God Attachment Healing
Hi everyone! Welcome to the God Attachment Healing Podcast. I'm your host, Sam Landa. This podcast is dedicated to Christians who want to understand why they relate to God in the way they do. I explore how our early childhood relationship with our parents--specifically with how they met or did not meet our needs--influences how we relate to ourselves, the church, and to God. Because much of the pains and struggles of life are intertwined in these three areas, I discuss with my guests how we can find healing from the pain, confusion, doubt, and anger experienced in these relationships. If you're interested in learning more about your attachment style and how to heal from the pain you’ve experienced in the relationships mentioned above, then this podcast is for you. Welcome to the show! I'm happy you're here!
God Attachment Healing
Understanding the Complex Role of Shame on Culture and Christianity
Send Me Questions on Attachment
Can shame exist if you don't believe in a higher power? That's the question we tackle in our latest thought-provoking episode with my good friend Tim from our Psych and Theo podcast. We challenge conventional beliefs by exploring how shame manifests within Christianity and secular societal frameworks alike. With help from experts like Brené Brown, we dissect the intricate relationship between shame and identity, contrasting it with guilt, which is more about our actions. Together, we unravel how personal experiences and cultural norms shape these emotions, examining if and how shame persists without a theological backdrop. Our discussion is enriched by listener-submitted questions, which push us to consider whether societal moral frameworks can independently fuel feelings of shame.
We then take a global perspective, analyzing how shame operates across different cultures and eras, including biblical narratives. We explore the profound impacts of shame on individuals like the woman at the well and the apostle Paul, reflecting on how their stories reveal the complex interplay between shame, personal history, and spiritual beliefs. Additionally, we scrutinize the roles of fear, guilt, and shame in maintaining and challenging societal norms. Movements like LGBT rights and body positivity come under the spotlight, as we ponder whether rejecting shame in these areas is beneficial or detrimental. This episode invites you to rethink the role of shame in modern life, advocating for a nuanced understanding that balances acknowledgment with empathy.
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My mission is to help you understand your attachment style to learn how you can heal from the pain you’ve experienced in your relationship with God, the church and yourself.
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All right, everyone, welcome back to the God Attachment Healing Podcast. I'm glad that you're here and I'm excited to share today's episode with you because it is one that I did with my good buddy, tim, on our Psych and Theo podcast. If you haven't checked that out, you can definitely check it out on iTunes and Spotify or Apple and Spotify. You can definitely check it out on iTunes and Spotify or Apple and Spotify. And yeah, so I chose to share that one with you guys because we talked about shame. We had a really good conversation, talked about the role of shame, talked about how it affects Christianity, how it affects our culture, and I think that it applies to what we're talking about here on this podcast, god Attachment Healing. So, yeah, so you'll tune into that in a little bit, as I set it up for you.
Speaker 1:But again, if you've been following and this is episode 87, and if you've been following this this far along, I thank you for your support. I'm so excited to get closer to 100 episodes, because that's really where I wanted to get to and we'll get there. It's been a busy season of life, as always, but we will. We will get to episode 100. But again, thank you for listening. I hope you enjoy the show and remember to share, leave a review, leave some ratings for the podcast, how much you enjoy it and I appreciate it. All right, tune into the show.
Speaker 2:All right soune into the show. So let's get into this topic of shame Now. What brought this on is we opened it up. We opened up a forum for you, the listeners, to submit questions, and one of our listeners submitted a really good multi-layered question. So, sam, why don't you go ahead and read that question? Yeah, and then we'll just discuss it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we wanted to be good about addressing concerns that you guys had that are related to the topic, and this one ties in very well. And her question she separated into two, one for Syke, one for Theo Tim. So I'll start with Tim's. And the question is can shame exist without the concept of a higher power or God? So can it exist without the concept of a higher power? You want to read the second part of the question too. The second part of the question is are there examples of shame in the Bible that led to repentance?
