Dying in Christ
Shame as a metaphysical problem
To be seen is at once our greatest fear and our deepest desire. Only Christianity (or, more precisely, Christ) is able to reconcile this spiritual tension in the heart of every man. In our apostate society, this tension finds no reconciliation—it becomes a mere contradiction, a self-negation that tears us apart (both individually and collectively) from within. We have nightmares of the world (whatever “the world” is) finding out who we truly are, how pitiful and weak we are beneath the facade we put so much energy into upholding. And yet, we are so deeply lonely today, we felt “unseen,” unrecognized for who we truly are. Today, we do not know how to deal with our shame.
Only Christianity provides an answer to our shame because, unlike the world, it does not try to either suppress it or inauthentically embrace it. Christianity elevates and provides new meaning to our fear of exposure and our desire for recognition. The fear of God’s judgment (His “seeing” us) becomes an essential aspect of the spiritual life, and confidence in His mercy and love for us becomes our assurance and peace. Shame is not something to be avoided, nor is it something to be “shamelessly” embraced—it is something that is given to Christ, who does not simply “cover over” our shame as He once did in the Garden, but transforms us into people who have nothing to be ashamed of. Our old self and all its shame dies in Christ—literally—and we are resurrected as new persons with clean hearts.
The problem of shame is a metaphysical one. It stems from the fact that we are made in the image of God, with a conscience that is intuitively aware of its sinfulness—although, through suppression and/or shamelessness, this awareness can be progressively lost. The problem of our past “selves” is not simply psychological, it has to do with the fact that our “past” is irrevocably constitutive of our present self. “Who we are” now is metaphysically bound to who we once were—I am necessarily shaped and determined by my past actions, good or bad. This is a cause for despair (if we do not have Christ).
Christ does not simply abolish our past. He does not magically make an evil action good. Rather, he provides a new end to evil, where once the only end was a shameful death. How does he do this? He dies a shameful death. He allows for our evil acts to manifest in the form of crucifying Him. Again, this does not magically give our evil acts (separating ourselves from the source of Life) an end other than death, but it gives our death another end—resurrection. While we meant it for evil, God meant it for good (Genesis 50:20). And, through baptism and repentance, we enter into this goodness, we enter into the life-giving body of Christ.
As we write in our book Time: Crown of Eternity:
Who we are cannot be separated from what we did, so in order for God to save us as we truly are, He had to experience what we did. Since sin has no reality outside of our own enclosed inner worlds, Christ could only experience it “from outside,” by having it spat and slandered into His face, whipped on his back, nailed into his hands and feet, and speared into His side. Yet, it was only then that the Waters of life flowed out, a New Creation was born, and the words “it is finished” could be pronounced. God makes sin operative by directly experiencing it, but in this very act He renders it powerless. As sin is an ontological paradox, the only reason it “is,” the reason God allows it to be, is because it has been used by Christ to bring us to Him. Christ on the Cross is, in this precise sense, the “atonement” that stands as a “substitute” restraining the “wrath of God.” It is the “antinomy” of God transcending even His own nature, which is, in truth, completely reasonable because self-transcendence is of the nature of God.
Our shame is both affirmed and transcended through participating in the death and resurrection of Christ. St. Paisios once said that the “Last Judgment” consists of all of our past actions and thoughts becoming totally transparent to everyone else, so that the “sheep and the goats” naturally divide themselves. Those who have reconciled with their shame—not because they can “bear it,” but because they allowed Christ to bear it for them—are forgiven by forgiving all others and, in a certain sense, forgiving themselves. Those who have fled from or pridefully embraced their shameful deeds cannot bear the weight of its revelation—the weight of the truth—and will naturally separate themselves and attempt to build up barriers from the gaze of the other—just as Adam and Eve hid their nakedness from one another with the garments of fig leaves.
But the fig leaves do not hold. We must either let them be torn off by the One who clothes us in His own righteousness, or spend eternity stitching them tighter against a Light that will not stop shining, in a place where no figs grow.