Ep. 50 - Unwrapping the Theology of Guilt and Shame Throughout Church History w/ Jason Glen

What if our modern rejection of shame is missing something vital? In this thought-provoking conversation, Jason Glenn, ethics professor at Liberty University currently completing his PhD on shame and cognitive emotions, takes us on a fascinating journey through the theological history of shame and guilt.

From ancient Egyptian dynasties to biblical Hebrew concepts, from Augustine's controversial sexual interpretation to Bonhoeffer's revolutionary perspective, we discover how Christian thinkers throughout history have approached shame very differently than our "shameless" contemporary culture. Glenn skillfully navigates complex philosophical traditions while making them accessible and relevant.

The conversation reveals surprising nuance around shame - how the Eastern Orthodox tradition saw Christ-like qualities in bearing unjust shame, how Aquinas viewed shame as essential for moral development, and how Bonhoeffer understood shame as both protective covering and testimony to our broken relationship with God.

While modern society often blames shame for everything from suicide to self-hatred, Christians throughout history have seen redemptive possibilities in certain forms of shame. This tension creates significant challenges for believers navigating mental health concerns while honoring biblical perspectives.

This episode kicks off a three-part series examining shame from theological, philosophical, and practical angles. Whether you're interested in church history, psychology, counseling ethics, or personal spiritual growth, you'll find yourself challenged to reconsider assumptions about these powerful emotions. 

Are we missing something vital by trying to eliminate shame entirely? Could shame actually be pointing us toward healing and wholeness? Listen and discover why these ancient concepts remain profoundly relevant today.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Guilt and Shame
• 5:47 Meet Jason Glenn: Ethics Expert
• 9:41 Becoming Interested in Shame Studies
• 17:54 Defining Shame vs Guilt
• 24:15 Shame in Biblical and Historical Context
• 29:07 Augustine's View on Shame
• 33:10 Theological Streams of Shame Thought
• 36:48 Bonhoeffer's Revolutionary Perspective on Shame

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

All right, everyone, welcome back to the Psych and Theo podcast. We are here with a special guest. His name is Jason Glenn. He's a colleague of mine in the arts and sciences department at Liberty University. He teaches ethics alongside me and he's a good friend and we've been colleagues for a number of years now, and what we're going to talk about today is the topic of shame and guilt in our culture.

Speaker 1: 0:32

Now, if you've been listening to me and Sam for a little bit, you've noticed that we've talked about shame and other topics like that recently. This is a little bit different of a spin on what we're going to be covering, because this is more academic and theological. So we've covered this from a psychological standpoint and now we're going to be covering this from a philosophical and theological standpoint, and Jason is an expert on this topic. He's actually working on his dissertation on this topic. So I'll let Jason just tell a little bit about himself as we get going, before I do Sam, is there anything that our audience needs to know about in advance upcoming episodes or where they can find us, anything like that?

Speaker 2: 1:16

No, I think you guys will be excited about this three-part series. We're covering three topics within this aspect of shame and guilt, so I think you guys will enjoy these conversations. I think Tim and I have been looking back at a number of our previous episodes and seeing what's been of most interest to you guys, so just be ready for that. We're probably going to go deeper in a lot of these other topics that we've discussed and, yeah, be excited, as always. You know. Feel free to send your request through Instagram or send us a message at psychandtheo at gmailcom.

Speaker 1: 1:51

And yeah, we always look forward to integrating new topics into the podcast, so keep following with that mentioned, this is going to be a three-parter series, and so we're going to break this down into digestible episodes so that you can listen to them and you know at your own pace. But the first part is going to be about historical, philosophical and theological foundations and controversies around guilt and shame, and then part two will be on current and historical arguments about guilt and shame, and then part three will be about Christian versus various cultural postures and applications when it comes to shame. Now, that's a mouthful of things, but Jason is going to flesh all that out for us.

Speaker 3: 2:40

I thought you guys were going to do it.

