http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/16998051/distinguishing-shame-from-guilt
Audio Transcript
We get absolutely flooded with questions here at APJ — way more than we could ever get to, as you know if you’ve read the stats I put in my little history of this podcast in the APJ book. But here’s something interesting that you might not know: Quite a few of those questions coming in are actually from authors who are working on new book projects. It’s quite something to see Ask Pastor John episodes popping up in the footnotes of books these days. And there’s a very good chance today’s episode is going to show up in a future footnote as well, because our question today comes from author Scott Christensen. Scott is a heavy hitter when it comes to tackling big questions. Just look at his books: What about Free Will? and What about Evil? Not exactly light reading (though he does do shorter versions of these books too, bless him). Scott’s new project dives into true and false shame, true and false guilt — pretty meaty stuff. He’s sent us this email.
“Pastor John, hello! I’ve got three questions for you. First up, how do you separate shame from guilt? Then, what makes false shame and false guilt different from the real thing? And finally — where does each one come from? I keep thinking the conscience must play a huge role in all this. Thank you!”
Back in the 1980s, I wrestled a good deal with the concepts of shame and guilt because they were very prominent in pop psychology. There was a popular book, for example, by John Bradshaw called Healing the Shame That Binds You, published in 1988. That book was shaping a lot of the discourse in evangelicalism and around my church. I found that book very problematical. But in the last forty years, I haven’t kept up with the way psychotherapy is talking about shame and guilt, so I don’t know if what I’m going to say right now is going to connect directly with what people who are studying these things today would think, but we’ll see.
The common definition in psychotherapy back then was this: While guilt is painful regret and responsibility for one’s actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person. I didn’t then and I don’t now embrace that definition, mainly because it’s not the definition used in the Bible. Using that definition makes understanding and applying the Bible more difficult, which is what I do and want to do; I want to understand the Bible and apply the Bible to shame and guilt.
Biblical Guilt and Shame
Here’s my effort to define and distinguish guilt and shame based on the way the Bible talks about these realities. Guilt is the moral and legal condition of deserving punishment for real wrongdoing. A person may feel guilty, but his feeling is not the same as the guilt. The feeling may be justified if there’s true guilt, or the feeling may be unjustified if there’s no true guilt. You can feel guilty and not be guilty, and you can be guilty and not feel guilty. The Bible doesn’t use the word guilt or the concept of guilt for a feeling. One may or may not have that feeling and yet be truly guilty.
“Consciences need to be recalibrated so that they don’t condemn us as guilty when we have not done wrong.”
So, guilt assumes a moral law or a moral standard and a system by which a person is held accountable for infractions of that moral standard. Guilt is the condition of being called to account for those infractions of the moral law. It’s not a matter of how one feels about reality. The book of James says, “Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10). The Greek word James uses, enochos, is used in the New Testament ten times and always means deserving of or liable to punishment for real wrongdoing. So, there’s a biblical concept of guilt that refers to the moral and legal condition of deserving punishment for real wrongdoing. It’s not a feeling; it’s a moral and legal status before the law of God or man.
Shame is different. The basic idea is a negative, painful emotion of disgrace or humiliation caused by evildoing or shortcoming or impropriety. (I’ll illustrate that in just a minute.) And this emotion is defined in part by the fact that other people think you should indeed be ashamed. Other people are watching; other people are assessing. So, the basic idea is the painful emotion of disgrace as others watch us.
But the meaning of the word shame is expanded beyond that in the Bible to refer to the behavior or the condition that brings down the emotion of shame. For example, Paul says some people “glory in their shame” (Philippians 3:19). Those people don’t feel shame — they don’t, but they should. And the behavior that is shameful and should make them ashamed is called their shame. Or in Hebrews 12:2, it says Jesus despised “the shame” of the cross. That means that a condition that ordinarily ought to overwhelm a person with shame — namely, hanging naked on a cross — Jesus steadfastly resisted for the joy that was set before him. So, shame in the Bible is a painful emotion of disgrace or humiliation — or the behavior or the condition that would ordinarily cause such an emotion as people look on.
Separating True from False
Now, what about true and false guilt, true and false shame? A person is truly guilty if he did wrong before the law of God or the just law of man, and a person is not guilty if he has done no such wrong. If he has done wrong, he should feel his guilt. This is what a healthy conscience is for. If he has not done wrong, he should not feel guilty, no matter how many people try to make him feel guilty, no matter whether his conscience indicts him or not. He’s not guilty if he hasn’t done the wrong.
