biblical storyteller can help us face the agonizing aspects of human life and also the staggering beauty of living as a creature of the living God. The struggle and the beauty; the agony and the glory—not only stories, but visual art carries into those spaces where are linear modes of cognitive sorting fear to tread, as artist Edwin Lester reminds me so vividly.

That’s what makes these first three chapters of the Bible so foundational: not as a pseudo-scientific account of human origins (Darwin is not an enemy of faith!), but rather as a story about the human condition that can help us travel along the good road toward flourishing.

We might also note that churches committed to the three-year lectionary cycle are currently living in Year A, which just happens to be the foundational year for the sake of Christian formation, and we certainly had plenty of material to sort through yesterday for the beginning of Lent! The story from Genesis, and also St. Paul’s interpretation of that story in his letter to the Romans (5:12-19), and still more: Matthew’s version of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (4:1-11).

Each of these texts separately and especially taken together reflect the ongoing and often deeply vexing struggle with it means to be human: in relation to each other, with the wider world of God’s creation, and in God. This struggle maps the entire Lenten journey—toward the Cross and into the Empty Tomb—and for many of us they are vexing texts, irritating, familiar enough to breed contempt, and almost always weaponized (as often happens with the best stories).

All of that vexation was certainly true for me, for many years, and then, as if flooded by divine illumination—probably because of a providential confluence of arguing with Christian fundamentalists about marriage equality and seeing a gay Jewish therapist about my own internalized homophobia—I suddenly read the Bible through an entirely different and luminous lens.

The following is the fresh path I’m still traveling through these texts, briefly charted (and if you want to read more about this, it’s at the heart of my book on thinking theological about sexual intimacy):

The first (and I would say most important and vital) thing to notice comes from the temptation in that ancient and iconic garden in Genesis. Quite honestly, my entire professional life, as well as my personal life, changed dramatically when I saw clearly what resided at the root of that temptation: shame.

Yes, it is also true that this story is about disobedience and guilt and the need for forgiveness; but those aspects are secondary, because they emerge first and foremost from the deadly dynamics of bodily shame—and they are indeed devilishly deadly. (I cannot recommend highly enough the work of Brene Brown on this; among here many videos and publications, you can start with this TED Talk on shame.)

I am thoroughly convinced that the vast preponderance of the world’s distress is rooted in unacknowledged and unaddressed shame. Notice carefully the character of the temptation itself. The wise serpent says to the first humans: “if you eat this fruit, you will be like God.”

Here’s the essence of that crafty invitation: to suppose that the way God made us isn’t good enough; being merely human is not enough—we have to be like gods.

That’s shame talking, not guilt, and the difference matters: Guilt attaches to something I’ve done; shame attaches to my sense of self. This ancient storyteller then shows us the deadly effects of shame: it separates us from each other, it separates us from the wider world of God’s creation, and it urges us to turn away from God.

Not just coincidentally, what follows immediately after this moment in the next chapter of Genesis is the story of fratricide, when Cain kills his brother Abel; shame often gets projected outward into violence—it’s in the daily news every single day.

The second thing to notice is how Matthew’s Jesus resists the deadly solutions to the problem of shame—even though they are very tempting.

Every year on the first Sunday in Lent, most Christians hear the story about Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. This year, I read that story as for the first time. Thanks to the lectionary pairings (like fine wines with a delicious meal of Mediterranean food?), it suddenly occurred to me that each of the temptations Jesus faced is just another version of what the serpent offered Adam and Eve in the garden: a way to reject human nature.

Oh, the trickster serpent says to Jesus, you’re hungry? A mere human couldn’t solve that problem; but if you really are the Son of God, why don’t you turn these stones into bread?

Oh, you’re afraid of heights? Mere humans usually are. But if you really are God’s chosen, jump off this high tower; God will surely save you.

Oh, you’re a bit short of money? That’s a classic source of human anxiety, poor thing. So just worship me, and I’ll give you all the riches of the world.

Jesus says No to each of these ways of rejecting his God-given humanity—he may be hungry, afraid, and poor, but his humanity is intact for the good road toward divine flourishing, toward the very purpose God intends, which is nothing less than abundant life, for all.

The story from Genesis presents that abundance, I would say, as a life made for communion—for deep intimacy with each other, an interlaced community with the wider world of God’s creation, and union with God.

Shame inevitably corrodes that purpose from the inside out, erupting into hateful speech, fragmenting families and communities, and maintaining deadly divisions among us with violence.

Among the many reasons Christian communities keep the Eucharist as the heart of their life of common prayer, surely this must be paramount: It is the Table of Communion: a visible and tangible reminder of the kind of life for which God makes us and toward which God wants to lead us.

Yes, gathered at that Table offers the vital assurance that we are forgiven; and perhaps today what we need even more urgently is that Table’s balm of love to heal our shame.

Shameless Living and the Sign of the Serpent

John does something very strange in the otherwise very familiar third chapter of his account of the Gospel. What John does is so strange that most people just skip right over it on their way to what is likely the most well-known verse in the entire Bible—John 3:16 (which we can still see people holding up on placards in football stadiums).

For God does indeed love the world, as the sixteenth verse declares, and yet in the two verses before that one, John’s Jesus refers to his own death on a cross by comparing himself favorably to a serpent, and for the sake of life.

The research I did on this strange passage more than fifteen years ago turned out to be life-changing for me. It shaped my second book (Divine Communion: A Eucharistic Theology of Sexual Intimacy), and I am convinced that this passage holds the key to the kind of healing love the world today so desperately needs.