Speaker 1: 2:44

All right, so let's get started. Jason, why don't you tell the audience who you are and just tell a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 3: 2:51

Yeah Again, jason Glenn, married for 20, 25 plus years to my beautiful wife Ashley, who's a photographer here in the Lynchburg area. Four daughters, two of them One of them's already graduated from Liberty, one's graduating in May from Liberty and one is currently a freshman at Liberty. And then we got a young one that's still in junior high. So we run the gamut. I have been, as Tim has said, I've been working on my PhD in ethics and systematic theology, with an emphasis in shame and kind of the cognitive emotions, as we would say, since 2017. I've been working on this thing for a long time. Hopefully I'll finish it up in the next couple of years. Got a lot of writing to do. Uh, you know, a lot is under my belt, um, and I do it at a school in belgium called etf lubin, evangelical theological faculty, lubin. Uh, good, good evangelical seminary over there outside brussels.

Speaker 1: 3:56

So, um, yeah, I think that's that's about it okay, uh, so tell us, how did you become interested in this topic of guilt and shame?

Speaker 3: 4:08

yeah, and again, that's a good question. I um, I think I was, I was in apologetics, uh, for a while prior to this. So I was at a school called brian college in east tennessee, called Bryan College in East Tennessee, which is known for its worldview programs, and I really loved Romans 1 and the testimony that every human being is without an excuse in terms of their recognition that they are not right with God, recognition that they are not right with God. And so I think that and I was building out curriculum for this worldview program we would go to schools and Christian schools and youth groups and we'd present these apologetic programs and I wanted to present something to the effect that would engage these students on the theological reality that they know better, that there's something in their heart that is telling them, something in their mind, something in their soul that is speaking to them, that's saying you're not right with your creator. And again, I find that in romans, chapter one, and I I wanted to, I wanted to study something related to that in terms of philosophy.

Speaker 3: 5:34

I had read some work by um, a guy named emmanuel levinas, an old french, french philosopher, jew, jewish philosopher, and he talked about the ethics of the other and how just the very nature of the great other and the other human being, the other, called me into immediately a responsible relationship and made me feel like again, I owed somebody something and that I was ethically responsible for something outside of myself. And so I was like, okay, I'll run with that in terms of Romans 1. And so I went to this, got into this program in Europe, in Belgium, and the guy that I wanted to study with wasn't there. He was actually dealing with cancer at the time. And so they're like, yeah, we can't do that, but here's a reading list and just start going through it and seeing what comes up.

Speaker 3: 6:33

But I started reading through Bonhoeffer and then another American philosopher, contemporary to our time, martha Nussbaum, and I'm reading both of them at the same time and both of them touched on shame. And then, of course, bonhoeffer, in this book I was reading, which was a commentary on Genesis 1 through 3, touched on, of course, shame and the garden. And then I was reading through Nussbaum and she talked about how she didn't like shame, didn't see a good value in shame, and that guilt was better. And I was like I don't like that and I think Bonhoeffer agrees with me. And so I was like okay, I think I'm going to pursue that the topic and that correlated again with that idea that something's going on in each and every one of us that should be pointing us to the fact that we're not right with God. So I think that's what originally kind of got me going down the shame track.

Speaker 1: 7:42

Okay, okay, that's a good answer, all right, so let's get into this first subject of the historical, philosophical and theological foundations and controversies of shame versus guilt.

Speaker 3: 7:53

Yeah, I was hoping you guys would help me out with that part. You know I've done my part and feel free to stop me. And you know, input I don't like that term, expert Tim, especially when it comes to shame, because that's the thing about shame. I've got a buddy you know that just graduated at the same seminary I'm at. His name is Juergen Schultz. He's a German pastor and now he's the head of the German seminary evangelical, good, conservative, bible believing seminary. If you can believe there is one, there is. It actually is um, but he is.