There are areas where our consciences need to be, as Andy Naselli has helpfully written, recalibrated. Consciences need to be recalibrated so that they don’t condemn us as guilty when we have not done wrong. There is an objective reality that we can conform to, and our consciences might condemn us when we haven’t done anything wrong. We need to recalibrate our consciences according to the word of God. If a person is forgiven by God on the basis of Jesus taking our punishment on himself, he should not feel guilty even though he did the wrong, because the wrong is now covered. It’s been duly punished.
What about true and false shame, good and bad shame? A few illustrations might help. Suppose you cheat and lie on your income tax return in order to hold back proper taxes. A year goes by, and your conscience bothers you because you really are guilty, but you don’t feel shame. It’s all private; nobody knows. Then the IRS comes knocking. The word gets out to everybody you know in your church and in your community that you lied, you were caught red-handed, you have been fined and humiliated — and then you feel shame. And you ought to feel shame. That’s proper shame, true shame, good shame. And you should want not only to receive God’s forgiveness, which is available in Christ for your true guilt, your true wrongdoing, but you should also want to regain your good name and trust in the community, which may take longer and involves a good bit of faithful, humble obedience and upright living.
Or suppose you’ve trained for months to run a 1500-meter race, and you’re competing with other runners in front of a thousand people, and it turns out that they are so superior to you that all of them cross the finish line and you are still three hundred meters behind. So, while they’re celebrating, you’re still running while a thousand people watch you. Should you be ashamed? Well, yes, if you were out partying until one in the morning and wrecking your training the night before, you should. But no, not if you did your best. If you feel ashamed having done your God-given best, it probably means you love the praise of man more than the praise of God.
Or suppose you simply commit an impropriety. You go to a party thinking you’re dressed appropriately, and when you get there, you find out everybody else is dressed differently, and you look totally out of place. Now, there’s no guilt here — it’s an honest mistake — but you probably feel embarrassed. But there should be no mortifying shame. A Christian should have such a strong sense of being loved and accepted, invested in significant life and work by God, that such a mistake quickly passes into forgetfulness.
Well, so much more could be said. Chapter 10 in my book Future Grace is all about shame and how to overcome it. But I hope this is at least helpful in pointing to how I would try to answer our friend’s questions.
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Honor Women Like Our Lord Does
As discussion about women in the church lingers online and in the minds of congregants, I wonder if some sisters today feel that their churches debate their proper callings more than they delight in them as one of God’s best gifts. The conversations about what women can and cannot do in the context of the church are poignant in this particular moment. Can they preach, teach, or lead a co-ed Bible study? These conversations matter because the Scriptures speak to them. Yet the church’s public discourse about women, when healthy, is marked most of all by celebrations of women as faithful saints.
Women across continents and denominations report their local-church participation often leaves them feeling overlooked and undervalued. What a sad reality that our mothers and daughters often feel that Christ’s very own bride holds them at arm’s length, even if unintentionally.
We are right to aim for theological precision in all matters, including the callings of men and women in the church. But we would also do well to ask, Does the way we talk about women reflect the way the Scriptures celebrate them?
Introducing Eve
Recall man’s first words in Scripture. After God created the world and everything in it, the narrative sings with the rhythm, “And God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). But then suddenly, God declares, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). And so, God makes the woman — the helper fit for the man. And as a father would usher the bride to her expectant husband, so God “brought [the woman] to the man” (Genesis 2:22).
“Remarkably, the first words a woman heard from a man announced the joy he took in her being.”
What follows are the first recorded sentences from human lips in Scripture. Upon seeing the woman, Adam explodes with delight: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man” (Genesis 2:23). Remarkably, the first words a woman heard from a man announced the joy he took in her being.
At that moment, the woman hadn’t yet done anything except exist by the power of God. Yet her very existence leads Adam to rejoice. Without any further instruction, he understands that the woman is an extraordinary gift to him. He had known life in God’s world apart from her, and, once with her, he immediately loves her and knows how essential she is to God’s mandate that humans should take dominion and multiply (Genesis 1:28).
