The Galli Report: 06.18.21

The contours of forgiveness and shame. 'Individuals' rule. Angry atheists. 'How to dad'

Forgiveness and Shame in Our Culture
Let’s start with two articles about words that play a crucial role in the Christian faith and life, and how those words play out today.

The first is a careful analysis of forgiveness in our culture. One expects much wisdom from author Tim Keller, and he delivers as usual. 

Our culture is losing the resources for forgiveness and reconciliation. Many would say this a good thing, that forgiveness is a form of psychologically unhealthy self-loathing, and that it is also a way that oppressors maintain their power over victims. Nevertheless, we have from three people—people representing groups who were egregiously oppressed in the twentieth century—ringing, insistent calls to forgive. Those three people are Hannah Arendt, Martin Luther King Jr., and Desmond Tutu.

The second article comes from Father Stephen Freeman who says startling things about shame:

There is a strange phenomenon about shame, however. I describe this as its “sticky” quality. When we see the shame of someone else, we ourselves experience shame. This can be as innocuous as watching someone’s public embarrassment and sharing the feeling of embarrassment. It is equally and more profoundly true in darker and deeper encounters. We cannot shame others and remain untouched. The very shame we extend reaches within us and takes us with it.

It is there, in its depths, that shame does its most devastating work. It is a primary creator and maintainer of the false self, an identity established largely through the energy of shame that leaves the truth of the soul shrouded in darkness. It becomes the source of acedia, in the words of the Fathers, or anger, anxiety, and depression, in modern parlance.

Unattended shame lives within us like a dybbuk, an angry hurt and hurting soul that breeds death. We ignore the role of shame in our lives to our own spiritual peril. Much that we imagine to be righteousness is only shame in a fancy disguise.

And at the end, he says, “We only heal shame by bearing shame.” 

I’m not sure what he means by that exactly. I do know this: that fear of shame is a driving force in our lives, certainly in my life. This is why nearly every morning I pray this litany, which is posted on my website. The section dealing with shame goes like this:

From the fear of being humiliated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being despised, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of suffering, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being calumniated, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being forgotten, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being ridiculed, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being wronged, Deliver me, Jesus.
From the fear of being suspected, Deliver me, Jesus.

Treating Individuals as Individuals
I’m including this excerpt from Charles Murray’s latest book, Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America, because it will be a book that will be the subject of much controversy in the coming weeks. Such has been the case with Murray since his most controversial book, The Bell Curve (1994), co-authored with Richard Herrnstein. Just as there are truths to be acknowledged from extreme progressive voices (like the crucial insight of Critical Race Theory that racism is more deeply embedded in our social structures than we imagine), there are insights to be gained from a conservative like Murray. 

Treating our fellow human beings as individuals instead of treating them as members of groups is unnatural. Our brains evolved to think of people as members of groups; to trust and care for people who are like us and to be suspicious of people who are unlike us. Those traits had great survival value for human beings throughout millions of years of evolution….

The combination of acquisitiveness and loyalty to the interests of one’s own group (be it defined by ethnicity or class) shaped human governments for the subsequent 10,000 years. The natural form of government was hierarchical, run by a dominant group that arranged affairs to its benefit and oppressed outsiders to a lesser or greater degree, usually greater. The rare attempts to try any other form of government were unstable and short-lived. The American founders’ idealism lay in their belief that an alternative was possible. Their genius was to design a system with multiple safeguards against the forces that had made previous attempts self-destruct.

I believe this genius was in some ways inspired by an inspired St. Paul, who insisted more than once that our group identity takes second place to identity in Christ, in whom “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female” (Gal. 3:28).

Why Are Some Atheists So Angry?
Tod Worner at Word on Fire makes a good point in trying to understand this phenomenon:

When it comes to atheists engaging the question of God (that is, his existence, his providential love, his judgment, and his narrative for our lives from their beginnings to eternity), I have wondered why there is often so much anger? If there is no God, all faith is falsehood, and eternity is simply a covered hole in the ground, then why should the atheist care so much to prove it? Why do some insist on erecting elaborate arguments and systems of thought around some truth if there is no source of truth? Why obsess about it? 

‘How to Dad’
In honor of Father’s Day, I’m relinking to a video I posted a couple of years ago.  It’s a commercial, but I just love it! Happy Father’s Day, dads.

Grace and peace,

Mark Galli
markgalli.com