Speaker 3: 8:32

He did his dissertation just now, uh, on shame, the, the terms for and the role of shame in in um semitic languages and a particular time frame in jewish history, and he is an expert on the hebrew terminology for shame and um a little bit on how it relates with guilt. But that is just like one little slice of the pie of shame and I couldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole man. I would not want to be in his realm of what he's studying in shame because it's completely fixed on biblical languages and Semitic traditions and I just I was like, ah, I don't want to get into that. So all that to say is it just is a really broad, broad, broad spectrum. It covers a lot of ground and you know a lot of. That is testimony to the fact that it has affected every society throughout history. In my own personal reading, I think Egypt I can't remember which dynasty it was, but it was really early on that was one of the earliest writings of the reports recorded, writings concerning shame, and it was their tradition of shaming people in public and like stocks type of thing, and that's like one of the early Egyptian dynasties that that was recorded in. So, yeah, it goes way back, way, way way back and and and we as christians, of course, can testify to why that. Of course that is right. We've got a meta narrative for that, um, but yeah, of course it starts out in in uh, in the old testament, uh, for us as christians, and where we we get our information.

Speaker 3: 10:42

Bush is the word in Hebrew that you'll find as the stem for all the most of the shame words that you run into and man, you run into them all over the place Jeremiah, isaiah, of course, in Genesis, it's Psalm all over Psalms. Talking about this is worthy of shame. Lord, god, shame them. I don't want to feel shame, I am ashamed, you know. Shame them, lord, because they are my enemy. So you get a really, really, really strong foundation in the Old Testament for the use of shame. And of course the experts would say, oh, of course, because they're a shame-honored culture, right, and that's another whole debate. I mean, countless books have been written on the whole idea of shame on our cultures and whether Christians should even mess with that, adopt it or apply it or recognize it. Or is it actually unjust to even engage with a shame on our culture at all on their terms?

Speaker 1: 12:02

But yeah, the old term yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 12:04

Yeah, I guess one question that came up as you were talking about that. You know we're talking about shame in these different cultures and shame in the modern times. I guess one place to start could be from your studies and what you've been working on how do you define shame and how do you differentiate that from guilt? Because I think that plays into this aspect of controversies is what is the reason for shame, what's the effect of shame, and so on. So how do you define those?

Speaker 3: 12:30

Yeah, that's a. You know you don't want to get into session two, we don't want to. You don't want to mess with session two here. Don't don't mess that up, sam.

Speaker 3: 12:39

But you know I, you know you've got to be careful with shame and how you define it. I think it's one of those things where't want to be identified with and we feel harmed, we feel pain because we feel like we have seen a version of ourselves or that others. And this is kind of again, part of the definition is that it doesn't have to. It does have to involve you. It has to involve your own version of yourself in your head, but it can be coming from someone else's glance at you and or it can be coming from a thought that you have about an expectation that you've owned from the culture that you're in. So there's got to be an object outside of yourself in some ways, but it does always have to involve your own view of yourself, so positive, we would say. There's a positive valence, there's a positive calculation about who you are and this is why and we can get into this down the road but this is why pride is inherent or, excuse me, shame is inherently connected to pride in some ways, because you have a view of yourself that is being violated, um, whether justly or unjustly. Again, that's a, that's a whole another part of the conversation, um, but you know these aren't new. New, you know definitions.

Speaker 3: 14:46

Aristotle, uh, nickelbackian ethics, he, he lays out his version again, kind of says the same thing. It's a painful emotion that's based on fear. He's talking about Ados and the fact that your fear of losing face again back to that shame-honor culture aspect. So you know, you get the same thing in the Greco-Roman world that you have in the Hebrew world. You get this ideal, virtuous understanding of who you should be and you don't meet it. You're shown a version of yourself that doesn't meet it. It's a little bit more intricate in the Greco-Roman world because they have kudos.

