One of the books that I have just been reading is Recovering the Scandal of the Cross by Joel Green and Mark Baker.[1] They relate a story told to them: “In 1981 a Japanese church leader in Hokkaido asked a missionary, ‘Why did Jesus have to die?’ The Japanese man immediately clarified that he was quite familiar with the standard explanation missionaries gave, that Jesus had to die to pay the penalty for our sins required by God, but he added, ‘To be honest, I don’t find that explanation satisfactory’”[2]

Norman Kraus was this missionary. He had just arrived in Japan. He discovered in the first few months he was in Japan that the traditional way of explaining why Jesus had to die for us failed to engage with Japanese people. Green and Baker write:

 “In the West, the image of justice is of a blindfolded goddess impartially weighing someone’s guilt or innocence based on the evidence and a set standard of law. In contrast, the Japanese image is of a male judge with his eyes wide open, observing the situation so that he can do whatever will best preserve human relationships. Kraus told his group of Japanese colleagues that in the United States we talk of criminals serving time and paying their debt to justice. He then asked if they had used similar phrases or ideas. They reported that these concepts and phrases sounded quite strange. Japanese criminals are imprisoned as a shameful act of exclusion from society. The lengths of the sentences are measured according to the enormity of their social scandal.

As Kraus pondered what he had learned, and as he continued asking questions, he came to realise that Japan was a shame-based culture very much unlike the guilt-based culture in which most North Americans live. The result is a very different concept and practice of justice. Understandably … Japanese church leaders would not find a penal substitution theory of the atonement satisfactory, for it was built on a penal approach to justice alien to them. During his years in Japan, Kraus worked to understand better this shame-based culture, then began to think about how he might answer the question ‘Why did Jesus have to die?’ in a way that would make sense and be heard as good news in Japan.”[3]

Norman Kraus’s work is contained in his book, “Jesus Christ our Lord: Christology from a Disciples Perspective.”[4]  I am waiting for my copy to arrive!

Does the cross, and the death of Jesus engage with the shame which is so much a part of the experience  of people in every culture in our world?

Approaching Easter in 2010 Prof. Joseph Hellerman wrote a short blog entitled ‘Jesus the Shame Bearer’. In this blog he relates this story:

“After some fifteen years of church ministry and a bit of adjunct teaching, I made the transition to academia in an official capacity in the Fall of 1994. I took a part-time but permanent position with the New Testament faculty at Talbot School of Theology. The plan was to bring me up to full-time when I finished my doctoral program a couple years later. The two years came and went, and I was itching to get back into full-time church ministry. I told my dean at Talbot to give the job to someone else, and I jumped on board as a team pastor at Oceanside Christian Fellowship, in February, 1996. I will never forget the reaction of one particular group of students at the seminary.

For a variety of reasons, related to the expansion of Christianity in the Pacific Rim and to our own history as a school of theology, Talbot has had the privilege over the years of training large numbers of pastors for the church in Korea. These young men and their families make tremendous sacrifices to come to the States, learn a new language and culture, and get a top-rate theological education to take back to their homeland. They are some of our hardest working students. They have to be.

One day in early 1996 I announced to my classes that this was my last semester as a professor at Talbot. I was going back into full-time church ministry. The reaction of my Korean students took me completely by surprise. They suddenly began to act quite uncomfortable around me. As I probed a bit, it became clear that these international students felt deeply sorry for me. They were somehow ashamed for me, as well.

Traditional Asian culture, you see, is wedded to honor and shame in much the same way as people in Jesus’ world were. Instead of military victory and public office holding, however, today’s Koreans regard educational achievements and vocational status as the key criteria for honor in the public sphere. Additionally, and also characteristic of an honor culture, my Korean students view Christian education and ministry in markedly hierarchical terms. At the top of the pecking order is the seminary professor, with his august educational degrees and pedagogical authority. A local church pastor, although still a big fish in a small pond, doesn’t even come close.

The Korean brothers who heard my announcement in class that day couldn’t imagine that a seminary professor would willingly trade a position at the top of the spiritual pecking order for the lesser job of a pastor. They could only assume that someone else made that decision for me, against my will. So these dear Korean students, sympathetically sharing in the shame they assumed I was experiencing, did not know quite how to respond to their now former, demoted professor.”[1]

Around 80% of the population of our world live in cultures very different from the West. Some people have described these cultures as shame-based, whereas Western cultures, they say, are guilt-based. I’ll need to address those assertions as time goes by. However, we might possibly already agree that while our Western culture is very individualistic, other cultures are not so. That too will need to be addressed. But there is a significant question which arises from this story. If what matters to many people in our world has something to do with avoiding or dealing with ‘shame’ rather than a sense of feeling guilty; and if ‘shame’ has little to do with guilt (another matter I’ll have to consider). Then how can we talk about Jesus’ death, about the atonement, the saving work of Christ on the Cross, in a way that means something to people for whom ‘guilt’ is not their main concern, but ‘shame’ is?

Does the cross address shame?

Here’s a first reason why I want to spend time thinking about ‘shame’ and in discovering what Jesus’ death has to say to the shame so many people have or encounter.

