Shame on us?

It’s a small world, after all—or not. Instant communication can make a provincial story blaze up on our virtual doorstep while we struggle to remember the names of our next-door neighbors. An image of a drowned toddler on a beach rockets around the globe and raises a heartfelt, unified cry—Do something!—before we know the details. The world is literally at our fingertips, accessible at a few taps on a keyboard. All that immediacy makes it seem small, but societies and ethnic groups are still worlds apart, and hard to explain.

The image of 2-year-old Aylan (or Alan) Kurdi (or Shenu), whose body washed up on a Turkish beach in early September, became an instant icon of the Middle East refugee crisis. How did the little boy come to be on that beach? Obviously, his parents were fleeing the danger of a civil war because no one wants to be killed; that’s universal. How do we understand a conflict involving factions going back to the Middle Ages? Well, that’s cultural. What should we do about it? That’s a muddle. Take the refugees in! appeals to our hearts, while Keep the refugees out! attempts to make a rational case. That usually means reaching for metaphors and dichotomies to explain how we (the West) are not like them (the East). More than one rationalist has suggested this interesting contrast: guilt vs. shame.

Our response is to show compassion and mercy wherever possible, because compassion and mercy are continually shown to us.

Soon after World War II, anthropologist Ruth Benedict published The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, a study of the cultural underpinnings of Japan, “the most alien enemy the United States had ever fought in an all-out struggle.” What made the Japanese so alien? Benedict decided it was essentially their “shame culture.” By contrast, the United States was a guilt culture: “a society that inculcates absolute standards of morality and relies on men’s developing a conscience.” Shame cultures, as Benedict described them, “rely on external sanctions for good behavior” and tend to be clannish and subjective, with little sense of responsibility toward those outside the ethnic, national, or religious group. Shame is a feeling; guilt a legal judgment.

Even though Westerners feel shame and Easterners determine guilt, Benedict’s distinction seemed to explain a lot—not only to Americans but also to Japanese, who made her book a bestseller in Japan. As some critics have pointed out, societies don’t boil down to a single theory, and at its worst the theory may be used to excuse criminal behavior. If shame/clan/honor is what a culture is, no wonder its people occasionally act out its excesses, especially during wartime.

With these distinctions in mind, radicalized Muslim factions look like shame cultures: touchy, tribal, and dismissive of those outside their circles. Meanwhile, some Westerners are wallowing in guilt for creating, or at least exacerbating, chaos in the Middle East (don’t forget the Crusades), for which restitution lies in welcoming the refugees, no questions asked.

Shame vs. guilt doesn’t explain everything. But both are deeply embedded in human history, going farther back than Ruth Benedict knew. Shame was what Adam felt in the garden: embarrassed about his nakedness, defensive about his honor, distancing himself from “this woman you gave me.” Guilt is what the Lord imposed on him: moral culpability, personal responsibility, pending judgment. Shame can’t be forgiven; only atoned for with one’s own life or another’s (as in Japanese ritual suicides and Islamic honor killings). Guilt can be forgiven when the guilty party makes restitution.

The Middle East (broadly speaking) still seeks blood atonement while the West, haunted by its Christian heritage, debates restitution for real and imagined sins. In God’s economy, guilt and shame come together as a single burden requiring atonement and restitution—and Jesus makes both.

But what about the child on the beach? Our response is to show compassion and mercy wherever possible, because compassion and mercy are continually shown to us. We are not required to commit cultural suicide or surrender all our goods. We are required to see clearly and act faithfully. If we don’t, as Jesus said in John 9:41, “your guilt remains.”

Email jcheaney@wng.org