Speaker 2:So those are good questions, yeah, so let's talk about what shame is first. And when we get into this, I want to give a shout out to one of my good buddies, good friend and colleague. His name is Jason Glenn. He teaches as an adjunct instructor at Liberty University in the philosophy department and he's actually working on his dissertation topic on the issue of shame, on shame Nice. He's an ethicist, like I am and he's way smarter than me, and he's focusing in on there's a particular feminist ethic and honing in on the role of shame in society and she's taken a very critical role to try to remove shame. Basically her view and Jason forgive me if I get this wrong, but basically shame is inherently bad, it's an oppressive thing and it's a real negative thing that we need to work out of our society, and so he's actually going to be writing his dissertation on that topic itself and maybe the biblical role of shame and why that's important.
Speaker 2:So shame is? Well, you might have a technical definition for this in the mental health world, but my shoot from the hip definition would be shame is an internal sense of not guilt, but maybe an internal sense of embarrassment or internal sense of feeling of negativity and inferiority over something Like a sense of embarrassment over something that I did or something that was done to me, and it's a desire to cover up and conceal for fear of embarrassment in some way shape or form. Maybe you have a better definition in the mental health world, but I think that's just like. As I'm thinking about, what shame is. That's what I think it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the leading experts. She's done a lot of work in shame. Actually she's probably referenced a lot in the shame conversation. But she talks her name is Renee Brown A lot of you guys, if you're in mental health field, you'll know about her and she basically talks about it as an identity formation. So she says guilt is I did something bad, shame is I am something bad. So that internal sense of embarrassment that you were referring to is I am that, or I am damaged goods, or it's I am statements with whatever it is at the end of that. So, for example, someone who experiences an internal sense of embarrassment over having a difficult past or maybe having a really difficult upbringing, they'll say something like I am those things right. They'll attach their identity to that thing that happened to them, that's good.
Speaker 2:That's better than my definition but, yeah, okay, all right. So the listener's question was can you have a sense of shame without a higher power, without the yeah concept of higher power.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it is theoretically and logically possible to have a sense of shame and to have some sort of real feeling of shame without a sense of higher power. And that doesn't mean that higher power doesn't exist. It just means that wherever there is, societies can have moral frameworks okay, societies can have moral frameworks okay. And wherever there's a moral framework in someone, they see their identity as not conforming to whatever that societal moral framework is or, let's say, the social norms. Because if we're talking about shame as, like, an identity thing and you don't conform to this, a person's not conforming to the social norms and therefore their identity starts to get based outside of that or this feeling of alienation from society in some way, the group. That can happen whether or not a society or an individual believes in some form of higher power.
Speaker 2:Now, I would argue that it doesn't make sense without the concept of God or some sort of higher power, cause you need a right or wrong. Yeah and and uh. We. We could make the argument that ultimately, like all, like my, my family, my group, all that rolls up into, uh, something bigger and higher than us from which we all come. Yeah and uh if, if shame is an identity crisis or an identity problem and there's a higher power that we should, that we, we could work back logically and think that our identity is actually rooted in that that thing or that person. Yeah, yeah. Well then, if I become alienated from that thing, then I have experienced a sense of shame as well yeah, and I was gonna yeah, I was gonna ask you too about that.
Speaker 1:So before I used to have a separate podcast called the genesis of shame. That turned into the god attachment healing podcast, and I talked about the garden of eden, and one of the things that I talk about was that you know everyone who knows what the standard is, or knows what the law is, or knows what the requirement is for something. And if they so, yeah, there is that feeling of oh no, I messed up, I did not obey God's command. But then there was the hiding and the running away from which is what shame does. So it's not just that you did something bad. Now we take that to the next level and we hide in and cover or run away from the person that we transgressed against.
