Sunday, August 19, 2018

Honor, Shame, and the Gospel


Welcome! Today is our final message in our Shame/Honor series. To whet your appetite on today’s topic, the Gospel, I want to give you a quote and a scripture. The quote is by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Ethics:

Shame can be overcome only when the original unity is restored, when man is once again clothed by God.”—Dietrich Bonhoeffer


Isn’t that great? I like the word “again.” Early in our series we looked at the fall of Adam and Eve with honor/shame lenses, and we noted that after their shameful disobedience, Adam and Eve tried to hide and cover their nakedness with fig leaves. But it didn’t work; they still felt intense shame and wanted to avoid God. How did God cloth them? With animal skins. An innocent animal had to give up its life in order to cloth and cover them. Figuratively, symbolically, man is again clothed by God, this time with something unspeakably more precious, the body and blood of Jesus. Jesus’ covering is eternal; unlike Adam’s, it does not wear out. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The scripture is Mark 10:45:

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many. – Mark 10:45

The Gospel is a term that means “good news” and it is fantastic news. It speaks powerfully to our guilt problem, to our fear problem (or you could call it our curse problem), and to our shame problem. If you recall, our series began by explaining that there are three major “axes” of influence in a given culture, where by “axis” I mean a kind of pull or mindset that tends to dominate how a culture or individual thinks or responds or “resonates” to various ideas and situations. People and cultures are a mix of all three axes, but often one axis tends to dominate significantly more than the others. I call these influences axes also because, like axes in a mathematical plot, there is both a plus infinity and a minus infinity. Sorry for the math on a Sunday morning, but the idea is that one end is the “opposite” of the other, and one can be strongly in one direction, strongly in the other direction, or somewhere close to the middle (zero on the axis).

In America and Western Europe, the axis that dominates the culture is guilt and innocence; this kind of culture is dominated ideas such as law-keeping and lawbreaking, fairness and unfairness, and rights. A second major axis is fear and power. People for whom this axis is dominant see the world as strongly affected by unseen forces that are typically called spirits or gods (lowercase g) or demons. Curses are perhaps the greatest fear. You find this kind of thinking scattered throughout Africa and Asia and South America especially in rural or tribal communities, but you also find it among individuals throughout these continents. The third major axis, which has been the focus of our series, is shame and honor. You find this kind of thinking predominant over widespread regions of most of the world apart from those strongly or historically influenced by Protestant Christianity. You also find this in the Middle East today as well as at the times that both the Old and New Testaments were written.

Honor and shame, in contrast to guilt and innocence, are primarily based on what others think of you. For this reason, honor and shame ideas are prevalent in highly communal societies. Honor is when others think highly of you, and shame is when they think poorly of you. In a communal society, these opinions are extremely important, because they affect every relationship you have. People in such societies are motivated by the goal of maintaining or increasing honor and avoiding shame far more than they are motivated by an internal sense of right and wrong, as occurs in guilt-innocence cultures, and far more than they are motivated by a sense of staying safe and avoiding physical or spiritual harm, as occurs in fear-power societies.

I have given two reasons this series has focused on honor and shame: (1) Because honor and shame are major themes in the Bible, arguably much greater than guilt and innocence, coming to better understand these themes helps us to better know the heart of God. (2) Because so much of the world lives by the honor-shame code, our traditional western way of sharing the gospel may not resonate with them. We want to be able to share the gospel effectively to all people (including foreigners who come to live in America), and so it is important to be able to share the gospel in an honor-shame context. This is the focus of today’s message.

Now, let me quickly review some definitions that have come up during the series.

Ascribed honor refers to the value or worth given to a person based on their family, bloodline, and heritage. You are born with a certain amount of ascribed honor. This amount can change if, for example, your son or another family member does something very shameful. Kinship and family relationships are therefore extremely important in an honor-shame culture, far more than in a guilt-innocence culture. Adoption into an honored family was a rare but extremely profound experience for someone because it meant that you could have your ascribed honor transformed upwards, a situation that in normal circumstances would be impossible. For a woman, marriage also accomplished this. However, it was extremely rare that a man would marry a woman from a family of much lower ascribed honor than that of his. 

Achieved honor refers to the value or worth given to a person based on what they have accomplished. Your achieved can either increase or decrease your total honor based on what you do throughout your life. Unfortunately, increasing your honor through achievements is a slow difficult process, whereas you can destroy your honor overnight with one particularly shameful action. Therefore, the ideal that “I will always do my best!” is a common internal motivation in an honor-shame culture.

Face refers to a person’s dignity, prestige, reputation, and overall honor status in a community. One can “give” face to others by praising them in front of people important to them and in many other ways. One wants to do this in part because of the universal Golden Rule; they want others to give face to them. If you do the opposite, for example openly criticizing someone, or even doing an action that on the most subtle level might be inferred to be the least bit critical or non-praising, “takes away” from their face, and if perceived as culturally inappropriate, takes from your own as well. For example, it is better to say “maybe” to an invitation when you mean “no” than to say “no”.

Patronage refers to a relationship between to people of very different honor-shame status in which the person higher in status (the patron) is expected to provide the other person protection, money, and other resources (such as providing introductions to other honored people) while, in exchange, the person lower in status (the client) is expected to bring the other person public praise, loyalty, and gratitude.  In a patron-client relationship, the client was expected to make his deepest needs known to the patron, so that the patron could work at helping the client with these needs. At times, a patron might need to make real sacrifices to do this; such actions only increased the honor status of the patron. The client’s honor status was increased, because they had the personal help of such a highly honored person.