Without Eve, Adam cannot fulfill God’s calling. Without the woman, the story stops. In the very good beginning, God puts his wisdom on magnificent display in her creation. And as the story of the world progresses, God puts front and center the essential part women will play in his redemptive plan.
Book of Heroines
The Scriptures brim with narratives that underscore the essential and exalted place women hold in God’s economy. From Rebekah, whose Abraham-like faith compelled her to leave her home for a place and people she did not know (Genesis 24), to Ruth the Moabite widow, whose conversion to Yahweh led her to become part of the Messianic line, the Bible’s story cannot be told apart from the lives of faithful women.
In the ancient world, women were far more vulnerable than today, in part because they did not enjoy the same legal rights as men. Yet in that very context, Scripture celebrates women by repeatedly placing them in the stream of God’s redemptive plan, where their fidelity to God often throws into relief the disobedience of fallen men. We know many of their names: Sarah, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Esther, Elizabeth, and Priscilla. Four women even appear in Christ’s genealogy, including Rahab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Mary (Matthew 1:5–16).
“The Bible’s story cannot be told apart from the lives of faithful women.”
Yet there are many others whose names are known only to God: women who received back their dead by resurrection (Hebrews 11:35); the widow of Zarepath, whose son was raised (1 Kings 17:17–24); the industrious godly woman extolled in Proverbs 31; the widow who offered everything (Mark 12:41–44); the sinful woman whose lavish care for Jesus in washing his feet with tears exposed the hypocrisy of the religious elite (Luke 7:36–50); and the Canaanite woman whose faith was answered with her daughter’s healing (Matthew 15:21–28).
Great Commission Women
Unbridled faith in God marks all of these accounts, and continues to encourage believers today. You can’t read your Bible without discerning the honored role God assigns women at every point in his story. Just as God gave Adam a mandate to multiply on the earth, so God gave the church a mission to multiply disciples. And so, just as Adam marveled at God’s creation of the woman, so the Bible teaches us to glorify God for the incredible gift of women who are in Christ.
Our sisters have been wonderfully indispensable to the church’s work of bearing witness to Christ and making disciples. God used Priscilla to sharpen and instruct the preacher Apollos in the way of God (Acts 18:24–26). Apart from the fervent prayers and godly life of Monica, the church may not enjoy the treasures of her son, Augustine.
Who can know how much eternal fruit the sacrificial labors of Lottie Moon and Gladys Aylward bore through their long ministries in China? Or through Amy Carmichael’s lifelong ministry in India?
Of course, we don’t just praise the Christian sisters whom we know by name. There are countless names we have not yet heard whom we will honor in the age to come. They are steadfast mothers and wives who pray down heaven while giving themselves to their family from dawn to dusk and even through the darkest nights. They are single women who joyfully content themselves in God while the world constantly tempts them to believe their faith is folly. My own experience living overseas testifies to the truth that far more young unmarried women cross oceans and borders for the sake of the gospel than men.
Honoring the Women Among Us
In the church, as in the garden, it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). In a day in which popular culture has muddled the lines between men and women, Christian men today have an opportunity to give fresh evidence for how much we admire women and value womanhood. Created in God’s wisdom and by his power, the church’s mothers and daughters are not second-class citizens in the church.
God presented the first woman to the first man as a gift, and he continues giving women as blessings to his church today. And just as the woman knew the man’s joy in her immediately, so too it would be fitting for Christian women to regularly hear how much of an asset they are to the church, both locally and globally. Adam could not multiply and take dominion without the woman (Genesis 1:28). And without Christian women, we the church will not be able to fulfill our mission to bear witness and make disciples (Matthew 28:18–20). The whole of the Scriptures and church history bear witness to this fact.
Every day, women advance the mission of the church by demonstrating the matchless worth of Christ. We cannot afford to overlook these sisters in Christ — neither the God of history nor God-in-the-flesh overlooks them.
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Taste Test Your Way to God’s Will
Audio Transcript
Boredom and purpose are the two themes we’re talking about this week. They’re related. Last time, on Monday, we looked at God’s purpose in our boredom — basically, that God plans for human beings to be frustrated by their experience in this world until they realize that they were made for God. It’s a really helpful reminder.