Speaker 1:So, in that, you can always experience guilt when you do something bad, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to experience shame. However, anytime that you experience shame, you've experienced a level of guilt. You know that you messed up on something. The question is, now you've made it your identity, that thing that you did wrong. Now you've made it your identity, which is why I think me and a couple of other people would have a different view on the idea of I'm an alcoholic, I'm an addict, because it ties that identity to you. Now the AA groups and others would argue that no, actually it gives you a sense of freedom because you finally accept that reality. But I don't know how hopeful it is to everyone. I think it differs with different people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could see that some people a sense of despair could set in if they say I am this Because then they could say I'm always going to be that. Right, right yeah.
Speaker 1:And so that's another piece of it, but I wonder what your thoughts were on that, when they hide away, because they know there's much more to it than just the running away from God.
Speaker 2:So that gets into the second part of the question. If I could sum up the first part of that question about can you have shame without a higher power? In short, yeah, like, just as you can have morality, someone can be moral, they can have a sense of morality. We can conduct ourselves as moral beings without acknowledging a moral lawgiver, but it's really hard to explain morality. You can exercise morality without God, but it's really hard to explain morality without God. So the same thing with shame without God. So same thing with shame. Like social norms can drive shame, but it's really hard to explain the concept of shame ultimately, without some sort of higher power is what I would say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I was going to ask about, but isn't? The reason why we're able to have a sense of morality is because we bear the image of God?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we would say. My point is that all societies can form moral systems, and some of them are good. Second part of her question was are there examples in scripture where there was shame experience that led to repentance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an interesting one. It's kind of put me on the spot of like running my mind is like running through the entire biblical corpus to like all these figures. So let's go to the Garden of Eden for a minute. Yeah, I want to focus on something that's really important. When adam and eve fall, there's three, there's kind of three aspects of the consequences of that fall, and I think it was roland mueller who wrote about this in his book honor and shame, or it might have been another author, I might be blanking on that.
Speaker 2:But essentially what happens, roland Mueller pointed out that cultures throughout the world either operate in one of three paradigms guilt, innocence or right and wrong. As you might say, honor and shame and then fear and power. So you have guilt, innocence, honor, shame, fear and power are the three paradigms and different parts of the world. That's the dominant paradigm Doesn't mean it's the only one, but it's the dominant one. In the Western world we would operate mainly on right and wrong or guilt and innocence. So we think in a very strictly legal mindset. So a lot of our theology is kind of oriented around the concept of guilt and innocence, right and wrong, like very juridical kind of language In the Middle East and in Asia it's honor shame.
Speaker 2:So an honor shame has a lot to do with where I fit in in the collective, where I fit in in society or my group and the group norms. In Latin America and Africa, especially more in indigenous areas, fear and power is the main paradigm and that has a lot to do with how they relate to the spirit world, because you don't want to live in fear of the spirit world, so you need powerful spirits to protect you, and so they relate to the spirit world in a sense of fear and power. They relate to God in a sense of fear and power. So in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve fall, they know they've done something wrong, so they immediately they experience guilt by sinning, by doing what they know they should not have done. Then their eyes were opened and they see their nakedness, as the Bible says, and they experience a sense of shame. They hide, but it says they were also afraid. That's right.
Speaker 1:And they hid.
Speaker 2:And they'd say to God like we were afraid and we hid. So you see all three aspects there Guilt, innocence, honor, shame, fear and power, all right there at the fall. So all three of those are important for understanding human beings and what sin does to us, for understanding human beings and what sin does to us. So we we shouldn't neglect any one of those that triad of the effects of sin in our lives. If we emphasize one of those too much and neglect another one, we kind of miss an important aspect of of the gospel. Here's an example In our Western mindset we tend to focus a lot on guilt and innocence and, to be fair, a lot of that, the New Testament, especially Paul's writings, are very much focused on guilt and innocence, especially in relation to the law, the Old Testament law.
