Shame, honour and the gospel: Recovering what we’ve missed

Jesus came not just to deal with the guilt of our sin, but also to cover the shame of being sinners

Is there an element of the gospel which we’ve forgotten about? That Jesus came not to just to deal with the guilt of our sin and forgive that, but to deal with the shame of being sinners and to cover that too. In this episode we dig into the differences between shame-honour cultures and guilt-forgiveness cultures. So-called honour killings, when family members murder their own kin to end their supposed shaming of the family, baffle and repulse us in the West, and yet Jesus came to a context in first century Judaea which was profoundly honour-based. How can we re-examine the gospel message he brought in this light to see what our profoundly individualistic culture in the West might have missed? And, are things starting to shift in both secular society and the church in recent times, as we drift towards a new form of shame-honour culture driven by cancellation and public shaming via social media?

Listen to other episodes of Matters of Life and Death or find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts, Podcast Addict, Castbox or whatever app you use to subscribe and receive new episodes sent straight to your device.

Tags
Most read posts
What can we learn from how the early church lived out their faith during their own pandemics?
How are young people different to those who came before, and what can we learn from them?
Navigating the transitions of later life
This Bill is the wrong approach - there is a better way to give individuals and their families dignity at the end of life
Living faithfully as we approach retirement, dependence, dementia and death
Recent posts
What's happening in the DRC, and why doesn't the world seem to care?
A series of unexpected breakouts by AI models has some worrying humans are losing control
Redundancies, over-mighty managers... but is this all ivory tower elitism anyway?
Is the pontiff an AI doomer or booster, or does he have something more interesting to say?
Why are Christians so bad at HR?