Honor, Shame, and the Gospel: An Update
Christians engaged in communicating the gospel navigate a challenging tension: 𝘧𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘎𝘰𝘥’𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵, 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘥 – 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘢𝘭, 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘴𝘰𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵. Tune in for this episode on 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘴 podcast as Matthew and Ted have a conversation with the authors of the new book 𝘏𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘳, 𝘚𝘩𝘢𝘮𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘭: 𝘙𝘦𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘔𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘺. Chris Flanders and Werner Mischke give us the backstory on their new book, share examples of an honor-shame gospel framework and explain why this is such an important topic for missionaries to be aware of. Chris Flanders serves as the Professor of Missions at Abilene Christian University and Werner Mischke serves as Vice President of Mission ONE.
welcome to the mission matters
the mission matters is a partnership
between 1615
and mission nexus who have a shared
passion to mobilize god’s people
to be a part of his mission the mission
matters is hosted by matthew ellison
president of 1615 and ted estler
president of mission nexus
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here are your hosts matthew ellison and
ted estler
greetings and welcome to another episode
of the mission matters podcast i’m
matthew ellison and as always joined by
my good friend
and co-host ted essler ted how’s it
going it’s going well
it’s uh we were just chatting before the
recording started here and
we’re in that snarky part snarky part of
the year in florida where we brag about
the great weather
unlike july and august in september and
october
you get the idea yeah it gets pretty
humid out there but
i am jealous i must admit so i live in
albuquerque the high desert and we’re
going to be
seven degrees on sunday i don’t know
when people are going to view this but
it’s the middle of february and it’s
seven degrees something is not right
well hey we always like to start off
with a softball and as we entered into
2021 i was thinking about
some of my favorite verses some people
call it a life verse
i don’t know if that’s popular today
still but i was thinking about that
go-to verse that verse that i’ve just
returned to
time and time again over the years when
i’m discouraged or afraid
or full of anxiety and it’s isaiah 26 3
for me
and there’s a backstory on why that
verse is so important my mom
when i was a kid used to help me
memorize scripture before she would tuck
me into bed and that was one of the
first ones
she helped me memorize isaiah 26 3
you keep him in perfect peace whose mind
is fixed on you
because he trusts in you so when i’m
anxious i think man if i just fix my
eyes on jesus and trust in him
he’ll put a garrison of peace around my
mind and so that is my go-to verse
i use it a lot in 2020 and um looks like
i’ll be using it in 2021 as well
ted how about you well for me my the
verse that i that i think of
it’s actually probably more of a
philosophy of ministry verse
now if you recall i was a missionary in
bosnia we have these different warring
parties and we have them all involved in
our ministry
and and what what you know strategy do
you use to break into that kind of a
situation where you have so much
division
in john 13 34 and 35 i would say always
kind of came to the top and that is
by this all men will know that you are
my disciples
if you have love for one another and
um you know i would if you’ve ever heard
me speak
on on a mission or ministry i must
always figure out a way to work that
verse in
and to me jesus didn’t give us a lot of
strategy but that’s one he gave us
and often in mission we think of mission
as loving the people that we’re going to
minister to but the thing in that verse
that is so
key is that it’s about the love between
believers
and so a mission strategy that focuses
on
us making sure that that those that are
outside
of the kingdom can see how we love each
other to me is a really powerful mission
strategy so that’s mine
love it love it
how about we ask our guests here uh
what they what they want to queue up
we’ll have them introduce themselves
in just a minute but chris let’s start
with you
introduction or verse verse yeah
um i’ve been thinking a lot
through covid and yeah as we even as we
move into 2021
here uh friends who have actually
gone to be with the lord and uh and a
lot of suffering as
all of us know about um i’ve been
reading in job
lately and job 120 is something that
jumped out as i
i’ve been pondering uh mortality
right finitude and the verse i think
it’s
job 120 that you know naked i the job
summary of losing everything naked i
came from my mom’s womb
naked i’ll i’ll leave the lord takes
or the lord gives the lord takes and
then that ending
blessed be the name of the lord um that
ultimately everything i have and
everything i hang my
you know physical goodness on
is going to be gone someday but blessed
be the name of the lord
who endures forever so i’ve been
thinking a lot
a lot more about mortality i’m not that
old but
you know when you live in a pandemic and