Speaker 2:So when we're dealing with a God who is holy and righteous and just, so when we're dealing with a God who is holy and righteous and just and a spiritual world that is very legal in its orientation, the spirit world is a lot like a courtroom. The Bible kind of presents it that way Satan's called the accuser of the brethren, jesus is called the propitiation or the substitute for our sins, god is called the judge and the lawgiver. So these are all things that the Bible talks about. So that's a really important paradigm that we should not neglect at all. However, it does also say that the gospel removes our shame and it's a lifter of our Christ is the lifter of our head. It also says that we, like Paul says to Timothy, we've not been given the spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. Paul oftentimes describes his own ministries Like I didn't, I didn't come to you with flashy speech and other things, corinthians, but I came to you with a spirit of power, like with a demonstration of the Spirit's power.
Speaker 2:So there's we can go into a lot of different examples of that, of what fear and power is, but these aspects are important for the gospel itself, our identity shifts. You're talking about shame. If we're talking about shame being an identity problem, the gospel changes our identity, you know, and we become something different. We become not enemies, we're not. We're no longer children of wrath. There's an I am statement, like I'm no longer children of wrath, I am a child of God, I am a son or daughter of the King. These are all identity shifts in us that correspond to a legal shift from being guilt or innocent too, and then, therefore, we don't have to fear the day of judgment. So all these things are present, even in the gospel.
Speaker 2:Now can I think of an example In the scriptures? I'm having a hard time right now. Maybe you can think of one offhand. I was trying to think of Like where shame leads someone. I mean there's like the woman who has the bleeding disorder in the New Testament.
Speaker 1:But that's the woman caught in adultery? No, yeah, you know that's the woman cut in adultery. No.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know that's, that's guilt and innocence. So too, I'm trying to think of maybe, um, yeah, I'm sure our listeners are probably thinking of one right now. They're like you dummies, like offhand, I'm like I'll think of one as soon as we stop recording you know, but I, I, I can't really think of one right now where it's like it's a shame, it's a specifically shame issue where I was thinking of Paul or Saul right at the time.
Speaker 1:You know he had killed so many Christians and you know that was probably a big part of who he was not necessarily as an individual, as a person, but it was definitely something that he did.
Speaker 1:And when he was confronted by Christ, it didn't come up.
Speaker 1:It doesn't come up in the text, but in my head I'm imagining him thinking about all of those actions, all of those murders against Christians, and feeling a sense of shame and the way that that shame could have been replaced was receiving that love of Christ and just kind of you know, this whole 180 shift, obviously, and now being a Christian serving Christ.
Speaker 1:So I don't know if that applies necessarily, but I often think about that because I know growing up, a lot of pastors or some of the teachings would be referencing that part of scripture. It's slipping my mind right now, but the idea of I've left everything behind and I push now forward to what's ahead, and they'll talk about things like that, like I left my past life behind and now I have a new life in Christ and therefore I should not be experiencing shame. But the reality is that people, as people, we just sometimes remember things from our past that were shameful and they could be reminders of grace. Like man, the Lord had so much grace on me and for others. They still live in it. They still experience that shame again.
Speaker 2:Here's two examples from the New Testament that I just thought of.
Speaker 2:One is the woman at the well, who's a Samaritan, and she's going to the well at midday because she's been with like five men and one of the one she's with now isn't her husband, and so the whole community has just shunned her completely and her and jesus they don't get into a discussion of the law so much, but jesus does bring up, he indirectly kind of brings up why she's there at the well midday. He says go call your husband. You know she said well, I have no husband. He's like you're right, he's like you've had four or five, I can't remember the number, you know. And so she's like ah, I'm caught. Oh, you must be a prophet. You know, she tries to shift, she tries to change the subject. You know it's like wow, you're smart, you're so smart.