Speaker 3: 15:37

I don't know if you've heard the term kudos. Are you familiar with the term kudos? So, hey, many kudos to you. Well, that's a Greek term and you're saying these are positive attributes that you want to have. Kudos is a positive attributes that you want to have, versus ados, which is a negative attribute that you don't want to be associated with, which is kind of funny. We use that term. Oh, kudos to you for doing that. Again, that's a Greek reference from aristotelian philosophy, um and but yeah, so we, we have that kind of philosophy, um from from aristotle coming through uh, and then that informs uh, of course, many would say that that informs the early churches understanding, understanding of shame, even though they're also pulling from the word of God, they're pulling from Paul and First Corinthians and his use of shame there. They're pulling, of course, from the Hebrew world and the use of shame in the Old Testament. We can get into kind of the early Christian. But I just want to stop any questions, any thoughts based on what we've talked about.

Speaker 1: 17:04

Yeah, I would just want to ask we're getting a little bit into, I guess, some of the historical uses of shame and from different cultures, different culture, what would be, I guess? What are the? Well, I want to ask you about controversies, but I guess let's get into, like the, the christians and early church, how did they talk about shame and what its role was theologically?

Speaker 3: 17:28

and then from there let's get into some of the historical controversies with shame and guilt yeah, you know, and that's kind of kind of feeds quickly into it when you start talking about the early church. Um, because you, you obviously have very strong differences early on and in some theological traditions, you know, you get the greek orthodox uh coming from athanasius and uh, you gotta, you know, you have this line coming out of augustinian theology and augustine is, he's kind of the hated, he's the hated dude. The early church fathers used shame and they didn't define it really well, but they used it. You know again, they kind of used it like the Old Testament uses it. Shame, I want, may shame come upon those who do not follow God's word, and shame on the dude that's saying that the Trinitarian God is not the correct God. You know, shame, shame on them, and may the Lord save us from shame. So, you know again, that's Athanasius, that's Irenaeus, those are the kind of references.

Speaker 3: 18:39

The shame that you get from there is there's not a, a systematic understanding. It's not until you get uh again to like aristotle um, I'm not aristotle, but augustine that you start to see a more systematic engagement, at least in my, in my reading, uh, with shame and kind of defining what that is. Um, that said, you do have that greek, um eastern orthodox tradition of theosis right, and this is where you kind of get a bit of a break in some ways. Um, you got the augustine understanding that shame is like a punishment, uh, for lust. So in the garden, um, they sin, eve sins, um, they see them, their nakedness, and and we're gonna get, we're gonna get and sam probably knows where I'm going here, maybe with your studies but you, you augustine, is saying the reason why shame exists is because, all of a sudden, adam can't control his, you know, his member, his sexual member, right, and and it's not, it's not conducting itself according to his will.

Speaker 3: 19:57

And aug Augustine, this kind of defines a lot of the way that people have reacted to shame in reference to Christianity over the years philosophers, psychologists, the counseling community. They look at what Augustine did and they, most of the time, they hate it Because they're getting understanding that augustine's whole view of shame is built around, um, around lust, around sex. I was gonna ask you.

Speaker 1: 20:26

Yeah, I was gonna don't mind me interjecting there it does seem so for our audience who, uh, maybe not from familiar with church history or theology. I can just imagine some of them listening to be like what is theosis and who is Augustine? So, augustine being a, I guess he's considered the last church father of you know, he lived in the late fourth century, early fifth century, and he's one of the foremost theologians in Christianity. And I think you know we mentioned guilt and guilt and shame or, um sorry, honor and shame versus guilt and innocence earlier, and you mentioned some books that have been written. There's a really famous book, uh, by Roland Mueller, who, uh, and it's called guilt, it's called, uh, honor and shame and it's a, it's a missions book.

