Speakers of Southern Énxet, a minority language spoken in the Chaco region of Paraguay, can now listen to the Old Testament in their language.

In May, mission partner Tim Curtis and colleagues Asunción Rojas and Serafín Sosa travelled to Lima, Peru, to work with sound technicians from DAVAR Audio Bibles to record the final outstanding books of the Old Testament in the Southern Énxet language.

After three weeks’ intensive teamwork, the team had recorded Numbers, Deuteronomy, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Ezekiel and Daniel.

The recording of these books marks the completion of the Southern Énxet audio Bible.

Related stories

Get our email updates:

SIGN UP

The post Full audio Bible for Enxet people appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Maybe you can listen to the voice of someone at the edges and read the Bible with them, through their eyes.

When I visited Palestine in 1998 I visited a centre for Palestinian liberation theology. I bought a book on the Bible and colonialism. I discovered that for Palestinians the story of the Exodus doesn’t resonate in the same way that it does for other liberation theologies. It’s obvious now but it wasn’t to me then. They identify with those in the story who dwell in the land and get driven out, the Canaanites. 

When I landed at CMS a few years later, hungry to learn about global theologies and mission, one of the first books my then boss Paul Thaxter gave me was called Voices From The Margins, a collection of essays. The one I remember the most is by Robert Warrior, a First Nations member of the Osage tribe (which you will know about if you have seen Killers of the Flower Moon). The chapter was called Canaanites, Cowboys and Indians. In it he says this:

“The obvious characters in the story for Native Americans to identify with are the Canaanites, the people who already lived in the promised land. As a member of the Osage Nation of American Indians who stands in solidarity with other tribal people around the world, I read the Exodus stories with Canaanite eyes. And, it is the Canaanite side of the story that has been overlooked by those seeking to articulate theologies of liberation. Especially ignored are those parts of the story that describe Yahweh’s command to mercilessly annihilate the indigenous population.”

In CMS I found there was actually a gold mine of this sort of stuff if you were prepared to do some digging.

Rewinding a bit further back, while I was at university I joined a group called Men, Women and God. In that group we read passages of the Bible that seemed on the surface to present traditional views of the roles of women and men. We were helpfully steered through them by those who had explored the texts, theologies, culture and so on. They were reading ‘with women’s eyes’ and that opened up a whole new vista of partnership, freedom and liberation for women (and men). That group was such a relief, so helpful!

Reading the Bible from the edges, through other people’s eyes, fit well with the so called shift to postmodern times which we were discussing back in the 90s (and which has not gone away). It was a shift away from one dominating (Western) story of modernity with its objective rational truth to something more akin to a meal where there is a conversation and those round the table have a number of takes, stories. The best thing you can do is to share your take with humility and listen well to others and you’ll likely discover some things you had not seen before, which will give you a bigger picture. Sadly, I fear the post-modern table was not all it was cracked up to be – or at least issues of domination do not seem to have gone away. 

If you grew up in a Eurocentric worldview or church you may have to get over some fear or worry because you probably unwittingly have learned that your take on the Bible is the right one and other people’s is dodgy! Interestingly it applies whether you are liberal or evangelical. I have come to think they may just be two different kinds of superiority that belonged to the modern era. You may even have learned to call your view ‘biblical’ or more latterly ‘orthodox’! That is simply a ruse. We have learned some odd things and can feel very defended about our ways of understanding and knowing. What makes this a bit more complex now is that you can get very Western ‘reads’ of the text in all sorts of places round the world, in some cases dogmatically so, which is a confusing legacy of empire. But again, dig a bit and you’ll find those who are doing the edge work. 

If you like the sound of this sort of approach to reading the Bible it’s more readily available than ever, though you’ve still got to do some digging. Here’s a few of the books I have been enjoying and/or challenged by recently. I have picked some that are on the Bible, not just contextual or intercultural theology more generally.

Bible Blindspots edited by Jione Havea, and Monica Jyotsna Melanchthon has some great chapters looking at Bible texts. ‘Samaritans and Empire’ by Nestor Miguez is incredible – this sermon I preached last year was inspired by that. In a similar vein Jione’s chapter on ‘Egypt Reframed’ is also wonderful in the flip it gives you on Egypt in the narrative. It is so helpful to get a take from the perspective of those who are ‘enemies’ of the story teller. 

