Recent years have been characterised in this country by a phenomenon I don’t recall experiencing to the same degree before: the upsurge of a collective sense of guilt too great for anyone to dissipate.
I grew up with an awareness of the Holocaust, and an intuition that this wasn’t just a German responsibility, but arose from a European-wide culture of vilifying and oppressing Jews, which made it everyone’s issue. I came to understand that inequalities and injustices around race were inextricably linked to Britain’s colonial heritage, and that the triumphalism of Britain ‘ruling the waves’ and the benevolence of highlighting David Livingstone didn’t tell the whole imperial story.
But from the late 80s I started to become seriously aware of the climate emergency, and the recognition that I was implicate in patterns of consumption and exploitation that were causing irreversible depletion of the world’s ecology, and would affect those living elsewhere and those born after me more than they would hurt me. And in the last few years the weight of these kinds of responsibility has begun to weigh on a great number of people.
Brené Brown helpfully distinguishes between guilt that may be constructive and shame that never is. Guilt involves ‘holding something we’ve done or failed to do up against our values, and feeling psychological discomfort.’ Shame is the ‘painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.’ Guilt is about what we’ve done; shame about what we are. It seems we need to discover a state of healthy guilt, that stirs us to change ourselves and seek change in the world – but doesn’t lapse into shame, a humiliating, disempowering and de-energising us so that we languish in self-rejection.
If we look at Jesus’ interaction with outcasts, we see how he embraced those who knew shame, but challenged those who could do with a dose of healthy guilt. It’s not a bad way of understanding how he relates to us.
Revd Dr Sam Wells
