Two months ago a glamorous media superstar shocked the world when she confessed a reckless, sordid offense- she had fallen off her diet and weighed nearly 200 pounds! She publicly apologized to her horrified but patient followers.
Last week an Olympic gold medalist returned to the headlines in a photo which caught him in the act of illegal drug abuse. He quickly summoned the press to apologize for poor judgment. Media consultants praised his prompt mea culpa which might well have nipped this scandal in the bud before millions of dollars in product endorsements were lost forever.
That same week, a nominee for a high profile federal appointment was taken aback by press reports that he had failed to pay income taxes which amounted to thousands of dollars over several years. Worse still, he had finally corrected the problem and paid the IRS only hours before his nomination was made public. The highly respected ex-tax cheat scheduled a press conference and apologized for his mistake. He was promptly confirmed by the US Senate.
I haven’t mentioned the well known names associated with these stories because I’m not here to throw stones. Rather, these are just three of the most recent examples of a vast, sweeping character crisis that threatens to blast away the foundations of our great nation. In his insightful book Losing Our Virtue, author David Wells traces many of our most serious losses back to our national obsession with Self. For example, he observes that Americans no longer experience guilt. By contrast, shame seems to be a constant reality in the lives of Americans. People who don't feel guilty about crimes against others are genuinely ashamed that getting caught has threatened their own dreams and ambitions.
Although the two concepts may seem similar at first, they are in reality very different beasts. As Dr. Wells explains, guilt is about falling short of God’s objective standards of right and wrong. By contrast, shame is falling short of my own ideals and fantasies. Guilt requires that I recognize my offense, repent, repay any losses, and request the forgiveness of someone else. Shame means only that I must learn to accept myself with all my flaws and promise to try harder in the future.
The American soul no longer registers personal guilt because we deny that there is any universal code which applies to everyone. In a culture in which even “Born Again” church members overwhelmingly believe there are no moral absolutes, no wonder secular people have opted to let the heart be their guide. After all, there are ongoing debates about the moral impact of things like plural marriage, homosexuality, and hallucinogenic drugs. But everyone knows obesity kills! And not only that, but it’s a turn off on HD TV! And so are your bad skin and crooked teeth!
It's ironic: the world finally convinced us that guilt was a terrible motivator. We finally accepted the idea that guilt oppressed multitudes, intimidated people, and drove them to do good things for the wrong reasons. So we stopped pressing the Guilt Button, and even stopped talking about sin. And now we find there are other motivations that are even worse than guilt. In the old days, some people did the right things for the wrong reasons. Nowadays we have a different problem: people doing the wrong things because they're ashamed. And there are lots of empty men and women out there who would swap the futility of shame for the urgency of good old guilt in a heart beat.
Shame compels men and women to hide in closets, to cower in self hatred, sometimes to take their own lives. True guilt points offenders to the One who established those standards of right and wrong in the first place. And when we arrive at his throne and find ourselves standing there in rags of unrighteousness, we discover something astonishing: I don't have to be ashamed anymore.
What do you think?
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