I have been very inspired by First Nations people and their worldview and spirituality and doing a lot of reading around that. On the Bible end, the First Nations Translation of the New Testament is amazing as way of reading the Bible. You get a flavour here of the gorgeous version of the beatitudes.

Unsettling the Word is a collection of Bible experiments in decolonisation written from Canada. It’s not all indigenous writers but nonetheless is also really good. The pieces are quite short so makes a good devotional book. ‘Destroy Everything’ by Derrick Jensen is a rewrite of Deuteronomy 7 and in the light of Gaza right now it could not be more pertinent. Another chapter by way of example is ‘Prayer of the Sent Away’, an extremely moving reflection by Ryan Dueck on Ezra and the ethnic cleansing that takes place.

Lastly the commentary Romans Disarmed by Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh is brilliant. I add it here because they definitely read Romans with the lens of Empire and First Nations people front and centre. It really is up there for me as one of the best and most creative commentaries I have ever read. And they have these wonderful targums, as theu did in Colossians Remixed, a sort of improvised rereading of particular passages. I hope to review all these over on my blog at some point. 

In Romans Disarmed, Keesmaat and Walsh discuss clobber texts. This is a way of saying that some people (for example women, LGBTQ+, black and brown people who have been enslaved, indigenous people whose land has been stolen) have had the Bible used over and against them. They have been clobbered by it. The example that springs to mind is a scene in the film 12 Years A Slave where the text ‘slaves obey your masters’ Is being read out by the slave master at a church service. 

Take Back The Word is a collection of essays that are a queer reading of the Bible. This is another edge to read the Bible from. It’s such an important edge right now to try and understand and feel the perspective of. They too discuss clobber texts. The thing that caught my attention the most in that book was the appeal in the introduction to those who have been clobbered by the Bible to find a way to make it their friend again. I thought that was a lovely exhortation, though how easy a journey that is I don’t know. My favourite chapter was ‘Reading The Bible From Low and Outside’ by Virginia Ramey Mollenkott.

If you prefer a podcast there is a series SheToo produced by Bible Society that looks at seven texts which include violence against women.

For pioneers the most important voice may well be to enable the Bible to be read from the edge where you are pioneering – maybe with spiritual seekers, young people, a working class estate. I wonder what that will look like. But actually I have found that reading the Bible from all manner of edges enriches it for me whatever context I am in and whatever context I am pioneering in.

In Deconstructing Whiteness, Empire and Mission, Anthony Reddie suggests that the tactics of reflexivity, decentring whiteness and finding new voices for the norm might be a start to decolonise the curriculum of theological education. I couldn’t agree more and I so appreciate his voice. Those three tactics are also good for reading the Bible. I have read the Bible most days of my life I think and still do. It never ceases to puzzle me, intrigue me, undo me. And I love it when someone opens up a new angle or possibility that deepens my appreciation or threatens my world. Maybe you can find the voice of someone at the edges and read the Bible from the edges with them, through their eyes. 

Get our email newsletter:

SIGN UP

The post Reading the Bible from the edges appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Discovering the place of shame in the gospel through witness and co-creation with female trauma survivors

by Linda Fletcher

My earliest recollection of the importance of shame to the ministry here on our estate in Swindon is from a specific moment of an Alpha course.

I was sitting in my living room with a small group of some of the most vulnerable people I had ever met – survivors of horrific childhood abuse, with trauma impacting their everyday lives – who were at early stages of faith. I was about to explain that on the cross Jesus had taken away all our sins.

I remember it as a moment where time stood still and the Holy Spirit prompted me to stop speaking immediately. I experienced this as an inner warning that to speak of sin alone in this context would do serious harm. I grabbed two pieces of paper and wrote “sin” on one and “shame” on the other. In a halting way I tried to explain what sin was and what shame was and that Jesus died to take away both. I explained that as children, they had been sinned against – what happened was not their fault and therefore it was not their sin, but the sin of the perpetrator. So much of the “sin” they were struggling with – one gentleman had shared he had a “drinking problem” – stemmed from the shame they were carrying as a result of their childhood abuse.

