We all feel shame when we do wrong. We should. It shows us that our consciences are working as God intended. But if we will lay down our claims to self-righteousness and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ we will be saved, we will be justified, we will be in the right with a holy God. And that is the only way sinners can find the solution to their shame.

Repentance vs. Emotional Healing

The western world is not united on much. However, there may be one thing that draws nearly everyone together. It is the attempt to banish the idea that we should ever be ashamed of ourselves or our actions. You see this mentality everywhere you turn. Oprah Winfrey recently commented on her use of a weight loss drug, despite the stigma attached to such weight-loss “cheating”: “‘I now use it as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing,’ Winfrey said, adding that she’s ‘absolutely done with the shaming from other people and particularly myself.’”

I’m not particularly interested in how people feel about taking weight loss drugs, but I am interested in the modern quest to banish shame to the outer darkness of polite society. As a part of thinking through how modern therapeutic thinking has gained ground (and done much harm) in the church, I keep coming back to the idea of shame. Shame is also treated in Christians circles much like the plague: we must rid ourselves of shame at all costs. And by this I do not mean rid ourselves of shame by taking our guilt to the cross to find forgiveness from the Lord. No, many in the evangelical church, taking their cues from the wider culture, insist that we must instead make sure that we never feel shame. Shame is treated as a disease. And the cure is convincing ourselves that we have nothing to be ashamed of in the first place. Are you a mom who feels shame because you can’t live up to the Instagram ideal? Are you a dad who struggles with shame because you work too much due to anxiety about paying the bills? Banish the thought.

There are, of course, all sorts of unrealistic, and frankly unbiblical, expectations we can face in life. Mothers are called to be faithful to what God commands, not to some bogus influencer lifestyle, and so on. But the contemporary evangelical aversion to shame goes much further than that. It is an attempt to eliminate the very idea of shame, to portray shame as a harmful feeling to be jettisoned, like any other injurious emotion. Popular authors such as Brené Brown have had a large impact on many in Christian churches. She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance, connection or belonging.” Following her lead, one Christian author (selected at random from countless possibilities to be found online) insists that “living in shame is neither healthy nor part of God’s plan.” Dealing with shame is routinely put in therapeutic terms by Christian counselors adopting the therapeutic models of worldly psychologists:

Shame is one of the most difficult emotions that can affect you. It is hard to spot on your own, yet it can pervade through almost every area of your life. Overcoming shame is difficult to do. Yet by meditating on Bible verses about shame, you can walk toward the light of healing that God provides.

In a culture defined by the “triumph of the therapeutic” shame needs healing, not repentance.

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