Speaker 1: 21:16

Lots of missionaries love to read this book. I had to read it, yeah, I was an intern and he essentially talks about how a lot of our theology is built around guilt and innocence and we have a hard time relating the gospel to honor and shame cultures and what you were alluding to with, uh, ancient semitic cultures, like the hebrews. They're built around honor and shame. Modern islamic cultures are built around honor and shame. Modern Islamic cultures are built around honor and shame. But the West that's informed by Greco-Roman philosophy and to a large extent Augustinian thought from Augustine, is very much steeped in guilt and innocence. Thinking in terms of our relationship with God, is it based on guilt and innocence or honor and shame? So you know, augustine, I think is really impactful for moving. Maybe I want to know what your thoughts on this moving Christianity. If the early church fathers are using shame a lot, it seems like Augustine shifts the focus to guilt and innocence.

Speaker 3: 22:23

He talks about. You know, again, it's not like he doesn't talk about shame, he does, he just paints it. He paints it in. And again, it's not that he doesn't understand that it is a positive. It can be positive in the fact that it is a warning sign, it is a penalty, it is a repercussion of doing something bad that makes you need to repent.

Speaker 3: 22:55

So Gaston talks about that in City of God, about that in city of god, um, and then, of course, he gets on some interesting conversations and confessions and talking about some of his friends that are dealing with the idea of shame and, uh, wanting to pursue. Really, when he talks about his friends, uh, working through shame, um, that's probably what I would see as the most fruitful, because they're talking about how it is this shame feeling that they feel about who they were outside of Christ that drives them towards contrition, that drives them towards repentance, and I'm like, oh, that's good, but over in City of God, augustine is just all about, yeah, shame comes from lust and you shouldn't feel any lust at all and so, a good Christian, the only reason you're feeling shame is because you still have that lust with you, and you shouldn't have that lust, even with your wife. You shouldn't have that feeling of lust with you.

Speaker 1: 23:59

I mean's where people are like what the you've been smoking crack yeah, do you think augustine is really influenced by that because of his own past? It's. It seems that he is really dealing with the guilt of his own, his own past and sexual promiscuity.

Speaker 3: 24:16

Yeah I think. So I think there's a bit of that there where he's overreacting, if you will, it's informed, it's kind of a subplot, uh that he's, he's, he's using and because, again, you do see him use it in a different way elsewhere, but it's pretty prominent in the city of god, but in terms of, like, say, athanasius, and this is a completely different stream. Uh and in, and the writers of eastern orthodox and their saints and their writers, um, they get into this theosis which is becoming christ, becoming like christ, becoming deification, or they're becoming so much like christ that they are becoming a god, lower g, right and um, shame for them is is the shame that jesus endured on the cross. So it is shame for them would be a formative experience, emotion that they feel, that one can feel and should feel and should be okay with feeling, in in moderation, as it pertains to you taking on unjust burdens that are not you, whether they be accusations or whether they be persecutions for who you are, and you kind of just got to own that because Jesus owned it on the cross. So that is their positive conception of shame. Does everybody still have a toxic definition of shame? In terms of toxic shame that they say is completely bad and disabling. And yes, they do. Everybody's going to come out with that version of shame, as do I, where we say, yes, there's always a toxic shame, but the positive view from that Eastern Orthodox tradition that comes out of, you know, as deep as Athanasius, is that that shame. I am owning the shame that Jesus owned on the cross and I that is a part of my becoming like Jesus in that sense, and that's a completely different stream, right, that's, that's a. You know, I could spend my whole dissertation on that. I'm not going to, but I could. It's just a whole a that I'm not going to, but I could. It's just a whole other stream.

Speaker 3: 26:43

But then you've got Aquinas Tim another big name, right and Aquinas and the passions and shamefacedness. And yes, he was very influenced by Aristotle and so he's interacting with Aristotle all the time in his Summa and he's talking about shame-facedness and how a person that's seeking to become a virtuous person but that is not quite a virtuous person there yet shame is going to be good for that person to feel, because they need to know when they're when they're violating god's laws, they need to know when they are being someone they're not supposed to be. But just like aristotle, aquinas would say it's not a virtue, and and a virtuous person should never feel it. Um, because they are, they are beyond it in their maturity, their spiritual maturity, if you will. They're a virtuous person, they don't need to feel it anymore. So it's only the young. So both Aquinas and Aristotle would say it's the young naive out there, sown his wild oats. That guy, whether he's a Christian or not, he needs to be feeling some shame, mm-hmm.

