What is it about the cross and its embrace of shame that informs and inspires Christians, who, for various reasons, might find themselves inscribed by shame, to no longer be shameful?
This article discusses, without graphic detail, issues of sexual abuse and trauma. Readers sensitive to these topics should take note.
In her book, The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge makes a keen observation about Paul’s statement in Romans regarding the gospel:
The apostle Paul, writing a letter to the Christians in Rome, brought his ringing introduction to a climax with these words: I am not ashamed of the gospel. Why should he be ashamed? we might ask. Why would it be necessary to issue this disclaimer? A person opening a Bible in search of spiritual guidance, inspiration, or instruction might well be puzzled to find so blunt a reference to being ashamed. One might search religious literature for a long time and never find any such language as this.
Rutledge proceeds to answer her own questions by pointing readers to the cross of Christ since crucifixion was synonymous with shame in the ancient world. Christians, traditionally, have embraced the cross and its shame, and in so doing are released from shame’s inscribing power. The shame of the cross is actually the glory of God and the hope of salvation. So, says Paul, “I am not ashamed of it.”
My own question is this: What is it about the cross and its embrace of shame that informs and inspires Christians, who, for various reasons, might find themselves inscribed by shame, to no longer be shameful? Any potential answer is caught up with more than a hope for therapeutic resolve. In other words, pastorally, the motivation to answer such a question runs deeper than simply relieving the feelings of shame. This is because shame is not just a feeling. It is a status, and different cultures enforce and apply it differently. Wherever it is present, shame always acts to exclude. Guilt, by contrast (a close cousin to shame) is more often a private, interior feeling, whereas shame is a public recognition of failed social expectations. Guilt is private and sometimes public, but guilt can usually be forgiven. Shame, however, is a lasting status, a shift in identity, and it both alienates those it adheres to from others and from one’s own self. Addressing shame and doing so in a way that accounts for all its seriousness requires a dedication to the struggle and respect for its destructive power.
In 410 A.D./C.E., Rome was sacked by the Visigoths. For over 1,400 years the Roman Empire had stood as the center of the world. Imagine that for a moment. Then, in an afternoon, the magnificent capital city fell. Rome’s fall was existentially catastrophic. For most people in the Empire, it was like the world was ending. Immediately, critics, academics, philosophers, and theologians began “making sense” of the fall of Rome by giving explanations for its demise and overthrow. One popular answer was that Rome fell because it abandoned the old gods and became Christian. It was Christianity that had led to Rome’s downfall. Augustine, who lived in Northern Africa at this time, wrote a defense of Christianity and against these claims in his monumental work, City of God.
The opening of the book dives right into the horror of war. It is a theological but also pastoral approach. One significant problem was the real and perceived rapes of the victims in cities that had been overrun. Roman culture was generally unkind to rape victims, and a long-standing view was that victims of rape should be ashamed, for they had lost their honor.
A wildly popular story that perpetuated this view was the Roman story of Lucretia. Lucretia was a virtuous Roman woman who was raped. But to publicly show that she did not consent to the rape or enjoy it, she chose to win back her honor by committing suicide. Every Roman would have known this tale, and it both reflected and inscribed the view that being a rape victim was something that carried great shame—it was a loss of honor and respect that could only be found again in the willful act of self-destruction.
In The City of God, Augustine contrasts pagan morality with Christian morality and prods his audience to judge which is superior. With so many rapes having occurred in war, Augustine takes the position that rape victims need not be ashamed since they did not consent but were victimized. But he goes further also to say that their chastity remains intact. Here is a brief sample of his argument:
Since purity is a virtue of the soul and has for its companion the fortitude which will rather endure all ills than consent to evil, and since no one, however magnanimous and pure, always has the disposal of his own body, but can control only the consent and refusal of his will, what sane man can suppose that, if his body be seized and forcibly made use of to satisfy the lust of another, he thereby loses his virginity?...This then, is our position, and it seems sufficiently lucid. We maintain that when a woman is violated while her soul admits no consent to the iniquity, but remains inviolably chase, the sin is not hers, but his who violates her.
Augustine is trying to address the question of suicide, “she [Lucretia] was a victim of her own shame,” he writes. For him, Lucretia’s shame caused her to commit suicide. Augustine points out that inner shame requires a love of the praise of men since the grief of shame is exclusion from the group. Because people desire to be part of the group, to be accepted and loved by men, they may even go to the unreasonable length of committing suicide because, in so doing, they win back their honor. For Augustine, shame is dangerously powerful, but it is also caught up in pride and idolatry. For what one seeks when one seeks to relieve shame is acceptance. At least, this is how he thinks shame operates from person to person.
