Earlier this week Lance Armstrong confessed to doping, using performance-enhancing drugs to win the Tour de France. He’s been stripped of his titles and his Olympic medal. We can only imagine the shame he is feeling, especially because the world now knows the truth. Shame is found in many places…
Early on in my military career I learned about shame-based cultures. I was assigned to the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea. I quickly found I had two challenges of cultural adaptation: the gung-ho Infantry, and living in Asia.
The military is a unique sub-culture, and within it are some elite units. The 2nd Infantry’s mottos were “Fit to Fight” & “Second-to-None.” They operated in an advanced state of readiness just below the North Korean border, the DMZ where tensions were high. My battalion was hard-charging, demanding and unforgiving. You met the mark or you were disgraced. There was no hand-holding or gentle encouragement. Field duty was about high performance under miserable conditions: “high-speed, low-drag.” We thought nothing of winter maneuvers without tent stoves, and road marches in our chemical suits and gas masks. PT/Physical Training was demanding; I remember running past rice paddies at zero-dark-thirty, then up a mountain, circling a Buddhist temple at the top, then running back down. After Physical Training you needed Physical Therapy!
Arriving in Korea was like going to a new planet. Everything seemed different; even the sidewalks didn’t look like ours. The food was strange; if you’ve ever had kimchi, you know what I mean! The architecture seemed totally foreign; only in Seoul was there evidence of western influence, but even there the Asian culture was predominant. It is a beautiful country, but for a westerner, a very alien environment. Not wanting to be an “Ugly American,” I quickly learned the cultural dos and don’ts, and a bit of the language. In my limited free time I saw as much as I could, and took soldiers on cultural bus trips.
I found that these two cultures--the Infantry and Korea--had one thing in common: they shared what is known as a “shame tradition.” I learned that if you brought shame upon your unit, you’d be ostracized; and the Infantry fosters a zero-defects mentality. Bluntly put, mistakes aren’t tolerated, and forgiveness is not an option. Any mistake can kill a career. And with Koreans, their greatest motivation is to bring honor to their parents. To fail in life is to bring shame upon one’s self and one’s family, which is an unforgivable disgrace. The pressures to succeed are enormous, and for those who do not meet expectations, life can become unbearable.
Americans are largely driven by success, yet for the most part we do not live in a “shame culture.” Fear of shaming our name or our family is simply not a prime motivation to strive toward excellence. We fail, perhaps learn from our mistakes, and drive on. We accept our failures with positive self-esteem. Even when we don’t succeed we’re encouraged to still feel good about ourselves. The word “shame” isn’t much in our American vocabulary. Yet a century ago Mark Twain observed, “Man is the only animal that blushes…or needs to.”
What place does shame have in the Christian life? In Colossians one, Paul is praying that we might live “worthy of the Lord”, which is setting an extremely high standard for believers. I wonder if we ever feel shame over our lack of spiritual discipline? God has set the bar high, yet we are all too often indifferent to His expectations. We miss church if we don’t feel like going; we don’t pray or read the Bible with regularity, and we sin with little thought of how God must feel. We want a comfortable, “no pressures, no demands” Christianity. We take advantage of God’s mercy and grace by not striving towards holiness.
Paul wants us to live up to our heritage, to bring praise and honor to God by our conduct. How we live matters. We do not have to work our way to Heaven; that’s been taken care of, thanks to the Cross…yet we are expected to be fruitful, to live a life where what we do is a reflection of what we believe. “Faith without works is dead,” we’re told in James. We are to conform to the image of Christ. Do our lifestyles bring honor to the family of God, or shame and disgrace? We’re saved by faith, which (if genuine) leads to a life of faithfulness.
Paul’s plea to live worthy is more highly regarded in Korea, where people feel bound, obligated to please; where indifference is not an option. When we consider the Christian life, do we see it as an obligation? Do we live to please the Lord, or simply to please ourselves? It is not uncommon for Koreans to get up at four in the morning during the week before going to work to gather for prayer. Here in America, Pastors do all they can to persuade their congregations to simply show up on Sunday.
People spend thousands of dollars for therapy to alleviate guilt…yet not all guilt is bad. There is false guilt over things we shouldn’t feel burdened with, but there is true guilt over sin, for failing to meet God’s righteous expectations. God is holy, and He expects us to strive toward godly living. There’s no room for apathy in being a disciple of Christ; and no room for a wasted life. God wants us to be fruitful, to accomplish something for His Kingdom. “What on earth are you doing for Heaven’s sake?” A Christianity that costs nothing and does nothing is worth nothing.
Paul issues two goals of a fruitful life: perseverance and patience. The only alternative to perseverance is failure. We patiently bear with the stresses and hardships of life, and by God’s help, we keep on going. We don’t give up because life’s too hard; we drive on, motivated by an all-consuming desire to please our Heavenly Father and to make progress in our faith-walk. We do not want to bring shame upon His holy Name or to the cause of Christ.
Saying we don’t feel like doing something is admitting we only do what we feel like doing, which is selfish, narcissistic living and self-idolatry. When we grow up, we do what’s hard, whether we feel like it or not. God has not called us to be comfortable but conformable to Christ. Our lives manifest what we truly think of Christ.
Gandhi once said that the main thing keeping him from becoming a Christian was Christians. He admired Jesus, but was disappointed with the poor performance of His followers. I wonder--do people want what we have after observing our lives? All too often people are turned off by Christianity after seeing the less-than-attractive so-called “followers” of Jesus. And I say this to our shame and disgrace.
Because of sin we live in a broken, fallen world. Do we feel the burden of how our sins violate God’s moral law and does it grieve us to offend His holiness? Do we feel guilt over sin or do we excuse our wrong-doing? Do we feel shame or self-pity? Jonathan Swift noted, “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” Spiritual blindness is to commit sin with no sense of having done wrong. We live in an age that rejects moral absolutes, that celebrates depravity, and which encourages people to live lawlessly without guilt. Pascal said, “The only shame is to have none.”
Shame has been called “a chauffer to drive us to the cross” (Tim Challies). I am not advocating a return to the harsh Puritan attitude that claims “Every breath you take is sin,” yet we need to admit our sin. We undervalue the work of Christ by clinging to our own merit, and also by drowning in our guilt. We need to drive guilt over to the cross and put an end to our shame. In so doing, we determine to follow Christ above all--to give Him preeminence and to make serving Him supreme. Anything less is a life not worth living. It’s been said, “What you are, is God’s gift to you; what you make of your life is your gift to God.” Let’s bring honor to the family of God.