you see people dying all around you it
it changes maybe the the focus a little
bit and that that verse has really been
important to me lately yeah great
werner how about you yeah uh
many years ago i started reading
john piper and became
thrilled with just the whole theme of
the glory of god and
and steve hawthorne’s article the story
of his glory and the perspectives course
was like such an inspiration to me
and um these days
you know where there’s there’s been a
lot of crud that we’ve had to go through
uh in in our nation uh i think in the
evangelical church we struggle with a
lot of stuff and i’ve also become
more aware of crud in my own
family and so there’s this sense that
man if i keep my eyes on jesus
that’ll get me through and paul has this
wonderful wonderful verse in
in second corinthians 3 it says and we
all with unveiled face
beholding the glory of the lord are
being transformed into the
same image from glory to glory or from
one degree of glory to another
for this comes from the lord uh
who is the spirit and i just uh love
that
idea of man keep your eyes on jesus keep
gazing on jesus in the gospels
who he is how he lived his character
his steadiness his his focus on
you know what god came gave him to do so
that’s uh that’s been an encouragement
to me
you know warner i got a mountain
dulcimer over the christmas
holidays and uh
the songs that you’re playing on molten
dolls it kind of it’s a little bit of a
limited instrument in the sense that
it’s got a certain sound but there’s a
song that just sounds so awesome on it
and that is
just a simple walk with thee and as
you’re describing that verse
and uh just tell all of us need to have
that simple watch
uh well today our guests are werner
mishki
and chris flanders we’re gonna be
talking about honor and shame
and uh just kind of kick things off
why don’t we start with you and if you
could tell us who you are
and then we’re going to flip to chris
and we’re going to talk about the book a
bit
so werner tell us a little bit about
your background
yeah i’ve uh i came out of a graphic
design and marketing background about
30 years ago and started working with a
small ministry called mission one
i’ve been with mission one since uh
1992.
uh it was founded by bob schindler my
dear brother and friend
and uh we partner with indigenous
ministries in africa asia and the middle
east our goal
our vision is to uh come alongside these
organizations
with uh with strategic projects
training and relief and to help
communities
look more like the kingdom of god my
role is with our training ministries
uh uh a part of the the ministry
and uh several years ago i got involved
in the honor shame conversation
in 2015 my book the global gospel was
published and and i’ve been involved
with the honor shame network along with
uh my dear brother chris flanders uh
here since uh since pretty much the
beginning
and uh so we’re here to talk about honor
shame today and
the new book honor shame in the gospel
uh reframing our message and ministry so
yeah i’m uh
that’s what i do great chris how about
you great to be here
so i grew up in the uh the midwest we
were just talking about that before
in a pre uh pre-recording uh chatting
how cold it is i grew up in south dakota
and then northern minnesota way up in
the
in the upper part of the state um and
then came to school
and uh ended up um shifting my focus in
college and got a calling to
uh international students through a
group of international students at uh
on campus i ended up spending 11 years
in thailand
most of that time church planting in the
northern part in an area of
northern thailand chiang mai which some
people know because of the number of
christian organizations that are based
here
there uh the sad part is that there are
very few people who are actually doing
outreach among ethnic northern thai it’s
a sad
state of affairs where they’re just full
of christian organizations
and uh and uh personnel of all kinds but
actually very little done
among the ethnic northern thai and
that’s one of the things that we did we
ended up planting
about four uh five churches uh there
and then i returned the u.s got a
doctorate and i’ve been teaching at
abilene christian university in abilene
texas west texas since 2005. i teach
mostly in graduate seminary but also
undergraduate
religion intercultural studies and
missions and that’s what i do
so uh gentlemen you co-authored a book
could you just give us a synopsis
uh what’s what’s the back story on the
book yeah so the back story
comes out of uh the formation of the
honor shame network which happened out
of a conference that we all attended the
international reality network conference
in houston
uh where a bunch of us got together we
were talking independently about these
issues and we decided to form a network
and one of the first major fruits of
that network was a 2017
conference that we hosted at uh wheaton
college in chicago and uh it really was
a global conference uh
close to 300 i i round up uh
werner is always fond of giving the
exact number um
but i go with preacher number i just say
300 people but they were truly global
and lots of uh
organizations a lot of practitioners
were there
and it was a phenomenal conference
really great plenaries and then
just a bunch of phenomenal breakout
workshops
and coming off of that we were thinking
how do we take this wonderful stuff and
get it out to people who were not able