And today we continue talking about purpose as we seek to find and follow God’s will for our lives. We’re on the topic because tomorrow, in the Navigator’s Bible Reading Plan that we’re reading together, we launch into Philippians and study one of the key, essential texts for learning to discern God’s will. I’m talking about Philippians 1:9–10. Read those verses especially carefully, because in them we learn that following God’s will requires that we “approve what is excellent.” In other words, we taste test our way to discerning God’s will. He intends that we have a faculty, a palate, for tasting what is true and what is pleasing.
The question today is from a podcast listener named Tenielle. She asks about another text, but Philippians 1:9–10 is going to factor in here. Here’s the question: “Pastor John, Romans 12:2 says, ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.’ Pastor John, what does Paul mean when he says ‘by testing’?”
That is a really, really good question. I love it because it means she is really paying attention. She is looking at the book, and she cares about the words, and I love people who care about the words of Scripture. And she is obviously reading from the English Standard Version, I think, because that phrase is translated in different ways. Let me just give it again: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God.”
Spiritual Litmus Test
“By testing.” Now, that phrase — “by testing you may discern” — is the translation of one Greek word, dokimazō. The standard lexical definition goes like this: “to make a critical examination of something to determine genuineness, such as metals by fire.” And interestingly, it is used in 1 Corinthians 3:13, where it says, “Fire will test [and that is the word, dokimazō] what sort of work each one has done.” So, our works at the last day are going to be tested by fire.
The idea is that the genuineness of something — in this case, the will of God in Romans 12:2 — is found out by an appropriate test. For metals, it is often fire. For genuine ripeness in fruit, it would be like tasting. And for genuine health in a horse, you might look at his teeth. And here, interestingly, powerfully, in Romans 12:2, the thing to be recognized is the will of God — namely, “what is good and acceptable and perfect.” And the question is, So, what is the test? Do you look at the teeth of the will of God? Or do you put your tongue on the behavior you are testing? Do you put some match to it? What is the test? And Paul answers, “The renewal of your mind is the test. By the renewal of your mind, you will be able to discern by testing what is the will of God.”
Here is the picture I have in my mind: my renewed mind — renewed by the word of God, renewed by the Spirit of God, renewed by soaking in the revealed nature of God in Scripture — is litmus paper that turns green when the good and acceptable and perfect will touches it. Green: go for that. And it turns red when it considers some act that is not the will of God. It is not good. It is not acceptable. It is not perfect.
So, my mind is being shaped by God into the kind of mind that, when it contemplates a behavior or an attitude or a word, there is something that reflexively says no or yes to it, because of the way our mind has been formed.
Approve What Is Excellent
Here is a great example that shows you how the mind is being renewed for this very purpose. It is Philippians 1:9–10, where Paul is praying that this would happen. He prays like this: “It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve [now, there is the word] what is excellent.”
“The renewed mind has the spiritual taste so that when something is seen to be of God, it tastes good to us.”
So, he is saying that what happens to your love is that love gets more knowledge in Scripture, and love gets more insight in Scripture, and love gets more of everything it needs to be the kind of litmus paper it needs to be, so that when you are out there in the world, and you are navigating at work every day, and you don’t have your little lists in your pocket to say, “Oh, where is a list I can consult?” — well, you can’t consult a list for every decision you have to make. I would say 90 percent of the decisions we make through the day don’t have a list that applies to them.
You have got to make judgment calls over and over again as to what is good, what is acceptable, what is perfect. And that is why our minds are being renewed day by day.
Delightful Taste
Let me say one more thing that I think is crucial here. The translation “discern by testing” might give the impression that all that is implied is, well, you test, you discern, and you know that is the will of God. You don’t like it, but you do it anyway.
That is not what is going on. The word dokimazō doesn’t just mean to prove and discern. It means to prove, and then when something is found to be genuine — approve of it. We know that because in Romans 1:28, it says the sinners did not approve to have God in their knowledge. And that is the word, dokimazō. They didn’t want it. They didn’t love it.
And so, the renewed mind is the mind that not only has the mental or intellectual or knowledge or insight capacities to discern something that is good and acceptable and perfect, but it also has the spiritual taste so that when something is seen to be of God, it tastes good to us. We delight in it. We approve of it.
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The Loss of All You Were Made For: 2 Thessalonians 1:9–10, Part 2
http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15908626/the-loss-of-all-you-were-made-for