If your needs haven’t been met well as a child, you’ll hold beliefs about yourself like being unlovable and things like that which I struggle with, which is one level of shame, but to me there is a whole other level of shame… that comes from somebody else doing something to me which is wrong, but that I hold the shame for. That is like a whole other level of shame that is toxic.

Anastasia

Since this time, as a community, we have been on a journey of witnessing to one another’s trauma. While we do have men who are part of our church community, this work has been done by a self-selecting group of women. We have witnessed to one another with the Bible in one hand and as much input from experts in the field of trauma and shame (Christian and secular) as I could muster on the other. What has been co-birthed by doing this in the power of the Holy Spirit in our community has been quite remarkable.

From a starting point of being individual women struggling with damage from our past, most with no affinity with a church community, we are becoming “A Lioness Church”. We were initially inspired by Num. 23:23–24 (NRSV): “See what God has done! Look, a people rising up like a lioness,” and then by the realisation that if Jesus is the Lion of Judah and the church is his bride, then the church should be a Lioness Church.

I feel stronger and that I can actually say things. Now if I’m not happy with it then I will say it. I would keep it all in and squash it all down.

Rose

Perhaps the Bible story that has been most important to us is the woman haemorrhaging in Mark. At first, we wondered why Jesus made the woman show herself by asking, “Who touched my clothes?” – as this would clearly have exposed her to the crowd and heightened her sense of shame, and it seemed like an unkind thing to do. But then we realised that had he not done that, she would never have seen the love he had for her in his eyes or heard him speak the word “daughter” to her. The look of love and the declaration of her as “daughter” of the living God would have given her a new identity and she, we reflected, would have been able to take off her cloak of shame (inspired by Ps. 109:29) and put on garments of splendour (inspired by Isa. 52:1–2).

Our activities include singing together as St John’s Community Choir, designing, making and selling our “Blessings Bracelets” and worshipping together as “Crazy Christians” – named after Bishop Michael B. Curry’s book Crazy Christians: A Radical Way of Life.¹ We have made a “Cloak of Shame” and bought “Garments of Splendour”, which we have used in our worship to help us think about who we are as precious daughters of the Living God.

I say all these things about myself, negative things, and I stop myself because I know that Jesus doesn’t see me like that.

Kath

Our choir and the Blessings Bracelets are ways in which we express what we have collectively come to understand. Song lyrics are carefully considered in the light of what we know God wants us to sing “over ourselves” and to him. Three of the most important songs over the years have been “You Say” by Lauren Daigle, “Roar” by Katie Perry and “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman. “Roar” speaks to that sense of finding our voices and expressing our anger at what has been done to us; “You Say” enables us to bring before God the voices we struggle with and our desire to hear instead what God says about us:

You say I am loved, when I can’t feel a thing.
You say I am strong, when I think I am weak.
You say I am held, when I am falling short
And when I don’t belong, oh you say I am yours
And I believe what you say of me.²

“This is Me” speaks of how we had come to be ashamed of our scars, but that we have come to know we are glorious. We sing of our decision that we will no longer let shame that others try to send our way sink in. We sing that we are no longer scared to be seen and will make no apologies for who we are.

Mary Magdalene was a weak woman because she did what she did and she let men abuse her that way. Then she met Jesus and from that point her life was 180 degrees so now she has become one of the disciples and now she is that stronger woman and she is gonna take nothing off of you men anymore. You’ve done what you’ve done and now I’m me, now I’m clean and you ain’t gonna take that away from me again, absolutely not. That’s the way I look at her and that happens to a lot of women today.

Diane

Our Blessings Bracelets express what we long for every woman to know and include some of our favourite Bible passages. The three bracelet styles are themed “you are precious”, “you are held” and “you are strong”.

Designed and made by all of us, they make wonderful gifts for women of all ages and all stages of faith. Each bracelet has six silver symbols to remind the wearer of a Bible passage with an important truth. The Bible passages are included in the card that comes with the bracelet. We all wear these bracelets ourselves, choosing the one most relevant for what we need to remember that day. They can also be used as an aid to prayer.

We also run short courses regularly to learn together, looking at Scripture and the latest developments in understanding trauma and shame, deepening our relationships with one another and with God. New women are invited along to all of these things. One such course is called “Small Steps Towards a Calmer You”, developed with Willows Counselling, Swindon, a Christian counselling organisation.