to attend
the conference it wasn’t zoom you know
in 2017 way back in the pre-zoom days
right
we were live casting this all over the
world so
what we decided to do was to to call out
the what we thought were maybe the the
top uh presentations from that
conference
and to edit them into uh chapters in a
book and that’s what we did so werner
and i worked
together with several offers authors uh
15
chapters that uh just display
all kinds of different applications
different emphases
but all revolving around this this basic
set of issues that uh
we call honor shame dynamics
so i would imagine that quite a few of
our viewers are familiar with honor
shame
but i imagine some are not so werner i
wonder if you could
give an example of an honor shame gospel
framework
how might you share the gospel uh using
the honor shane paradigm
yeah uh this links back to what chris
said uh there were several people from
uh
crew who attended uh the honor shane
conference at wheaton some were current
uh uh currently uh in
crew and some were prior crew members
uh but there were uh there was a task
force that was formed at crew
after they were uh at the conference and
they
they got together to develop an honor
shame
presentation of the gospel of course
campus crusade for christ or crew is
famous for the four spiritual laws
uh developed by bill bright you know
more than 50 years ago
and so they have a an app which you can
get on your smartphone it’s called the
god tools app g-o-d-t-o-o-l-s
and um and if you open this up
it it has several presentations of the
gospel
one is called power over fear one is
called honor restored we’re going to
look at that just
in a moment and then uh you see also the
four spiritual laws so
if you click on honor restored that’s
the name of the honor shame presentation
of the gospel
here it is and uh by the way this is
available
in i think maybe 30 languages so it’s
it’s
it has real global reach so it begins
with these beautiful
elegant diagrams and it’s simply at the
bottom there it says shame
and honor you click on shame and it says
we feel isolated rejected polluted
excluded and abandoned can our shame
be removed then
honor but we long to be included
accepted exalted cleansed and cherished
can our honor
be restored you click the arrow
the beginning god created a good
world and gave humanity great dignity
then it describes the good world in the
beginning
god created the heavens and the earth
and there’s these god saw everything
that he had made it was very good and
there’s references to genesis 1
1 27 and 31 honor and harmony under
god’s care people honored him rightly as
their father and lived in perfect
relationship
and then it’s references psalm 8 verses
1
and verse 5. you placed on them a crown
of glory and honor
but then it asks if god created a good
world why does it feel
so broken and here we have the
introduction of the problem of sin
the problem we rebelled against our
creator
we sought glory apart from god
and dishonored him and then it goes to
corruption
and shame and it describes uh
what sin looks like using honor shame
terms
from from scripture romans 1 21 they
knew god but they didn’t
honor him as god everyone has sinned no
one measures up to god’s glory
and so forth so i’m going to stop there
but
it really takes a person through the
gospel
the role of christ in in covering our
guilt and shame
dealing with our guilt and shame through
the cross and then inviting
the the user uh to to give their life to
christ
so that’s just one of of many examples
uh uh i think when we talked on the
phone matthew i told you that in my book
in
in honor shame in the gospel i have a
whole section
where i look at nine different dynamics
or 10 different dynamics
of honor shame in the scripture and i
show how they overlap
with verses about the atonement of
christ and the gospel
as ways that the gospel can be
articulated so
this is you know the crew presentation
is one version
we’re so thrilled that they’ve done that
they’ve also done this power fear
presentation so
uh i hope that’s helpful to our uh our
viewers and listeners
matthew you should probably pick it up
here
next question okay give me a second here
let me just note the time here for tom
okay
so you tie honor and shame issues to
glory and jesus in chapter one
of the book can you unpack chris a
little bit of what that looks like for
us
yeah happy to do that so chapter one is
actually written
by steve hawthorne of uh perspectives
renown
and uh and one of the things that
stephen does
in that chapter is is layout i think a
really wonderful case for how
uh well two two important things one
that god created humans to be
honor seeking creatures that our
desire to find honor and the ways that
werner just beautifully described
through that crew app
inclusion and and uh righteousness
and and excellence and virtue those
kinds of desires are actually
implanted in the human soul as part of
god’s design but
as we know how the story unfolds both in
the genesis account throughout
the hebrew scriptures uh and throughout
you know even the new testament paul
talking about
the people who who find honor in their
shame right philippians 3
or romans 1 i think werner mentioned
that
through the crew app where we exchange
god’s honor for
the shameful things so there’s this
human uh falling short
where we now seek honor a god design
thing but we seek it in the wrong ways
in the wrong places and have the wrong