Speaker 1: 28:04

All right. So we've dumped a load of concepts and names on our audience. Tell us this what are some of these controversies that we've alluded to? Historical, theological controversies, and the next few minutes I think we'll wrap up the episode and go into part two about current and historical arguments about guilt and shame. So what are some of the controversies throughout history dealing with guilt and shame? You've mentioned some streams of thought. Yeah, this yeah, bonhoeffer.

Speaker 3: 28:35

bonhoeffer would be kind of the last and the kind of mohicans, if you will. Um, that, who is that? Um, dietrich bonhoeffer? Uh, right, the, the in Nazi Germany who revolted against, of course, the Nazis and was an extremely brilliant theologian and interacted a lot with European philosophers, european philosophers.

Speaker 3: 29:06

But Bonhoeffer had an interesting take, and this is where the controversy is there with all the ones I just mentioned the controversy, of course, with Augustine. Most pastors are going to steer far away from Augustine we can get into that conversation more later on but they're going to steer far away from that. But Bonhoeffer says that shame is actually a testimony, a covering that testifies to our disunity with God and it's necessary to stay there. If we lose it, then we lose our ability to remember that we are. We are, uh, disunited with God and others, and so shame serves as a consistent, permanent reminder that we are not on good terms, we are not unified with God and with others. And in a and yes, bonhoeffer was was influenced by German idealism and a guy named Max Thaler, and shame serves as a protective mechanism in some of their writings, and so Bonhoeffer does use it. In reference to that protective mechanism.

Speaker 3: 30:25

I put on clothes to cover myself to that protective mechanism. I put on clothes to cover myself. I advert my eyes to protect my identity, because you can't look too much into my soul If I stare. The only people that you stare into the eyes of besides me, of course, tim, is your loved one, is your wife. You look intently, but that's a very rare exception. You don't want to show yourself because you're a broken person and you are oscillating, if you will, between this person that wants desperately to be united with your creator and this person that knows that you cannot, and and so you're you. Shame serves as a kind of a comforter and yet also a testimony to the fact that you were this side of heaven. Uh, you're. You're never going to be completely whole, um, and even, yes, we can kind of achieve some unity with christ through faith in this life. But we're still wrestling with the fact that our bodies are not where they need to be, not what we want them to be.

Speaker 1: 31:37

We're still hoping for a life that's beyond this broken, sinful, lustful, arrogant, disobedient, angry person that we, we struggle being so as I, as I listen to you, it sounds like even among the history of theology, you have several different uses or takes on shame and, just to put this in terms of relevance to people who are listening, we live in a culture that, as me and Sam have said many times, like it's a shameless culture. They don't want to feel shame. Nobody wants to feel shame today because they think shame is bad or if you shame someone, you're arrogant. You shouldn't be shaming anyone, you shouldn't be ashamed of who you are. But in the history of Christian theology, shame is a very important subject. If you're just listening to Jason, you can hear that we have at least five that I was counting. One is Augustine and one is, you know, augustine and his. Take this uh a, a a sexual reading of that. But even if you don't take the sexual reading, it still says in Genesis three that they, they saw themselves, they were naked and they were ashamed. So there is a shame, there's some shame element there. Um, you have uh Aquinas, thomas Aquinas, who lives in the middle ages, who uh thinks that. I guess, if I could summarize that shame is shame is this mechanism to move in a spiritually or morally immature person into virtue and once you achieve virtue, then you don't need to feel shame anymore. Uh, we, I probably disagree with that. I think you probably do too, but at least it's there.