Speaker 2:Here's another example would be the roman centurion, who I don't know for certain I'm still watching season four of the chosen, but I think I, I think I know who they're going to depict, uh, in this particular story. But a roman centurion comes to jesus and asks jesus to heal his servant, uh, at his house, and, and Jesus is, like willing to go to his house to heal his servant, and the centurion says no, no, no, like just say the word and he'll be healed. You know, he might have not wanted Jesus to come to his house for like political scandal, but it also might have been like a sense of like I the gentile, like you know, you shouldn't be coming to my house. I think there's a few more examples like that I could I could think of if I had enough time where, where god comes to someone and they're like, oh, why are you talking to me?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, no, and I think you know from, uh, at a personal level with people that maybe that we've known growing up, where, yeah, I mean they talk about. I mean one example would be like my dad. My dad would talk about his past and he would feel even then, even when he would share, he would still feel a lot of shame attached to it, and I remember we'd have conversations around this like dad, you know, now, as a Christian, you know why does that still come up Again? Because that was such a big part of his life and he feels that one way to continually receive God's grace is reminding himself of that time and to see how far he's come or how far the Lord has brought him. But there's also things that he's done after being saved. That also continues to add to the shame. I'm a Christian. How could I do, you know, still sin against God, and so on. So there's again. Shame is such a powerful thing because it's experienced in the body and then it's experienced also mentally and emotionally. Right, your body feels a certain way when you've done something wrong and you're around people that are close to you.
Speaker 1:One of the common factors that's often discussed around shame is the fear of being known, which is why we hide. It goes back to the Garden of Eden. I need to hide, I need to pull away. So shame. The way that it impacts relationships is that it keeps you away from true intimacy with others, because if you're known, you feel that you're going to be rejected because of that. So that's kind of the same feeling is that if God truly knows me right, there's a common argument that people would have If God truly knew my heart and knew who I was, he would not want to be with me. But the reason why that's believed is because other people have treated you that way.
Speaker 1:You think that once you share this dark secret or this dark part of your past with someone else and they pushed you away and that's always been your experience it makes sense why you would believe that God would treat you that same way, because it's all you've ever known, right. But then you come to know God's grace. You come to know his understanding, his compassion, his faithfulness and then you start seeing yourself differently. So, with shame, there's a lot of what we would call in the clinical field like self-compassion. How do I have compassion towards that younger version of myself that made decisions, that made mistakes that were not aligned with God's word and understand that it was a different stage of life. And if you can show that compassion, then you can accept God's compassion as well. And he talks about that. Paul talks about that in 2 Corinthians 1, right, the idea of accepting God's comfort and his love. And that's a big part of it. You know, a big part of how we manage or deal with with shame real quick.
Speaker 2:So the, the or the, the last part of that question? Oh yes, had to deal with. The person who was asking the question grew up in a predominantly oh yes, had to deal with. The person who was asking the question grew up in a predominantly Muslim environment, or Muslim culture.
Speaker 1:Muslim country Middle East? I think yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's definitely, as I mentioned, that is definitely an area of the world where their major paradigm of thinking is honor, shame, not guilt or innocence, right and wrong. And I think, well, actually, can you read part of the question?
Speaker 1:again wrong and I think well, actually, can you read part of the question again? Yeah, the second part of that question was I grew up in a Muslim country where it was common to describe behaviors as shameful or people as shameless, usually when their actions deviated from societal norms. So culture plays a huge role in how we experience shame.
Speaker 2:Yeah, culture does play a huge role and this is where I think Christians, we need to be mindful that a culture can have a sense of right and wrong, or honor and shame, or fear and power that is aligned with the Bible or misaligned with the Bible. I had a friend many years ago get mad at me because I said some cultures are better than others and he just couldn't believe that I would say that Like as though I just Was he from a different?
Speaker 2:culture? Yes, he was, but it wasn't because he was from a different culture that he had a problem. He was very much informed by a a world of relativism and wokeness you know so, and we've dealt with the woke stuff early in an earlier episode.