There’s something very safe about this environment… It’s made a world of difference. I’ve tried counselling in a much more clinical way which isn’t faith-based, where the message wasn’t necessarily coming from love… This is on a fundamental basis that you are already loved…

Claire, after attending “Small Steps Towards a Calmer You”

The Bible has so much to say on shame that can transform lives; our prayer is for more people to see it. We also hope more church communities will come together that are made up of survivors of abuse – witnessing to one another’s stories of the past, cocreating new stories together in the power of the Holy Spirit. One might expect such a community to be a sad and difficult place. The lived reality could not be further from the truth. I have never known a place with so much laughter, joy, colour, sparkle and holiness.

About the author

Revd Linda Fletcher is Priest-in-Charge of St John’s, Parks, and St Andrew’s, Walcot, Swindon. Parks and Walcot, as the area is known locally, are two large council estates in which Linda has lived and worked for the past nine years. She is passionate about prioritising the ministry of all God’s people towards the margins, following after the example set by Jesus.

More from this issue

Notes

1 Bishop Michael B. Curry, Crazy Christians: A Radical Way of Life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2018).
2 Lauren Daigle, “You Say,” track 5 on Look Up Child, Centricity, 2018.

The post Discovering the place of shame in the gospel through witness and co-creation with female trauma survivors appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

Whose honour? Whose shame? Some reflections on the Bible

by Judith Rossall

Biblical scholars are increasingly realising that honour and shame were both ubiquitous and crucial cultural values in the ancient world and that understanding the influence of these values is therefore important for anyone reading the Scriptures.

Those who come from cultures that place less overt emphasis on honour and shame will thus need to do some work to ensure they are alert to the role of these values in how the Scriptures were written and can be interpreted. This is particularly the case in many Western societies because in those, shame is often treated as an individual and psychological issue; however, a careful reading of the Scriptures can alert us to a fuller understanding that recognises that every individual (and therefore every individual’s experience of honour and shame) is embedded in and shaped by the society around them.

Shame in the First Testament

Adam and Eve “were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25 (ESV)). Many considerations of shame in the Bible begin with the creation stories, which establish some fundamental ideas about human existence. The first is that creation is described as good, not just in the sense of being morally righteous but also in the sense of bringing joy and delight. In Gen. 1, when God sees that creation is “good”, the Hebrew word is towb, which is used to describe something beautiful, that which brings joy. The second idea is that human existence is based in relationship – we are created to know ourselves in the gaze of another.¹ The first creation story in Genesis constantly repeats that “God saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31 (ESV)) and the second creation story emphasises that the first human created should not be alone and is incomplete until the second is made from his rib. Adam and Eve are then described as being “naked and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25 (ESV)). This is a key statement in a story that actually gives very few details about the couple; there is a sense that they were open, accepting and unafraid to show their true selves to each other. This makes it all the more striking that the very first response to the eating of the forbidden fruit is that the couple begin to judge themselves and hide from God. Their eyes are opened and they realise that they are naked (Gen. 3:7) and that realisation causes them to fear God and conceal themselves from God’s presence (Gen. 3:10). It is notable that in Genesis, the couple’s experience of shame, their own judgement on their nakedness and their attempts to blame each other and the serpent all happen before God pronounces any kind of verdict on what has happened. The experience of sin somehow alters the couple’s perception of themselves and introduces the notion of a judgemental gaze, before God actually responds.²

In Genesis sin and shame are closely intertwined and the story of both sin and shame is then continued in the next generation. Psychologists have pointed out that different people respond to shame differently – some withdraw and become quieter while others compensate and become more aggressive in order to cover their shame. It is possible, therefore, to see the effects of shame being described also in the story of Cain and Abel.³ Cain responds to shame by blaming his brother and resorting to violence; Abel, who is noticeably passive and silent in the story, responds to shame by becoming withdrawn. Issues of shame and honour are then a key issue in reading Scripture.