Speaker 1: 33:32

The early church fathers, at least in the Eastern side, and their take on as we become more like Christ. Part of becoming like Christ is accepting I guess accepting shame that isn't yours, accepting Christ took on our shame on the cross and to become like Christ, you take on shame that isn't yours. I like what John Piper says, or related to this. He says you will be shamed for the gospel, but you do not need to be ashamed of the gospel and since, of being a Christian, someone might shame you. You accept the shame quote unquote, the shame of being a christian, but you don't have to be ashamed of that right.

Speaker 1: 34:17

Um, and I like. I like how you bonhoeffer I didn't know this about him but this idea that shame always has to be there, because we're always, we always fall short of god, and so there's some sense in which we wear shame, we're fully aware of our own shortcomings, and that itself produces a shame in us that we can't wait to be. We can't wait to be with the lord and separated from this fallen body. I mean, yeah, it kind of reminds you of roman 7, where paul says that that what I want to do, I I don't do, and that that's right, I do, I don't want to do, I I don't do. That that's right, I do, I don't want to do.

Speaker 3: 34:50

Yeah, that's totally right. That's a good reference. Yeah, yeah and that and that, just to just to give you the reference on that. It's out of ethics, the the Dietrich Bonhoeffer is out of his ethics book.

Speaker 1: 35:01

So yeah, yeah, all right. So so it seems like you know if we're coming to the end of this episode, just that we've gotten a really broad snapshot of just how shame has been used in different cultures and societies. What? What's the what's like the key controversy? Going into the current debate and we'll we'll do part two on the current debates about guilt and shame, but what's like the key controversy?

Speaker 3: 35:36

like the key controversy man. The key controversy is is just the observation of what um our contemporary world sees or blames shame for right, the, the suicide, the hatred of self, the loss of hope. It's that recognition. They label shame as being the perpetrator of that, of all those bad things. And that's where the in the Christian world again, as Sam probably knows full well and I'd love to hear any feedback he has from his counseling psychology studies that's something that the Christian world and pastors struggle with a lot.

Speaker 2: 36:22

That's good All right, hmm.

Speaker 2: 36:26

Hmm, that's good. Yeah, I did have a comment cause you guys have referenced it a couple of times the passage in Genesis three and you know a lot of. When I first started the first podcast, I had a Genesis of shame podcast and it was regarding that chapter and the very first emotion that Adam and Eve experienced was that aspect of shame, right. So the way that I looked at that passage was what was there before the fall? Complete vulnerability, relationship with God, relationship with each other. And after the fall, those things were affected. Right, and it's interesting because, if we think about modern times, what do people seek to do? Most is to be vulnerable and to be fully seen and fully known, and shame keeps them away from that.

Speaker 2: 37:15

So it's interesting that, as you were discussing the read the ways in which shame was was used before. It was always a way of reestablishing our relationship, either with the, with the culture or with God. So, yeah, it was just really interesting. So I guess I've really informed my theology around this aspect of shame. But one of the ways that in the counseling world, they'll talk about shame is this aspect of. It's a signal that something is wrong with your relationship and in our case, we're talking about this. There's something wrong with our relationship with god. How do I fix it? And then, hearing about all these other um philosophers and theologians, it's been really, really good to hear.

Speaker 1: 37:56

Thanks for sharing that, yeah, all right. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap up part one, and, uh, we will come back for part two and discuss the current topic of the current argument over shame and Jason had just alluded to it that that so much of the world's pain, mental health issues, um, different moral and ethical issues are blamed on this, this idea of shame, and where shame comes from. So if we can excrete, x, exercise shame from our lives, then perhaps we can cure society of all the ills and evils that we experience, right? So, let's, let's get into part two then, and just a minute. But well, I guess, for our audience listening, this will be next week, but we will see you all again for part two of this series.

Speaker 1: 38:47

Until next time, give us a listen Spotify, apple podcast music. You all again, uh, for part two of this series. Until next time, give us a listen spotify, apple podcast music. And, uh, we're on youtube now and all the other things that we're doing. Shout out to brian, our editor. We always thank him for doing the hard behind the scenes work. I really appreciate him. Other than that, we will see you next week, all right.