Videos

Videos from the 2017 Honor-Shame Conference are available on this YouTube playlist.

Introduction

Biblical Teaching

Practical Ministry

Popular

5 Comments on “Videos

  1. I appreciate all your work on the Honor / shame site. It is a worthwhile resource that I often refer people to. Just a note about the “Back to God’s Village” video. In it is a bit of a mixing of metaphors. Jesus is referred to as “defeating shame”. However this is “fear / power” language and does not fit with shame. It should be something like “covers shame”.

    • Thanks Mark. Your comment has me thinking. What I had in mind with “defeats shame” is that Christ renders shame powerless. He scorned it on the cross and called it false bluff. The social powers of alienation and exclusion (which were fully directed towards God incarnate during the crucifixion) no longer influence God’s people. We are free from our spiritual shame not only because it is hidden/covered, but because shame now impotent. By siding with the shamed in this entire life and then death, Jesus through a monkey wrench into the social machinery of exclusion, disgrace, and shame. So now, Christians are able to resist shame. (And yes, these ideas are not entirely distinct from elements of Christ’s victory over spiritual powers or fear-power language in the NT).

      • Thanks for the further explanation of the thinking behind the language. That is helpful. Being shaped by a guilt-innocence paradigm made that my default assumption when I heard “defeat”! I wonder if there would be some value in thinking about Jesus “absorbing” our shame. I am thinking of the older son’s anger against the younger son in Luke 15 because of the shame the younger son caused to the family. The father’s response is to essentially say, “don’t think about your brother in those terms. Think about him in terms of renewed life and being found.” Where did the shame go? The father took in on himself by honoring the younger son. cf. Jesus’ actions on the cross that is also an explicit dishonoring that “absorbs” our dishonor.

  2. I wonder if the reality of now-impotent shame is implied in Revelation 5? The lamb who opens the scrolls appears ‘looking as if it had been slain’ v6. The marks of his shame-full death remain on his body yet he is declared ‘worthy’ v9. Is it distorting the message of the resurrection to say that in Christ there is no shame in shame?

  3. Ever since I discovered the Psychological aspects of shame from a Psychiatrist we were jointly treating in 1975 I have studied it from both the secular humanist framework as well as the theological framework. The topic of shame is popular in Psychological circles but lacks the foundational heft of a Jewish/Christian perspective. Bene Brown is a brilliant secular humanist who communicates the results of shame and the ways to combat them as a therapist with no focus on fallen nature and the redemption promised in Jesus Christ.

    I have posted here before about the teaching I received from Dr. James Kallas in 1978 about the three main streams of fallen nature and their specific answers in Christ. He mentions Rebellion/Conversion; guilt/ justification/ Bondage/Rebirth but does not cover shame/adoption since it is not a classic view of western theology. I took his themes and added shame/adoption to the process. Although shame has definite psychological and social and cultural implications I do not believe those are the causes of shame but simply magnify its power.

    The biblical root of shame is a total loss of identity and inheritance as Adam and Even lost them in Genesis 3. When we are rejected as humans and as members of God’s eternal family the psychological/social dimensions are exacerbated but not causal. The answer is found in Romans 8:14-17. “We did not receives the spirit of slavery to fall again into fear but the spirit of an eldest son and heirs with Christ.” (Paraphrase)

    Thus we honor all persons because they are created in God’s image and are honored by God as we join the eternal family with Christ. I fear that our focus is too much on a human agency for shaming as causal rather than the spiritual roots in Genesis 3 with renewing our minds and “Taking every thought captive to Christ” as our defense for human shaming.