In a short article in Re:generation Quarterly, David  E. Eagle writes about ‘Shame and the Cross’. He relates his own experience of shame and abuse and then talks of his conversion:

“I finally did ‘accept Jesus into my heart’ the year after high school. I was longing to fit in and be accepted by the group of Christian friends I had met. Yet the cross, as they explained it to me, did not seem to address my deep experiences of shame and my fear of intimacy. The significance of the cross, … was as a payment for human sin, which offends God’s holiness. According to the rules of divine justice, “the wages of sin is death.” Jesus paid our death penalty, offering himself as a sacrifice in our place—a sacrifice he was qualified to make because of his life of perfect obedience. God’s anger was turned away from our sin and poured out on Jesus, thus enabling us to be in relationship with God. In ways I only vaguely understood then, this relationship had its limits. If my shame-filled memories had to be “covered by the blood of Jesus” before God could know me, then God wasn’t in the business of truly knowing. God had to kill Jesus because God couldn’t stand me as I really am. God’s plan for salvation seemed to mirror my plan for dealing with shame: (1) Dig a really big hole and bury it. (2) Present a shiny, perfect exterior and hide the mess. It’s as if Jesus were saying, “Take up your shovel and follow me. If you let others see you as you truly are, they will reject you, and so will my judgmental Father in heaven.” Those shame-filled experiences—the ones that Jesus’ blood supposedly covered—didn’t feel covered. I had “accepted Jesus,” but shame continued to cripple me, and I could never fully believe that God had accepted me” [1]

Here is the significant question: Does the cross address shame?

David Eagle’s felt experience and the concerns of his friends suggest not. However, he goes on to say that as he reflected on Jesus’ death, he discovered that on the Cross, God meets us in our shame. … “Roman crucifixion was explicitly designed to bring shame upon its victims”[2], and it was on that cross that Jesus uttered his cry of abandonment, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ “Jesus’ cry brings back the dark, painful memories of times when I have screamed heavenward at God, “Where were you?” The crucifixion reveals a God who is willing to be vulnerable, who chooses to bear the pain of shame and rejection. On the cross God meets us in our shame.”[3]

He then asks, “Does the cross mean God can save me from the effects of my shame? I’ve been tripped up repeatedly by the way I was taught to associate the cross with the need to repent of specific sinful acts. I have repented more times than I care to think about, ‘God, I’m sorry for the abuse I suffered. God, I’m sorry for the way the abuse cripples me. God, I’m sorry that I feel so worthless.’ Certainly, I do things that require repentance. But God doesn’t ask me to repent of the sexual abuse I suffered as a child—nor does he leave me to suffer its consequences alone. Instead, on the cross Jesus enters into my shame and experiences its destructive influence, and then he triumphs over its power in the resurrection. The resurrection is our hope that God will wipe every shame-filled tear from our eyes. The resurrection is a call to every shamed, oppressed, hopeless, scared, messed-up person out there: ‘He is risen!’”[4]

So is David E. Eagle right? Does the cross address shame?

I want to introduce you to a good friend of mine. You might not have seen him around much over the past few years, but nonetheless he remains my good friend.

He’s the kind of friend that when you meet,  even though you have not see them in years, you seem to be able to start up with just where you left off. It is a comfortable friendship that seems not to have been dulled by the passing of years or by the period of separation. In that sense ‘Shame’ is a little like my good friend Steve, who was my best man, or Nick and Katherine who have been good friends over the years. We have not seen Steve and his wife Vicky very much in the past few years, yet whenever we see them or stay with them, as we have recently, we feel welcomed, comfortable, and at home.

‘Shame’ is another good friend, just like Nick and Katherine, or Steve and Vicky! … Perhaps I need to explain.

First, it has been quite a while since I spent a bit of time with ‘Shame’.  It has been over 14 years since we really spent any time together. That was in my MA dissertation at St. John’s College, Nottingham! There have been a few days, here and there, over the years that we have been able to spend together,  but this Autumn has been the first time for many years that we have been able to spend a decent amount of time in each others company. Yes, there was a few days on retreat two or three years ago but nothing like the amount of time we have had in the past few weeks.

‘Shame’ has led me on a merry old dance once again. I’ve been able to meet lots of new friends who seem to have got to know ‘shame’ since I last spent any time with him. He’s introduced me to social anthropologists, theologians, psychotherapists, psychiatrists – some of them really down to earth, easy to understand people. He’s taken me to meet a few famous names along the way as well.  If you ask me sometime, I’ll tell you about a few of these. Name dropping is good fun! ‘Shame’ has helped me too to do a bit of thinking about Jesus, his death and resurrection. He’s talked with me too about his past and his travels around the world. It would be good to tell you about some of these experiences. Perhaps I’ll get round to that over coming days.

If you meet my friend ‘shame’, give him my regards. Tell him that you have heard of him through me.

A word of warning, however, ‘Shame’ is a great guy, but don’t get too entangled with his estranged cousin. Confusingly this more difficult character, the black sheep of the family, has the same name – ‘Shame’, although if you encounter either of them, my friend or his estranged cousin, abroad in Europe or in many other countries around our world, they’ll be a little easier to tell apart.

You see, in Great Britain we only have the one word for ‘shame’. Whether we are talking about a healthy sense of shame: which teaches us about our limits; that sets appropriate boundaries; that protects us from rushing to place ourselves in the public sphere when it is inappropriate or before we are ready; that helps us to be discrete, to respect other people’s privacy, to judge when our actions are inappropriate – we might call that ‘discretion’. Or talking about an unhealthy sense of shame which overwhelms us, leaving us feeling utterly worthless, wanting nothing other than to shrink into nothing and never be seen again, a sickness of the soul, an intense feeling of being utterly exposed to others – we might call that ‘disgrace’. Shame’s estranged cousin ‘shame’ is not nice, he is predatory and intrusive, he will hold onto you with a strength that is surprising! So learn to tell them apart if you can. One is to be embraced and welcomed. The other …, well the less said the better!