versions and so what jesus preven
presents for us is the perfect example
of god’s glory god’s honor in as
one of my professors used to say jesus
is god with a face
and we see perfectly clearly the full
glory of god or god’s honor most fully
in jesus and so
if you really think about it the new
testament in different ways is simply
redirecting the human desire for honor
in a christ-focused way uh whether it’s
the gospels
showing that in jesus in his ministry or
it’s the letters
or you know acts or revelation focusing
it
in different audiences that what uh what
the new testament is trying to do is to
reshape
not get not tell humans stop doing that
honor thing
stop looking for glory that’s not the
message the message is
here’s the real stuff here’s the true
glory focus on this
uh learn to modulate your honor seeking
and your honor giving and uh and if
there is shame to
do it correctly based on the right
protocols and the right
uh standards rather than the standards
that your culture might present to you
and and so chapter one of this book in
fact does a really great job
of laying that out and showing how the
honor seeking that we all
have as part of our god-given god-design
nature
is most fully fulfilled through jesus
and so in
in essence i think i will speak for
warner
that that the honor shame conversation
is a christological
conversation it’s focusing on the honor
we see in jesus
uh not the honor codes or standards that
our culture might press upon us or even
sometimes
as we know churches get off kilter there
too right we design
strategies or ways of doing this that
aren’t truly
christ-centered and so uh yeah i would
say
jesus is uh the
exact representation of god’s full glory
and honor and we pay close attention to
him
so you know as i hear both of you talk
and i’m thinking about our audience and
also what i’m thinking as you’re as
you’re
describing this it you you’re
in it feels like what you’re doing is
you’re redefining our understanding of
the gospel away from
forgiveness of sin and um
well i understand you know honor and
shame is an aspect here are you actually
suggesting a
a read a fundamental red definition of
how we
we understand soteriology
i would not say we were arguing that
uh uh for a fundamental
change in our soteriology i would say
we are expanding our understanding of
soteriology to be more
in line with the full testimony of
scripture
so a lot of people wonder for example
about
the uh how we define sin
you know a standard western
theological view of sin is extremely
linked to guilt and
certainly the bible has much to say
about sin and guilt
what we challenge is whether guilt is
the only way
to understand sin in the bible
and and so i would point out that
for example in genesis what is the
the vet the last verse in chapter two of
genesis
just before the fall uh it’s uh
that the the man and his wife were naked
and not ashamed so the pre
condition of humanity is described
not as they were without guilt
but they were without shame now that
doesn’t mean they were not guilt
we’re guilty for their sin but the bible
uses
shame and honor terminology
how does god show mercy after the fall
god covers the nakedness
of adam and eve with garments of animal
skin
of animal skin so to cover nakedness is
clearly
a way of covering their shame and some
theologians believe this previews the
sacrificial system
of the shedding of blood and ultimately
the atonement of christ
another thing that’s for many people
a real aha moment is when
it’s pointed out to them that in romans
1 2 and 3
when paul is making his case for the
sinfulness of humanity
and the need of humanity he primarily
not exclusively but primarily uses
honor shame language and a very
simple uh
device for remembering this is romans 1
23
romans 2 23 and romans 3
23. so in romans 1 23 humanity
exchanged the glory
of the immortal god for images that’s
honor shame language they exchanged the
glory
in romans 2 23 paul is speaking to
the jews and he says you who boast
in the law in other words he’s a he’s
saying you jews who
are proud of your your exceptionalism as
god’s people and you’re boasting and
what the law means to you and how that
separates you from
other people than you’re above other
people you who boast in the law
dishonor god by breaking the law
and the the force there is on the
dishonoring of god the father
because of their law breaking
that’s the that’s that’s the force of
the greek there
it’s on dishonoring god as a description
of sin and then finally the verse that
we’re perhaps most familiar with
out of romans concerning sin for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory
of god
and we normally use that verse to
describe the fact that everybody’s a
sinner
but less of us i think
focus on the fact that what we are
falling short of
is not innocence what we are falling
short of is god’s glory
and that we were made for glory so
i think this is this is helpful i’ll
point out one more thing we have a
gospel presentation called
the father’s love booklet uh that we’ve
produced at
mission one and we just tell the story
of the prodigal son
and how is it that sin is described in
that’s
in that story it is described by the son
dishonoring the father in a very
dramatic story
so i think that that the overall
testimony of scripture
yes it includes guilt but it also
includes
an abundance of material about
shame as you were describing that i was
thinking of isaiah 6.