The wider Biblical context

There is a wealth of material from biblical scholars who discuss shame as part of the wider project to apply learning from the social sciences to our reading of both First and New Testaments. Bruce Malina published The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology in 1981,⁴ and since then the work of the Context Group has established the value of drawing on social anthropology in understanding the historical context of Scripture. The notion that the cultural world from which Scripture comes was collectivist (as opposed to the individualism of much of modern Western society) and that honour/shame was one of the key values of that society is now well established. There is much to be gained by recognising the particular context and culture in which the Bible was written; however, Zeba Crook has rightly warned against the assumption that any society is 100 per cent collectivist or 100 per cent individualistic, noting the difference between aspiring to be individualistic and being fully so.

These are tendencies: the ancient Mediterranean was no more 100 percent collectivistic than modern North American society is 100 percent individualistic. There are elements of each found in the other, but the occurrence of collective concerns among North Americans (e.g., peer pressure) does not diminish the dominance of an individualistic ideology.⁵

Those of us in the West must be careful, therefore, not to treat biblical culture as if it is entirely alien to us, while at the same time understanding that by recognising that the desire to have honour and to avoid shame was a central cultural value, we can be alert to nuances in the text that might otherwise be missed. Equally, an approach to shame that recognises the role of the community in deciding who is honoured and who is shamed resists the individualist impulse to regard shame as being purely a personal psychological issue that needs healing. Rather, a reading of Scripture that takes note of the way in which shame and honour shape human life necessarily leads to reflection on issues of sin and how power is exercised. Western readers who are accustomed to looking only for the dynamic of sin–guilt–forgiveness can easily overlook the wealth of biblical material that deals with sin–shame–flourishing (of both individuals and communities).

It is not easy to tell the difference between shame and guilt. In theory they are often distinguished by saying that we feel guilt when we do something wrong but feel shame when we come to believe that there is something wrong with us. Shame is a feeling of being worthless, flawed or unwanted and can range from a temporary experience to a lifelong struggle. In practice, we do not always distinguish well between shame and guilt; people may talk about feeling guilt when in fact what they are dealing with is the deeper and more insidious problem of shame.

The opposite of shame is normally held to be honour and, in a group-oriented society, honour is a complicated mix of how others see us and our own self-image. It is not possible for someone who lives in a shame/honour culture to have a strong sense of self-worth unless that person is honoured by the group around them. This means that being subject to public disgrace (particularly if a person’s honour group abandons them) may be even more devastating in a shame/honour society than in some modern Western cultures.⁶

What is more, in order to be honoured by the group around them, a person needs to live by the values of that particular group. Honour, in this sense, may be said to hold together something that individualistic societies separate – reputation and integrity. Again, this is a nuance that Western readers often miss, regarding the desire for honour as simply meaning a desire to have others think well of you. Just like shame, honour has both an internal psychological and an external social dimension. As Kwame Appiah expresses it:

It’s important to understand that while honor is an entitlement to respect— and shame comes when you lose that title— a person of honor cares first of all not about being respected but about being worthy of respect. Someone who just wants to be respected won’t care whether he is really living up to the code; he will just want to be thought to be living up to it. He will be managing his reputation, not maintaining his honor.⁷

Appiah’s mention of a code of honour here reminds us of another dimension of honour that is strongly related to being embedded in a group. The assumption is that the group operates by an agreed standard or set of values – what Appiah calls an “honour code”. To be considered and to consider themselves as honourable, a person must live out that code, and importantly since honour involves an intricate relationship between a person’s own internal judgement on themselves and the judgement of the group, it is important to live up to that code even when no one observes you.

I said that the honorable person cares about honor itself, not simply about the social rewards of being considered honorable. Emotions like shame (and pride) are reinforced, it’s true, when other people are watching – especially those whose respect matters to me most. Nevertheless, honor requires me to conform to the standard for its own sake, not merely for the sake of reputation and its rewards. And someone who aims at reputation for its own sake is taking a dishonorable short cut.⁸

Appiah goes on to argue that honour and the desire for honour is a powerful motivating force that has been harnessed for good in the past and could be again.

Seek honour from Yahweh

The Scriptures recognise the danger of a person who is shameless, in the sense of failing to have due regard for others. This is particularly the case when the shameless person is in a position of power. Thus, the leaders of Israel are criticised heavily for their failure to act honourably; in Jeremiah’s description the problem is that they have acted shamefully but did not know how to blush (Jer. 6:15) – in other words, they have lost touch with honour in the sense of integrity and treating other people with respect. At the same time, there is also encouragement to seek honour from Yahweh; the challenge to the Israelites is not that they ignore the quest for honour – the challenge is to strive above all to be honoured by Yahweh, which means to live by Yahweh’s standards for what is honourable and what is shameful (1 Sam. 2:30). Oppressing the poor is seen as an insult to God while generosity honours God (Prov. 14:31). Equally, God is portrayed as one who honours those whom society shames (1 Sam. 2:7–8).