Some textual sleuthing is in order to get to the heart of the matter here, and that involves taking some steps back into the Hebrew Bible—back to the equally strange story of Moses in the desert that many Christians heard this past Sunday in concert with the passage from John. And then back further still to the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

That’s the textual trail I tried to map from the pulpit this past Sunday, the fourth in Lent. And the image that ties all of it together is of course the serpent.

In ancient Mediterranean societies, the symbol of a serpent enjoyed multiple and interwoven meanings. A serpent sometimes symbolized eternity, with depictions of a snake eating its own tail to signal the circularity of infinite time. Serpents could also symbolize healing, as the shedding of a snake’s skin signified the promise of renewal.

These ancient societies also knew very well that snakes can be dangerous and deadly. That mix—whether of danger and healing, of both risk and renewal—that mix shows up in the old aphorism about how to soothe the effects of a hangover—what you need is a “hair from the dog that bit you.”

That insight also contributed to the development of modern vaccines. And the insight is just this: that which causes the disease also provides the cure.

That insight found its way into that rather strange story from the Book of Numbers (21:4-9) where the ancient Israelites are wandering through the desert and they stumble into a nest of poisonous snakes, the bites from which make many of them ill and some of them die. God instructs Moses to make a bronze image of a serpent and to lift it high upon a pole so everyone can see it. All those who looked at it were healed.

Some have suggested that this story from Numbers led to the familiar image we still see today of a snake wrapped around a pole as a symbol for the medical professions and healthcare; here again, the key insight remains: that which causes the disease also provides the cure.

Going back to the third chapter of Genesis, we encounter yet another serpent. That story of Adam and Eve in the garden is so familiar that most people miss exactly what that serpent said to Adam and Eve.

Standard readings of that chapter from Genesis frame it as a story about humanity’s guilt and our need to be forgiven for our sin. I embrace that way of reading the story, but it’s not the only way to read it. By focusing so much attention on sin and guilt, the modern Church has left virtually untouched the epidemic of shame and violence.

This was the life-changing insight for me years ago when I was researching these texts, to understand the difference between guilt and shame.

Guilt attaches to something I have done, a mistake or an offense which I can confess and for which I can seek forgiveness. Shame, by contrast, attaches to my sense of self and who I am, usually in quite physical and bodily ways.

Guilt says, “I did something bad”; shame says, “I am bad.”

Social psychologists and sociologists have been urging us to notice for quite some time now just how pervasive shame is and just how severe are its consequences. (Be sure to read Brene Brown on this and watch her videos.)

Shame can make us dangerous to ourselves (in patterns of isolation and alienation and addiction and self-harm) and also dangerous to others (when we project our own shame on those who are different from us, or whole communities, or other species, and then treat them with hostility and violence).

Take all of this back into that ancient story of a garden where a serpent persuades human beings to eat forbidden fruit. If you eat it, the serpent says, “you will be like gods.”

The essence of this temptation is to suppose that being human isn’t good enough; that how God made us is flawed; that who we are is fundamentally bad.

That’s a lie; it’s simply not true. The ancient storyteller in Genesis insists that what God makes is good, and is indeed very good (1:31).

When Adam and Eve believed the lie, they tumbled into the spiral of shame, with the results today’s psychologists would easily recognize: they hid from each other; they hid from the wider world of the garden; and they hid from God. And in the very next story, Cain kills his brother Abel.

Shame isolates and shame kills.

And so, John’s Jesus says to Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up for the sake of unending life.”

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent…

Why just like that?

Because, if being human is the cause of our distress, then the truly human one—and that’s what that title “Son of Man” means—then the Truly Human One will be the source of our healing. After all, that which causes the disease also provides the cure.

Here’s one of the key pivot points in my own theological development that these interlaced texts provoked: shame cannot be forgiven; it can only be healed. And in that moment of realization, I remembered the Australian aboriginal story about the rainbow serpent, who created the land and the humans to inhabit it.

The rainbow, the serpent, the associations with sex and sexuality, bodily shame, and growing up gay: I still have trouble threading all of this together with the words of a logical sequence. But somehow I came to know this: embracing that which caused my shame would be healing; it would save me.

The grace of God provides forgiveness when we’re guilty.

The love of God provides healing when we’re ashamed.

That’s likely enough, more than enough, to ponder. And still, I can’t stop thinking about that distorted desire and the tormented urge to “be like gods.”

Humanity’s godlike aspirations and ambitions have led to unspeakable pain: the dynamics of racism and white supremacy; misogyny and the denigration of women, which leads quickly to the oppression of LGBT people; stockpiling weapons of mass destruction and enough nuclear warheads to obliterate humanity many times over; the relentless decimation of ecosystems and plundering of the environments that give us life—all of this, I’m absolutely convinced, and an ancient story about a serpent in a garden illustrates, is rooted in the corrosive effects of bodily shame.

Our salvation as a species and for the sake of this precious Earth may very well depend on the most robust and fulsome reading possible of that one chapter from Genesis, and in concert with that famous chapter from John: being fully at home in our own bodies without shame; fully at home on Earth without any guilt; and fully at home with God without any fear.

The world can scarcely name what it so desperately needs from today’s churches: spaces where we are free to love fiercely and live shamelessly and for the sake of a world in pain.

That great work begins and returns often to what Jesus wanted Nicodemus to see: God so loves the world that God forgives our guilt and heals our shame.