where you know isaiah has this encounter
with the pre-incarnate jesus
and you know essentially god’s glory is
on display here
and isaiah is crushed i mean he wounded
to the core
there’s no threats owing to judgment
there’s no mention of the consequences
of breaking the law
he just sees the glory of jesus
and recognizes this is what i was made
for but i didn’t i didn’t realize it
um it just reminded me of that that i i
think oftentimes evangelicals miss
um they make
sin about the damage it does to man and
that’s true
um but you know isaiah no longer saw
that i mean
look this was the man who spoke god’s
oracles i mean and yet he’s coming apart
he’s unraveling
in the presence of glory and he now saw
sin as something that demeans god
so i did something that occurred to me
when you said that i was just man
there’s a scripture that just reminded
me of that so
can i just throw in one thing there i
love that matthew uh
the the term woe right woe is me i’m
undone
the term woe in hebrew and in greek ui
in greek
is a shame-laden term it’s it’s about i
am
i’m i’m pathetic that’s how i translate
that by the way
especially when i would preach in in
thai um how do you render
kind of church ease into normal
language for everyday people you know uh
c.s lewis talks about the fact that
they’re probably almost no church
members who understand what glory really
is right we just use it like
god’s a divine light bulb but here
isaiah’s reaction to the glory of god
is shame he he’s just oh i
am so undone woe is me how pathetic
am i and exactly because now he sees
in maybe not fully but but just a little
bit more of a glimpse of of the actual
awesomeness and honor and glory of god
and uh
i think that’s powerful yeah if if i
could add just one more thing to that
too matthew and chris
the prophet isaiah says woe is me for
and i am undone for i am a man of
unclean lips
and dwell among a people of unclean lips
and what we see there is that he sees
himself as part of a community
and so the the point i’m trying to make
here is that sin
is not just an individualistic reality
there is a collective perspective to sin
which we see
all over the bible but but which we
tend to minimize in america
and in i would say in the west and
this so an alertness to honor shame
dynamics
and collective identity is a part of
that uh
it helps us could i do standing
just jump in warner um i mean i’ve been
wanting to jump
a lot here in this conversation but that
concept
right now of collective sin
is it’s actually i think a huge part of
the national conversation
when it comes to the racial division
we’re facing absolutely
um what i find interesting about this
whole conversation that we’re having is
you know typically we we focus on global
missions
and the global great commission and we
just you know we just talked around
however many minutes about honor and
shame
and we really haven’t attached it at all
to
the cross-cultural dynamics um
that are inherent in this conversation
and just based on my conversations today
and
in previous form i do think that’s one
of the things about your book and about
what you’re you’re
writing about um in one sense you’re
you’re
you’re you i can’t say the word
universalizing
these concepts of honor and shame
in our understanding of the gospel and
you’re not limiting it to a
cross-cultural
application in other words well that’s
an honor shane culture so i act this way
am i am i right about that or am i wrong
about that well
i so i think that many of us at least
i’ll speak for me came into this
conversation because of the pragmatic
benefits of
understanding this for our ministry
context so when i’m sharing the good
news in thailand
and i’m doing it in a little bit more of
a a western frame presentation
uh and then i modulated to a little more
of what we are talking about here what
werner shared both in the crew app and
his own
mission one the father’s love approach
we saw
eyes lights go on with people who had
never even gotten it
and so for us for me personally and for
many of us
we enter into the conversation through
the
the power that this perspective has on
the ground
sharing with believers or in a
discipleship tool as well
and i could spend the whole hour talking
about how this can
enhance discipleship work in contexts
where these issues are more
more at the center but then i kind of
work backwards then
into well so is this just a pragmatic
ministry thing for a certain kind of
culture
or is there more here that i’m missing
and
i came to understand that i had been
shortchanging my own understanding of
scripture because i’ve been reading it
as more of a just a typical normal
evangelical western
american and and so it’s enhanced i
wouldn’t ever say this replaces anything
but rather enhances maybe critiques or
chips away at the edges of some previous
understandings