A further and even more countercultural theme is that God will sometimes call on God’s people to bear shame, a theme that is epitomised in the mysterious figure of the so-called “suffering servant” in Isaiah. In Isa. 53, there is a strong emphasis that the servant is “despised, rejected and held in low esteem” among the other forms of distress described, and yet somehow it is that very shame that brings healing to others. The final end for the servant is honour in the sight of God.

Therefore, I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors. (Isa. 53:12 (NRSV))

Jesus and shame

These same themes are then explored further in the New Testament depictions of Jesus. Jesus is portrayed as one who challenges the usual assumptions about honour (Luke 14:7–14, Matt. 23:11–12), who honours those whom society treats with disrespect and who takes issue with his disciples’ preoccupation with who is the greatest (Mark 9:34, Matt. 18:1, Luke 9:46). In the early parts of the Gospels, Jesus is portrayed as powerful and yet as often resisting the attempts of others to honour him in public. The ancient Mediterranean world commonly assumed that it was desirable for good and generous acts to become well known – thus bringing honour to the person concerned – and yet Jesus often tells those he has healed to keep quiet (Mark 5:43), while evil spirits who recognise him as “the Holy One of God” are commanded to silence (Mark 1:24).⁹

Crucifixion was deliberately designed to be the most humiliating death conceivable and it is possible to see a devastating determination to shame the victim in many aspects by how it was performed. The victim would be naked and held up for disgrace. There was a deliberate element of being mocked and the execution was usually performed in a prominent public place. The Romans regarded crucifixion as so shameful that it was not discussed in polite company. For the first disciples and for the New Testament writers, one of the great challenges of following Jesus was not simply his death but the particularly shameful way in which he died.¹⁰

The Gospel writers respond to this challenge in different ways. Mark’s Gospel makes the dishonour that Jesus suffers a central element in the presentation of who Jesus is. The Gospel is structured so that Jesus is first portrayed as powerful and honourable and yet, as noted, also resisting the attempts of others to enhance his honour by telling people about him. After the Transfiguration, Jesus first predicts that he will be treated with contempt (Mark 9:12) and then suffers the degradation of being betrayed by a disciple, abandoned by those who should have supported him, arrested and put to death in a particularly humiliating way. In this way, Mark makes the mystery of a humiliated Messiah central to the Christian Gospel.

John, however, presents the crucifixion as being, in some mysterious way, a means by which Jesus is glorified (John 12:27–36). Jesus refers to his death as the time when he will be lifted up (John 12:32), which both refers to the fact that victims of crucifixion were elevated and carries the meaning of exaltation and being raised to honour. John stresses Jesus’ power and voluntary surrender (John 18:11 and 19:11) and that Jesus was crucified as “King of the Jews” (John 19:19–22). John, it seems, attempts to subvert the humiliation of Jesus’ death by characterising it as, in fact, profoundly honourable.

Shame in Paul’s letters

Paul’s understanding of Jesus is shaped by the struggle to understand a crucified Messiah, regarded by the Jews as scandalous and by the Gentiles as ridiculous, and yet for Paul it is precisely the humiliated Jesus who is the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:23–27). Thus, the crucifixion asks key questions for Paul about what wisdom and power look like in the light of Christ. But the crucifixion was not, of course, the end of the story. For Paul, as for the rest of the New Testament, Jesus is not simply the crucified Messiah, he is also the resurrected one – and it is important to recognise that in raising Jesus from the dead, God vindicated the one who had been humiliated by earthly powers. Thus, Paul opens the letter to the Romans by referring to Jesus as having been “declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead” (Rom. 1:4 (NRSV)). We might say that the Roman empire gave one verdict on Jesus in the humiliation of crucifixion, but that God returned a very different one in the resurrection. The letter to the Philippians holds that the death and resurrection together show us something of the nature of God. Jesus, being in the form of God, refuses to grasp at equality with God but empties himself and accepts even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalts him (Phil. 2:5–11).