Speaker 2:But so he had a real problem when I said some cultures are better than others, and he just kind of bulked at that and I I said, well, yeah, if you don't believe that, then you'd have to believe you have no ground to stand on to condemn Nazi Germany. And then he kind of thought about it for a then I mean, the only difference is change. It's just one culture changed and it's different than the other. We have to judge it from a higher standard. But that was just an argument about which culture is better, like right and wrong. My point to him was that some cultures can be closer If we think that the Bible is God's revelation of the world and how the world is broken and how the world can be made right, and individuals can either align themselves or misalign themselves with that truth. They can come to the Lord in repentance and live for him and with him, or they can choose not to. If we think that's true of individuals individuals does it not stand to reason that cultures can also do that to a greater or lesser extent? Yeah, yeah, and so some cultures can have a a more accurate understanding of honor and shame, right and wrong, fear and power, and some can go way off, way off the rocker. So I don't necessarily think that a culture that is predicated on honor and shame is somehow less biblical than a culture that's predicated on guilt and innocence.
Speaker 2:I would say Western culture is very much, has had 2,000 years of Christian influence. Most of the world hasn't had that, has had 2000 years of Christian influence. Most of the world hasn't had that. So we we stand with a, with a, an advantage, let's say, of biblical revelation, whereas a lot of the world doesn't have that. And if you travel around the world, you'll see that. You will see whoa, okay, like I take, for I've taken for granted a lot of things about the West and that I didn't realize Christianity gave to the West. You know that if I go to other parts of the world where Christianity did not have such an outsized influence, it definitely shows in a lot of ways how they value life, how they value the treatment of minorities and women and other things, like how they view right and wrong or the role of government, like how they view right and wrong and like, or the role of government, like all these things, like it definitely shows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's good, that's good. Um, culture makes a big difference, more locally or more community-based. The church culture also makes a difference and I think we were kind of talking about this before the episode is this idea of shame. There's a difference between experiencing shame when the pastor or preacher is talking about something that the Bible is teaching and experiencing shame like you, feeling embarrassed, feeling like, oh no, that's me, he's talking about me, that was me, that was my past, this is me now. So there's a difference between experiencing shame and then being in a shaming culture. So there are some churches that may be very shaming towards something. So it's not just that they state what the Bible teaches, but then they intentionally or at least it seems like they're shaming people like these people are garbage or these people are this. That's a shaming type of culture. So I think we live in a world today where, if someone says something that the Bible teaches, like, oh, you're shaming people like that.
Speaker 1:There's again, there's a difference between having a shaming culture and stating what the Bible is teaching. Just because you experience shame doesn't mean that the setting that you're in is a shaming culture. Yeah, right, and we also talk about just kind of this not a movement, but a phrase that was mentioned and it made a lot of sense to me when I heard it. It's like this idea of bring shame back. What do I mean by bring shame back to our culture, to our society? And the point was that there are things that people do that are shameful, that they should feel shame for. Should feel shame for Because when you feel shame, if it ties to your identity, it's going to prompt you to move in a different direction so that you don't keep living in that identity. Right, there's shameful things that people do. We're seeing a lot of stuff in the media and stuff with a lot of hip hop stars or with other people that those are shameful things.
Speaker 1:If you actually experience shame, the point is to redirect where you're going with. That's telling you something about what you're doing or what you're seeing in yourself or believing. Right, so it's meant to. Again, you can't experience shame without guilt. So if you have guilt, that means you did something wrong. Now the question is I'm experiencing an identity attachment to this thing that I did wrong. What do I need to do now? And the hope is that you redirect, course, okay, the only way to move away from something that you identify with, past behavior or even current behavior, is to do the opposite. So that way, right being you in Christ, our identity in Christ, is now different than that thing that we did or are doing right that thing that we did or are doing right.
Speaker 2:Let me answer her question this way, I think it was can shame have a positive role in society? Well, again, we've talked about fear and power and guilt and innocence, alongside shame and honor. Can guilt have a positive influence in society? Can fear have a positive influence in society? Can fear have a positive influence in society? To answer those questions with an affirmative yes isn't calling guilt or fear inherently good. It's simply saying that they have a function in society. They're not inherently good, but they're extrinsically good. That's simply saying that they have a function in society. They're not inherently good, but they're extrinsically good. That's what a philosopher would say is that they have some sort of extrinsic good to them. It's not healthy to live in a constant state of fear, but there are things that you should be afraid of, like if you find an alligator in your living room you have reason to fear going into your living room until that alligator is removed.