but doesn’t supplant but rather expands
and i think that’s what we all want
right we want to be fully
gospel fully biblical and that’s the way
that i’ve worked and so you talk about
the kind of
universalizing i would say that there is
a universal
honor shame dimension to this
conversation that’s not how i got into
it
and i suspect suspect that people could
pick up our book and use it in a very
pragmatic and effective way
without thinking about the universal
dimension i would hope that
like me they’d eventually wind their way
back to
uh scripture and the nature of god and
the gospel itself and
allowed these conversations to open our
eyes to our own
cultural limitations which is what
happened for me
so let’s drill down a little more on
this do you think this is an important
thing for missionaries to understand
today
yes next question
[Laughter]
well i would say it’s important for
missionaries to understand all over the
world
including those of us who are living in
america in our
western suburban communities
every culture is an honor shame culture
it
it just shows up in different ways if if
we don’t think
um our own you know middle class
churches our honor shame have
have honor shame values in them just ask
you know a prominent woman or a
prominent man
or really anybody in your church are you
concerned about your reputation
everyone is concerned about their
reputation
and in our own political conversations
here in this country
there is there has been a tremendous
increase
in what i and
many others refer to as tribalism
you know there’s a there is an extremely
strong
sense of collective identity that
is that prevents us
from listening to people on the other
side these are
honor shame dynamics bullying is an
honor shame dynamics
an honor shame dynamic the forces of
social media
and uh you know the anxiety that it
causes
these these have to do with honor shame
principles of how i
am perceived by my community and
so honor shame dynamics are
i think have always been at play in our
country
i think they’re certainly
you know more at play today than they
were
say 20 years ago especially in the
political arena
i’m not sure all that’s changed in our
culture to create this but i i can’t
i don’t think anyone can deny that that
shame
and honor have risen to a new level
at least in our recent history you just
go into google and put
christian and shame in your search terms
and just
see the hundreds of works that are
now addressing toxic shame and uh one
book that i
i’m you know particularly struck by the
title is if i’m forgiven then why do i
still feel so bad
and the answer the author provides i
think he’s right is shame that there’s
something else that’s not being
addressed adequately in the church my
wife is a therapist here on our campus
at our
in our in our counseling center here at
abilene christian
and her one of her areas of expertise is
eating disorders she tells me that
at the core of almost every single
person who struggles with the eating
disorder is this
deep deeply
deep sense of shame self and defective
self and most of these have grown up in
christian homes going to church but they
just feel deep down that they’re
defective that they’re not measuring up
and then it
winds up you know coming out in these
really destructive ways
so there’s a there’s an issue here as
well as globally
no doubt so i i mean we gotta i know we
gotta wrap up soon but
just your example right there to help
our readers understand you so
when you talk about eating disorders
i think we would often talk about it’s
because people feel
guilty they’re dealing with guilt
but you’re saying they’re dealing with
shame well it
they could be dealing with both uh
shame and guilt are are both responses
uh to some kind of infraction or
some kind of uh some kind of lack
and the social psychologist the
theorists really can’t tell us
why one person feels guilt in this
moment and another person feels shame
but we do know that people feel both of
those things about the same event
sometimes people feel both about
something that’s happened
but guilt typically is associated with
breaking of
laws or infraction of some kind
shame on the other hand tends to be
about not measuring up being defective
being lacking in some way
and uh and so a gospel understanding
will recognize that we are
simultaneously sinners
who are guilty because of that sin but
we are also in shame because of that sin
and part of the gospel message is that
the gospel frees us from both of those
if we understand the good
news and embrace it so
somebody i think that there is a western
tendency to to put
shame as like uh a sub sub point under
guilt
but they’re actually two very different
things
that can be powerfully motivating both
for good
and for ill but we need to understand
that they’re really different
yeah i would add to that chris that
we are challenging the idea
