Shame

And Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he returned to the temple. All the people gathered around him, and he sat down and taught them. The legal experts and Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery. Placing her in the center of the group, they said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery. In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone women like this. What do you say?” They said this to test him, because they wanted a reason to bring an accusation against him. Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger.

They continued to question him, so he stood up and replied, “Whoever hasn’t sinned should throw the first stone.” Bending down again, he wrote on the ground. Those who heard him went away, one by one, beginning with the elders. Finally, only Jesus and the woman were left in the middle of the crowd.

Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Is there no one to condemn you?”

 She said, “No one, sir.”

  

Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, don’t sin anymore.”

John 8:1-11 (CEB)

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle; that is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable."

-Brennan Manning

I still remember to this day the Christmas I got my first portable music player. Long before iPods and MP3 players – even before the popularity of failed formats like Minidisc – there was the Discman. In December of 1995 – I entered the portable music generation with my very first personal portable CD player. And of course – like everyone else of that generation I had to break that device in with one album that got played on repeat until I darn-near wore the CD out. That album was D.C. Talk’s “Jesus Freak”. And of course everyone listening to Christian music in my generation within weeks of that album’s release had memorized that Brennan Manning quote that served as the introduction to track number 4 – “What if I stumble”.

The idea that many people in my generation bought into from that quote was that leading inconsistent lives greatly hindered our witness to the world and undermined the power of the Gospel to transform people. The outcome of this failing then was an increase in atheism – an outright rejection of the notion of God and the person of Christ. But in the sixteen years now (am I really that old?) since that album was released and that idea set loose on me and my peers I think the situation has changed – and unfortunately changed for the worse.

Whereas our inconsistent lifestyles in the past polarized people to choose between a perfect Christ preached by very imperfect people and the idea that God doesn’t really exist – today in the post-modern milieu of smorgasbord religion and choose-your-own morality our inconsistent application of Christian virtue has led to something more disturbing than atheism – it’s led to the creation of an ambivalent Christ who has no interest in the morality of his followers.

Looking in from the outside (or is it out from the inside – I need to make sure my metaphors are consistent too) I can see an emerging generation who has created a Jesus in their own image – one who sees no inconsistency with drunkenness, debauchery, casual sexuality, crude and vulgar language and other unseemly behaviours six days of the week, while worshipping, serving and leading in the Church on Sundays as if there was nothing wrong. A quick survey of my Facebook friends (not exactly scientific, but nonetheless fairly representative) reveals a great number of people posting about their wonderful times in church in the same week that they have been talking about how wasted they got at the bar, making jokes about how slutty they look in photos that got posted from the weekend’s party, or how much they’re looking forward to partying until they blackout at this coming weekend’s gathering. Is it just me or is there something frightening about this trend?

(Just to clarify  – I’m not picking on anyone in particular. My Facebook friends list and the people I follow on twitter number somewhere around 375, this is a widespread observation – if you’re reading this and feeling like I’m picking on you be assured that I’m not – but maybe Jesus is)

There are a lot of reasons thrown around in Christian circles as to why this watering down of virtue has become such a rampant issue in the church – some of the ones I’ve heard are related to the cultural values of tolerance that have become inescapable in our society – If you can’t tell anyone that their lifestyle is immoral then eventually the perception becomes that everything is permissible (another quote from the NT taken grossly out of context); another has to with teachers and preachers going down an accommodationist path – miss-applying the example of Jesus who dined and partied with sinners as a mandate to ignore the morality of professing Christians – not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable in the church. I’m going to propose a third idea today as to why things have gotten so out of hand. Shame.

Whatever happened to good, old fashioned shame?

It used to be that when someone who claimed to follow Jesus and then acted in a way contrary to that claim they would feel ashamed by the way they had misrepresented their Lord; they would feel ashamed by the way they had cheapened the grace offered to them on the cross; they would feel ashamed by the way they had sullied the witness of their local church through their actions. There was a healthy and godly shame that led to repentance and a recommitment to allow the Holy Spirit through the process of sanctification to once again perform surgery on their fallen and unyielded hearts. Certainly this inconsistency did, as the Manning quote claims, cause some to turn away from God but at least it was actually the God of the Bible that they were rejecting. This emerging generation (and by extension those of all ages who embrace their values and cultural norms) seems to have no shame. I don’t mean that as an insult or the derogatory declarative that you might imagine some exasperated senior saint exclaiming as they walked out of a church service where the pastor wore jeans when preaching(!!!) – but rather as an observation on the thing that seems to be missing from this new expression of the faith. It’ like we’ve fallen in love with a saviour who boldly declares in the face of our accusers, “neither do I condemn you” but walk away before we hear him exhort us to “go and sin no more”.

We preach and teach that story excitedly about the grace that is extended to us by Jesus to get past our faults and failures and start anew in relationship with him – and certainly for generations people have come into the church broken over their own sinful actions to find forgiveness and restoration – but we miss out on the crucial application of that grace – holiness.

What we are experiencing these days in our churches is the direct result of failing to proclaim the second part of Jesus declaration as loudly as we shout the first. The woman who was caught in adultery felt shame over her sin – she was broken and contrite and was shown unmerited grace by Jesus – but he wasn’t content to wipe the slate clean without calling her to something deeper. “Go and sin no more.” Or in some translations “Go and leave your life of sin.” That sort of call will inevitably lead to shame. It will inevitably lead us to be more cognizant of our failings, more aware of our sinful appetites, and more wary of a lifestyle that acknowledges Jesus with our lips only to deny him by our actions. Shame is the way we know we need Jesus. Shame is the way we know we need forgiven. Shame is a currency that we can exchange with Christ for joy.

Oh that we would be an ashamed generation. Perhaps then we could begin to understand the depths of Joy that were experienced by the woman caught in adultery.

Until next time,

Chris