Speaker 2:Okay, I just thought of that because I've been seeing like gator videos in. Florida. If you're walking through a crime infested part of town and you're unarmed and you're walking and you're holding a lot of money in your hand, you have reason to fear that something might happen to you you're not, uh, living in fear. You have a good rational reason to fear. Okay, same thing with guilt. Guilt has a function in our society. If we didn't have guilt, um then how would you prosecute criminals?
Speaker 1:yeah okay.
Speaker 2:how would you know right from wrong? Okay, so, again, if we're distinguishing guilt as an objective thing versus the feeling of shame, there is a place for guilt in society. Guilt moves people to act in a good way or a right way by avoiding the bad things to do. Okay, so guilt plays a role as well. So same thing with shame. Shame isn't inherently good. We don't want to live in a constant state of shame. We don't celebrate shame. It's like wow, like I hope I feel so much shame today. But shame plays a function and that function is there.
Speaker 2:There could be healthy forms of social norms that are actually good for us, yeah, and when you go against those social norms, it's not good for you and you should feel embarrassed by it. But our society has cast, has really rejected this idea that shame is in any way good, shame is in any way good. And this gets to the point I made at the very beginning, where my friend Jason Glenn is writing his dissertation on is that there's been this push, especially with feminist ethics, to remove shame from our categories, of thinking that it's just so bad we don't need to feel shame anymore. And what does that lead to? Well, that leads to people doing all kinds of quote-unquote, shameless acts in society and acting in public ways and very grotesque and just crazy ways, because we are rejecting any sense of shame.
Speaker 2:When we start to feel that shame, we push it down or we throw it out and we say that's just an oppressive category that someone has put on me.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:Because it's a social construct or whatever.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. No, it's interesting, as you were mentioning that, interestingly enough, in the desire to not point out shameful acts in other people, you yourself start to experience shame because you think of yourself now am I being judgmental? Right, it becomes an I am statement like I'm judgmental. So in you trying to avoid calling something that is shameful shameful, you yourself start to experience shame because you have an objective view of what's right or wrong or what's not.
Speaker 1:And this again. This goes back just because it's a blaring example is the LGBT movement. You know they do a lot of shameful things in these parades and if I were to say something about it, we were to say something about it. Oh, you're just. You know you're shaming them or you're like this and you know you're so judgmental. I'm just pointing out something that is not helpful to the culture. You know that's not. You know kids are watching this stuff. Yeah, helpful to the culture.
Speaker 2:You know that's not. You know kids are watching this stuff. Yeah, you're telling me that's good, that's an easy example. It's just like, yeah, like, why would you? Why would you dress that way and dance that way in front of a child? Right, that's a very shameful thing to do, like very shameful.
Speaker 1:But people defend that.
Speaker 2:They say you shouldn't address or you shouldn't say that about, you can't judge, so we're going to shame the shamers exactly.
Speaker 2:Another one is the body positivity movement oh and this is not to, like you know, target anyone who, uh, maybe is is having weight issues or trying to lose weight or anything like that.
Speaker 2:I'm not, you know, saying anything about that, but our culture has reacted so so much against a prior generation where supermodels had like just unrealistic expectations of body types and as, like, the standard of beauty in our culture has reacted so far against that. The feminist movement especially to where they've now foisted upon everyone the body positivity movement, which is you can't point out when someone is morbidly obese. In fact, you can't just not point it out, you have to celebrate it because it's good and it's objectively not good, it's objectively unhealthy and it actually makes someone have a higher chance of morbidity or heart disease or anything like that. Yeah, so that'd be an example. Another example is modesty. If someone were to point out that, hey, ladies, maybe we shouldn't dress a certain way because it actually it generates sexual feelings in men, like it. Actually, you know, when you flash certain parts of your body or hint at them with by the way you dress, you accentuate certain parts of your body and I'm going to get canceled for this.
