Shame Nation

You have made us a byword among the nations;

    the peoples shake their heads at us.

I live in disgrace all day long,

    and my face is covered with shame…

Rise up and help us;

    rescue us because of your unfailing love.

Psalm 44: 14, 15, 26

Shame is not a foreign concept limited to countries where women are hidden behind the hijab, men commit honor-killings, or children with disabilities are forced to leave the villages of their birth.

At the time of this writing, shame has shrouded the United States. We are a shame nation and the world is watching.

We see shame differently than almost two-thirds of the world. (See the Global Map of Culture types here.) Shame is not the primary lens through which we judge our society and make life decisions. The Western worldview is largely innocence-guilt, or right-wrong. Criminals are innocent until proven guilty. Behaviors, leaders, words, even the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, and the food we eat, are judged based upon their “rightness” or “wrongness.”

Shame, on the other hand, is usually considered an undesirable emotion or experience that most Westerners seek to avoid unless we want to punish someone with it. Ironically, if one is deemed guilty of doing wrong, shame is one particularly vicious weapon our society uses to exact revenge.

But in two-thirds of the globe, life is assessed through an honor-shame worldview. Honor is the cement that secures one’s position in her group, be it her family, community, tribe, or nation. Agreed-upon standards of behavior drive one’s honor. Follow the rules, maintain honor. Break them, even through no fault of your own (such as in the case of an infertile wife), and you shame not only yourself but also your people. It often results in expulsion from the group and can lead to extreme attempts to restore lost honor. (To read more about this, see Covered Glory: The Face of Honor and Shame in the Muslim World (Harvest House Publishers). In honor-shame cultures, belonging is everything. Shame must be avoided if at all possible. So you’d better behave.

At the heart of honor is belonging. Shame, on the other hand, separates.

The United States is a nation of individuals, but we belong to the world. The United States has long inspired sister and brother countries to dream of liberty and justice for all. The United States is an incredibly beautiful and diverse composite of the nations.

Recent events have disgraced our nation, and the majority of the world may understand us better than we understand ourselves at the moment. They know that the incidents of this week at the US Capital do not only bring shame upon the perpetrators but upon the entire nation. In the eyes of many we are a shame nation, and you and I, fellow Americans, regardless of our beliefs, bear that shame in the eyes of most of the world.

This pains me deeply. It makes me angry, resistant. The injustice of bearing another’s shame is infuriating. My soul rises up and resists. I had nothing to do with what happened in the Capital. I don’t want to be identified with those whose dishonorable behavior brought death and destruction.

I am innocent; my worldview shouts, don’t shame me for something I did not do.

Then I hear Jesus whisper these words: 

I bore all the shame. Even yours.

The Savior, the Messiah Jesus, bore humanity’s shame upon the cross. 

He bore the shame of the Roman government that colluded to bring about His own death.

He bore the shame of Nero, who burned down Jerusalem in 70 AD and forced the early church underground.

He bore the shame of John Newton, a slave ship captain who transported slaves from the African continent to Europe, only to be slain with conviction in his later life, leading him to pen the words of the well-loved hymn Amazing Grace.

He bore the shame of the nations throughout the ages who denied Him and chose their own paths of justice, their own strength, their own swords, paths of man, not of God. Paths that separated humans from one another, leading to wars, genocide, terrorism, and gross disregard for the value of one another’s lives.

Jesus bore all the shame of history behind and all of history yet to come. Jesus did this so we would know the deep satisfaction of belonging to each other and to God.

Because of his unfailing love, Jesus bore my shame. He bore the shame of the Yazidi girl taken from her village and trafficked for her body. He bore the shame of the young Egyptian brother who killed his sister in a desperate attempt to restore honor to the family. He bore the shame of the teenage addict who during a blackout robbed his parents and could not remember the next day. 

He bore my shame, and He bore yours. He bears the shame of a nation gone mad and a people divided from each other and from Him.

We do not have to remain ashamed, separate from God and one another. Jesus endured the cross to remove our shame and give us the honor we long for. #honorinsteadofshame Click To Tweet

We can stop the madness when we drop to our knees in humility and cry out to Him for our nation and for our world. We can ask Him to rise up and help us, to rescue us because of His unfailing love. We need help. We need rescue. And He is the only Rescuer for a shamed nation or a shamed individual.

He will help us because He loves us even on our worst day. We need the One who bore our shame on the cross because of His unfailing love.

Even a shamed nation, roiling with fear and unrest, is not beyond his unfailing love. He is our hope for better days, for honor instead of shame. Let us repent and look to Him to lead us to the honor our souls crave.

Cry out to Him with me today?

Lord, rise up and help us; rescue us because of Your unfailing love. Amen.

@audreycfrank