A Catechesis of Guilt and Shame - Part 3

By Patrick Hall

Whoever sins also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him, there is no sin. Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. 1 John 3:4-6

We have raised a generation of young and not-so-young, who have no awareness, nor use for the above scripture. As stated earlier, we have neighborhoods, schools, and prisons full of people who have very little guilt, shame, or cultural religious guardrails.

We are imperfect beings, who often struggle with imperfections or sinfulness. It is part and parcel of who we are, whether Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, moral atheists or perplexed agnostics.  Those of us who at least called ourselves Christian are aware of these shortcomings, or original sins. But we try on a day-to-day basis to be better people. To make some effort to at least adhere to some remnants of a Christology, that is consistently under attack, if not mostly ignored.

As stated previously, we have bred an entire generation of individuals, who possess no such moral or religious beliefs. As pointed out by the late Victor Frankl in the book Man’s Search for Meaning, the human species can become easily morally deformed, depersonalized, and dangerously disillusioned. They can operate with no guilt, shame, or internal-moral compass for guidance. They don’t seem to be even cognizant of anything like right or wrong, good or bad. What is acceptable vs unacceptable behavior? What is simply sinful!  They worship the gods of material possessions, money, sexual and gender impropriety, and race ideologies like CRT, personal, and political power. They become acolytes of numerous dystopic ideas and movements, (Ex 20:3).

 Once more, the obvious question to be asked is. Do they have or operate with any sense of guilt or shame? Unfortunately, the answer is becoming increasingly discernible.  Moral anomie is becoming the norm. It only conveys or invites complete and utter chaos in any society. From Judaic-Christian scripture to the post-scriptural commentary of the Jewish Talmud, the truncation or blatant sacrificing of morality, religious proclivity, or what the 12th Century Rabbinic scholar Moses Maimonides referred to as one’s spiritual logos, has tragic consequences.

Over the last eight years, we have witnessed flash mob phenomena in many urban centers.  This is where groups of people will just raid a local Walmart, Best Buys, Nike Outlet, or expensive jewelry or cosmetic store and just flat-out steal what they want with no regard for anyone but themselves. Merchants, innocent shoppers, and law enforcement are completely ignored if not violently pushed aside.  They take what is not theirs with impunity (Exodus 2:15).  Many larger urban areas like New York, San Francisco, and Chicago have in many cases surrendered to these gangs of urban malcontents. Some municipalities have chosen to plicate these mobs, by setting a limit on how much one can “steal” before it becomes illegal (Exodus 20:17). That is if a besieged store merchant can immediately tell the exact prices of items confiscated by a flash-mob participant.  

Now let’s be even blunter. The obvious perpetrators of this lawlessness or sin have been black.  Endless videos of the individuals seen gleefully running out of a local CVS have been young urban black kids as well as many so-called adults.  Once again, who are these people?  How have they been raised or not raised? What kind of family structure or lack thereof has spun such moral deformity?  Is there any notion or thought of sin, guilt, or shame in their psych-social makeup?  Let me say it again. The individuals carrying out these egregious actions have been mostly black and/or some other “People of Color” types. Yet the progressive political class, who administrate these cities, and the mainstream media excuse this cultural insanity by inferring this is somehow related to, and generated, by the effects of sustained systemic racism, and income inequality “as opposed to outcome inequality”. And of course, one must never forget the tiresome tropes offered up by some, that these young people are suffering from the ongoing legacy of 400 years of slavery. This is total nonsense, if not spiritually debilitating.  It is an entirely new level of “stupid.”

Sidebar: I have never been a slave, nor do I have any experience in my short 72 years on this earth, that would compare to the suffering that my ancestors underwent as slaves during the nation’s Antebellum Period. They suffered to give a later generation of Black people tremendous opportunities that still exist as a citizen of the United States.  Just stop! Please just stop this stupidity about the effects of 400 years of slavery, by some immoral, Nike-wearing, pants-down-to-their-ass, ghetto, and not-so-ghetto individuals participating in the stealing, violence, sinfulness, and destruction.  

 The apologists for this behavior (mostly the Progressive Democrats) won’t admit that monstrous, amoral behavior has more to do with the breakdown of the family in civil society. It is a direct result of the cultural, moral, and religious capital that has been undermined for decades in many inner-city communities.  Its sins unchained, (Matthew 18:15-17). All of us, whether we are rich or poor welfare mothers, make choices that will either keep us in a state of dependency or liberate us, so we can see the opportunities that are there for the taking. In public schools and from many mainline church pulpits, various Post-modern thinking has become the norm. Biblical and religious values are just “arbitrary social constructs” having no meaning outside the particular societies in which they are taught. But if there is ever to be a final epitaph written for the current generation of Americans, especially those of us nurtured in the Post-World War Era, it would say; “we became fixated with the obsession of replacing values and religious mores that worked, with what sounded good.”

We have no shame about abortion because we have accepted the heresy of a woman’s right to choose over a baby’s right to live.  There is no shame present, nor will there be, if we do not restore, a sense of our sinfulness (Gal 5:19-21, Rm 3:23) or struggle with our selfish nature (Isaiah 64:6).  When we as human beings, as “people of God” lose our sensitivity to respect human life, practices like euthanizing the elderly and the not-so-elderly become just another “right to choose”.  This has already begun in many countries and some states of our Union. Because we have no moral and or religious centering, coupled with an increasingly malformed set of hermeneutics, what is now starting as a procedure to alleviate pain from some severely infirmed elderly, has degenerated, just like abortion into another convenience to make lives easier.

 It would certainly make it much easier for some to afford that great vacation to Costa Rica, and to have a better house if one didn’t have to worry, nor care about an elderly parent or some financially draining snotty nose infant.

To paraphrase a famous Jewish Rabbi, many moral values, religious catechesis, and customs have been discarded without an appreciation for the role they played in creating a civilized culture.  And we are paying a steep price for moral hubris. If we have no shame in not protecting the most venerable among us, the unborn, then the mass murder witnessed in Uvalde Texas, and Utoya, Norway, becomes an act of just a few sick individuals, that better secular laws can alleviate.  All we need is more gun control to stop these shootings.
 
The total removal of “social constraints” systemic to Judaic Christian catechesis has nothing to do with this cultural madness. Politicians and well-meaning clergy can tell themselves that these and other despicable acts have nothing to do with the removal of these religious guardrails. A chipping away at what the late Eric Fromm called the “cultural capital” that keeps society civilized. But these biblical teachings and catechetical norms, not secular and government regulations, make for a civilized society.  If we have no guilt, no shame; no idea that we indeed are all sinners (Rm 3:23); society, and our neighborhoods will become more hellish.  As Christians, as people of the Book, we must indeed see that we have sinned, and like our Lord, we are called to forgive, but then we are also called to sin no more through his grace (Ephesians 2:4-9). In many inner-city communities, this lack of guilt and shame has become extremely destructive because it reduces societal expectations, curtails the spiritual other, and results in a deplorable loss of personal responsibility.      

[Patrick is a retired University Library Director. He is graduate of Canisius College and the University of Washington where he earned Masters Degrees in Religious Studies Education, Urban Anthropology and Library and Information Science.  Mr. Hall has also completed additional course work at the University of Buffalo, Seattle University and St. John Fishers College of Rochester New York. He has published in several national publications such as Commonweal, America, Conservative Review, Headway, Freedom's Journal Magazine, National Catholic Reporter, and American Libraries. He has published in the peer reviewed publications, Journal of Academic Librarianship and the Internet Reference Services Quarterly. From 1997 until his retirement in January 2014 he served on the Advisory Board of Urban Library Journal, a CUNY Publication.]