Speaker 2:I know, but if you dress in a certain way that you accentuate certain parts of your body that actually draws the attention of men because men are visual creatures okay, so just be careful when you're doing that. Maybe it's not wise to do that. You know If you were to say something like that, they would call you a slut shamer. You do that. You know. If you were to say something like that, they would call you a slut shamer, you're slut shaming.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So well, again I'm gonna get canceled for saying these things, but, folks, I'm just talking about.
Speaker 1:I'm just talking about what the culture's saying yeah, you know, and so these are.
Speaker 2:these are examples of our culture rejecting any sense of shame, and that itself is not good.
Speaker 1:it, it's not, it's not, it's not good for us Because it will eventually lead to not being able to think. The truth about something and again, I kind of made this point earlier is that if you experience shame, and in a non-shaming environment, that's saying something about what you're doing, right, because that means that at some point you cross some sort of boundary, because you can't experience shame if you haven't experienced guilt. Now, the things that you feel guilty about, those things can change. You might say well, you know, it's not bad that I dress this way, or it's not bad that we do these provocative dances. Once you remove the guilt piece from it, yeah, it's possible that you don't experience any shame, right? You kind of numb that part of of your being and that's, that's doable, right? I mean, I think, uh, romans talks about being given over to one's desires, and one of them, is that right?
Speaker 2:you lose the conscience seared yeah, so yeah, yeah that. And let me let me wrap up by saying this that I think if you've grown up in a like me and many others, if you grew up in a super, super conservative environment that was very legalistic, you can actually have a great sense of shame. Yeah, that's not healthy for you, right? You talked about shame being this identity marker and a lot of people who grow up in hyper conservative upbringings where there's a lot of legalism, they can carry with them a heavy sense of shame.
Speaker 2:That's not good, right, like an over, a too strong sense of shame, and I know in my own life I experienced that yeah where it's like I just feel embarrassed for things that I shouldn't be, or I I'm hypersensitive about things, you know, because I'm like, oh, I did something wrong, oh, I'm a terrible person. Like I make a mistake and I'm like I start catastrophizing, like oh, I'm a terrible person.
Speaker 2:I'm going to lose my job, I'm probably going to end up under a bridge or living in a van down by the river, you know, like that kind of stuff, you know, yeah, but all that's driven by shame in the background and a lot of people who grew up in very, very strict environments can experience that. And if you're one of those people listening right now, I think, for you, just to encourage you that not every we've been talking about there's a good role for, like, shame is good in some sense.
Speaker 1:We're not talking about that kind of shame, that kind of shame is actually kind of is pretty harmful and destructive for people, yeah, yeah, and I think what we're bringing light to is that there are some things where shame is experienced because something was broken, a standard or something was wrong, but there's this other. The flip side to that is the over-attachment of shame to things that are not necessarily shameful or they're minor, but we, as you said, catastrophize it and make it the worst possible thing. So there's this constant cycle of you know, oh, I did something bad, I'm not going to be accepted, no one wants me. So it's kind of this, this cycle, uh, in a van down by the river and a van down by the river and I'll die alone, type of thing, but, um, yeah, great questions, really really great questions. I'm glad we have this conversation. I, you know, I know it. Um, I think we enjoy doing these and we literally we literally shot this one from the hip.
Speaker 2:We did not prepare at all for this one. We read the question and we're like let's this episode I think we could answer these.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So folks you just got, like what, 40, 40 minutes, 50 minutes of uh about, yeah, yeah, of just shooting from the hip, yeah, so send us more questions yeah, we'll do it yeah, thank you for listening.
Speaker 1:Send us questions, follow us on instagram and we'll talk to you soon.