To follow in the way of Jesus is to be led out of the praises of men.
Perhaps Augustine’s analysis here seems too academic. Real victims of shame do not often feel it unreasonable to demand that life be enriched with loving relationships and embrace. However, the theological point Augustine raises is still acute. It focuses on the fact that shame should not be made out to be worse than it already is. I hear Augustine as essentially saying, “Don’t give shame any more power; it already has the power to kill, but if you look at it closely, shame is caught up in deeper insecurities we all have, in our flesh, about approval and acceptance. Who do we really care to be accepted by? Who is the true determiner of our honor?”
Are approval and acceptance wrong? Is it unreasonable or selfish to desire embrace rather than exclusion? No. However, the “no” comes–like all things–within a context. When St. Paul says he is not ashamed of the gospel, he is referencing the fact that others think he should be. Paul recognizes that the reality of following Jesus necessarily means exclusion from the dominant group. It means disdain and blacklisting. On the other hand, Paul is at pains to teach Christians to be forgiving to each other, love each other, and recognize their mutual need for each other’s gifts and talents. Such repeated teaching shows that Christians struggled to be the kind of community God asked them to be for each other.
If we think about Jesus and his cross, what we see there is God excluded and shamed. For Jesus to do the will of God, he had to clothe himself with shame and be excluded. Not all of us are called to such dramatic self-sacrifice (thankfully), but we are all called to take up the cross and follow him. That means, at the very least, a recognition that to follow in the way of Jesus is to be led out of the praises of men and up to the hill of Golgotha, where the sinners offer no mercy and share only their utter disdain.
Who can take up such an invitation? No one, except by faith.
Christians often understand the theological point that Christ took on our shame, but many find it difficult to apply to the shame-stained realities they live with. It is harder to see how it speaks into the life of the father, who feels deep shame for not being able to see his kids as often because of a recent divorce. It doesn’t seem easy to apply to the girl who suffers from body dysmorphia and cuts herself. And it feels like a cheap dismissal to the many victims of abuse, sexual trauma, and abandonment—all experiences that bring great shame to victims even if we tell victims they shouldn’t feel that way.
Does the cross offer a way out of shame by embracing it? I think so, but I caution to add that this application is a process of healing, a form of tender discipleship where Jesus invites his people to join him on the cross, as the thief did. Not that we can take away the sins of the world. Only Christ and his righteousness can do that. But the invitation of the cross is beckoning to come, to behold the Lamb, whose body is naked, wounded, bleeding, and marked by the spit of those who would shame him. Who can take up such an invitation? No one, except by faith.
And what do we find there? We find that God is found in the place of shame. We do not find God, the God for us, in Israel’s pleasant pastures or in the marbled halls of Rome’s forums. We find him displayed as disdained because to be shamed is to be excluded. Where we find Christ is where we, as the human race, refuse to want to see him. He comes, and he dies a failure, a condemned criminal: naked, afraid, and shamed by the oppressor.
No shame we bear out-shames the One most shamed by being lifted up on a cross.
And yet, this also means that to those who find themselves excluded and ashamed, Christ is already there. He does not wait for us to come to him, for in our shame, God’s beloved son, in whom he is proud and pleased—this is where he has made a home. He has made a home on the cross. To those caught in the suffocating weeds of shame, we are asked to behold the One who carries our shame as his own. He meets us as brother and sister in the place where human wisdom, human kindness, and human justice have fallen short of their promises or reached their limits. But Christ’s love and forgiveness have no limits, and no shame we bear out-shames the One most shamed by being lifted up on a cross.
God is there on the cross, and he invites us to exchange our shame for his own. But, as is so often the case, God’s shame turns out to not be shame but forgiveness, embrace, and righteousness. God’s shame is God’s grace, meted out upon those who meet him at the cross. Hidden behind the shame of the cross is God's glory, glory distributed and gifted in the grace of righteousness.
This does not mean the cross acts like a magic wand that takes our pain, trauma, suffering, and feelings of shame right away with one sweeping dash. No. The cross is always painful. But the cross does, as Augustine noted, invite us to seek the acceptance of the One who never leaves us, who always heals us, and who, quite literally, is not ashamed of us. As Augustine noted, true chastity is a spiritual condition, and he infers that honor is, too. It follows, then, that shame is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. And the only beholder that counts is God, who has taken all our shame away. If that is true, perhaps we can begin the process of healing and rethinking our identity. We can embrace the shame of the cross so that we can learn not to be ashamed of our sins or our traumas. Our shame lives at home on the cross, on the One who did not earn it. It is no longer ours.