In other words, in their portrayal of Jesus, the biblical writers seek to raise the issue of “Whose honour and whose shame?” in different ways. Jesus is presented as one who accepted being shamed by those around him but was ultimately demonstrated to be honoured by God. Just as the Israelites were encouraged to seek honour from God, so Paul also is quite comfortable arguing that Christians should be motivated by a desire for honour, provided that the honour they are seeking is from God.¹¹ This is then to be worked out also in the inner life of the Christian Church; Paul’s famous image of the church as the body of Christ allows him to make this argument.

On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.

1 Cor. 12:22–26 (NRSV)

There is gracious picture here of a group of people who are particularly attentive to the question of who among them normally receives honour and who is normally shamed. The gospel calls us to ensure that it is those often treated as if they were less valuable who should be given particular respect within the family of God.

Conclusion

It is not easy to summarise what the Bible has to say about shame in a relatively brief article, not least because different biblical writers take different approaches to how the subject is handled. It is, however, possible to argue the following. First, that understanding the cultural values of honour and shame is vital for a faithful exegesis of Scripture. Secondly, that the Bible offers a wealth of teaching that is particularly helpful to those who struggle with shame as much or more than they do with guilt. Finally, reading the Bible constantly challenges the reader to consider again what is shameful and what is honourable and how to be faithful to a Messiah who is both the crucified and the resurrected one.

About the author

Judith Rossall is tutor in church history and preaching at The Queen’s Foundation, Birmingham. She is a Methodist minister and author of Forbidden Fruit and Fig Leaves: Reading the Bible with the Shamed (SCM Press, 2020). She is also a member of the Transforming Shame network, which can be found on both Facebook and YouTube. She spoke about the Bible and shame at the Transforming Shame conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvQ0VlDB7D0

More from this issue

Notes

1 Judith Rossall, Forbidden Fruit and Fig Leaves: Reading the Bible with the Shamed (London: SCM Press, 2020), 2–3.
2 Mike Higton, Christian Doctrine (London: SCM Press, 2008), 267.
3 Rossall, Forbidden Fruit and Fig Leaves, 12–20.
4 Bruce J. Malina, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology (Atlanta: John Knox, 1981).
5 Zeba Crook, “Honor, Shame, and Social Status Revisited,” Journal of Biblical Literature 128, no. 3 (2009): 599.
6 Gabriele Taylor, Pride, Shame, and Guilt: Emotions of Self-Assessment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 55.
7 Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (New York, London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2011), 16.
8 Ibid., 18.
9 David F. Watson, Honor Among Christians: The Cultural Key to the Messianic Secret (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 37–62.
10 Martin Hengel, Crucifixion (London: SCM Press, 1977), 87–88.
11 Jayson Georges, “From Shame to Honor: A Theological Reading of Romans for Honor–Shame Contexts,” Missiology 38, no. 3 (2010): 301–2.

The post Whose honour? Whose shame? appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).

This process has been developed by Church Innovations as a practice of missional churches.

We use it today to help us listen to one another and to God – so have a go!

1. We invite the Holy Spirit in prayer to open our ears, hearts and minds.
2. We listen to a passage of scripture read out loud and notice where our attention is drawn – a verse, phrase or single word.
3. We then remain in silence for a minute or two, staying with the place in the passage that stood out for us.
4. We each find a person in the group whom we might call “a reasonably friendly-looking stranger”.
5. We listen to that person as he or she says what they heard in the passage in a particular verse, phrase or even single word. They may mention something they’d never heard before, something odd or something comforting, or something about which they’d like to ask a Bible scholar.
6. Listen well, because your job will be to report to the rest of the group (in fours, sixes or the whole group) what your partner has said, not what you yourself said. Some people even take notes to help them focus and remember. You introduce your partner by name to the group and share what you heard them say, each one takes their turn when they are ready to speak.
7. If there is time a conversation develops around what God is saying to us today from the themes arising in the whole group.
8. Afterwards, spend some time reflecting on what you noticed and what God might be up to among you through this practice.

Related posts

The post Dwelling in the Word appeared first on Church Mission Society (CMS).