that guilt is objective an
objective problem that we have before
god whether we know it or not
and that shame is merely subjective like
it’s a derivative
problem of the primary problem of guilt
uh we are we contend that shame and
guilt are
both objective and that there is
abundant scripture
uh to to uh um
to show this is true and i would just
reference jackson wu’s article
uh that was published in the gospel
coalition’s
uh academic journal familios
it’s called have theologians no
sense of shame question mark how the
bible
reconciles objective and subjective
shame i think that’s the title but that
lays out 150 scriptures from
old and new testament showing that shame
is
objective in the bible so
objective reality do you so when i think
about shame
i think of a social dynamic to it
yes yes whereas with guilt i don’t feel
that social thing
is that related at all to your your
description there
absolutely uh normally we think of shame
either as psychological or socially you
know uh derived and what jackson wu has
done
in his article is he’s saying no in the
bible
we have not only social shame we have
and psychological shame
we have something called sacred shame
and a really powerful example of this
would be
uh in romans 9 and in romans 10 and in
first peter
i think it’s chapter 2 where the uh
the new testament authors quote isaiah
saying everyone who trusts in him
shall not be put to shame
what is that is that social shame no is
that psychological shame
no that is sacred shame that is
shame before a holy god it’s the same
thing in romans
2 23 dishonoring god by breaking the law
that dishonor of god is
objective shame
well i think we could probably go on for
several hours here
we could we certainly could and i hope
this is what the appetite of those who
are new to the
concept here the subject matter and for
others it’s
been a reinforcement uh gentlemen if
people want to get a hold of your book
how do they do that
well it’s available on amazon it’s
published by william carey publishing
it’s available at amazon and through
william carey publishing
and i think those are the only places
you were going to hold up a copy right
yeah
i i got the copy right here here you go
a little bit of press there you go
honor shame in the gospel reframing our
messages
ministry it’s a great way to step into
the conversation because the chapters
are so diverse
in their uh both their approach and
their areas of focus
and uh and it’s a really wonderful
introduction yeah right yeah
well listen uh thank you so much
brothers for being with us today we’re
gonna pass it over to ted here there’s a
segment of every podcast that we do
we call it something i like and it’s
something ted likes that he wants to
share with our audience so ted it’s all
yours brother
all right well in this in the spirit of
rooting for rivals
so you know we’re we don’t have rivals
in the kingdom right we have
not competitors but cooperators i want
to talk about another missions oriented
podcast
that our audience might like i had the
great pleasure this week of visiting
mission x’s member i tech it’s a
organization that’s it’s about an hour
and 45 minute drive from my house here
so it’s located in florida
and it comes out of the legacy of nate
saint
uh it was founded by steve saint his son
and the current ceo is jamie saint the
grandson of nate
and they they develop and design very
unique technological
tools for really indigenous or national
movements to utilize
in their ministries and i just had a
an awesome visit i learned a ton
just a very i think a very well uh
conceived ministry different than a lot
of other
uh mission nexus members that i relate
to and visit
but they have a podcast first of all let
me say they’re
they do it way better than we do at
matthew like this was in a studio
they were really cool headphones and uh
i’m sure the quality is like
double or triple r so first of all
they’re it’s very high quality but
it’s it’s called the mission minded
podcast and you can find it if you go to
itech’s
website just google i tech itec
mission minded podcast and i think
you’ll really like it
well interesting i’m going to be a guest
on that podcast here
focusing in on our new book but ted now
i’m ashamed that you’ve uh
you’ve told us our podcast needs to step
up in quality
well you know they they have they have
in-person guests
we bring people in from all around the
world so we’re doing what we do
well maybe i’ll learn something um by
watching and be a part of their quality
so again chris werner thank you so much
ted we’ll see you next
time all right before you go
would you visit our hosts websites there
you will find a wealth of interesting
and challenging information about the
state of the great commission
they are 1615.org and missionnexus.org
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[Music]
you