Honor-shame reversal refers to situations (in real life or in fiction) in which a person with high ascribed honor but otherwise mean or who has other negative character qualities loses their honor status while a person with low ascribed honor but otherwise kind or who has other positive character qualities gains in honor. Although not seen as an absolute rule, there is a tendency to view honor and shame in honor-shame cultures as a zero-sum game; that is, one usually only gains honor status at the expense of the honor of someone else. (Note that patronage would seem to be an exception to this.)

Challenge and riposte: Challenge refers to a verbal contest between two people of relatively similar honor status in which the challenger seeks to gain honor at the expense of the other person through making them look unwise or foolish. Riposte refers to a quick and appropriate response to the initial challenge; the term is based on a sword-fighting term that describes a quick defensive movement that seamlessly turns into an attack. Challenge and riposte are done in a public setting in which the audience determines the winner (who gains in honor status) and the loser (whose honor status is diminished). 

Injustice: In an honor-shame society the poor and disadvantaged are the easiest to take advantage of through unfair means because they don’t have the resources or connections to seek their own justice. Many societies have stratification of honor based on wealth and the lack of it, as well as on the presence or absence of physical deformities or illness. People who are poor or ill, including orphans and widows, are shamed, experience misery instead of compassion, and often internalize the external pronouncement of shamefulness that others cast on them.

Before I talk directly about how the Gospel addresses all these ideas, let’s look at perhaps the most famous parable, that of the Prodigal Son. Due to time restraints, I will not look at the parables before this, that of the lost sheep and that of the lost coin, even though all three are part of a continuing conversation between Jesus and the Pharisees and teachers of the law, who complain about how Jesus is eating with “sinners” and tax collectors. I am also going to skip the final verses of the parable, where the older brother becomes grumpy because the father lavishes so much on the prodigal son.

“There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. – Luke 15:11b-12

From an honor-shame perspective, what do we see here? First, we see a son who dishonors his father in just about the most extreme way imaginable, telling his father that he in effect wants a “divorce.” He wants to leave his father! And he wants to take whatever money was coming to him! This was a taboo topic to discuss while the father was still alive. In essence, the son is saying, “Father, I wish you were dead already, so that I could get out of here with my share of the estate and do what I want apart from this dreadful family!” This is as far from the commandment to honor your father and mother as you can get!

But second, we see a father who inexplicably agrees to such an outrageous demand! This is perhaps even more shocking than the actions of the son. The father would be totally within his rights to expel the son from the family forever, to kick him out and cut him off. He could even bring his son up for charges with the religious authorities, and it was conceivable that, at least in Old Testament times, according to the Law, he could have been given the death penalty. Under Roman occupation, the Jewish leaders were far more limited in what penalty they could pronounce. But no, this father does none of these things. He agrees to the division! The small community he lived in would certainly find out this is going on, as small communities find out everything that is going on, and this is a pretty big deal, plus the departure of the younger son with lots of wealth (not to mention the father probably selling off many items to raise the necessary cash) would be obvious. Note that the son does not only bring tremendous dishonor on himself, but also on his father, who apparently out of love, does not give the son what he deserves, but instead gives the son what he asks. The son has destroyed the face of himself and his father. From another perspective, the son has challenged the father (even though he did not have sufficient honor status to appropriately make the challenge), but the father has made no riposte at all.

“Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything. – Luke 15:13-16

So here we have an honor-shame reversal. The son shamed the father and left without honor but with wealth, and in the distant country he would have the honor that accompanies wealth in and of itself. But now, the son has lost everything, deservedly so. His shame is so great that even the unclean pigs are eating better than he is. And he now works in one of the most disreputable and dishonorable jobs imaginable from a Jewish perspective.

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father. – Luke 15:17-20a

From an honor-shame perspective, this too is shocking. This takes a lot of chutzpah, to use the Yiddish term. How could he, disgraced so completely, even think of going back to his father, whom he treated so terribly? Yes, he isn’t thinking of going back to him as father. He isn’t seeking to talk to him as patron. He is coming to him like a hired hand, a stranger, one that wishes to sell himself to servitude in exchange for basic provisions.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ So they began to celebrate. – Luke 15:20b-24

The father is the center of attention here, not the son. Despite the terrible things the son has done, the father loves his son. He doesn’t even care that his honor is further degraded by allowing the son to come to him. He runs to him in a most undignified manner, adding dishonor upon dishonor. (For an elder to run at all was seen as extremely dishonorable at that time.) The father rejoices in the son and gives him the best he has to offer, as if nothing had ever happened. The community (who, remember, determines one’s honor status) must have thought the father had completely lost his mind.

This entirely ruins the honor-shame reversal story that appeared to be going on here! The son started with honor, living in an honorable family, but he threw that all away when he acted so disgracefully towards his father. Why is he ending up back in the family? Why is he being thrown a party? What did he do?

The answer is that he didn’t do anything! He couldn’t! There was absolutely no way to “earn” his way back into his father’s good graces. The only thing he did do was return to his father. His father did everything else, including dishonoring his own name even more.

This presents us with a picture of the gospel. I am now going to present the gospel from an honor-shame framework. This is based on a gospel-sharing technique called the Three Circles. The following links present the Three Circles from a guilt/innocence, fear/power, and shame/honor perspective. My version incorporates some ideas from the shame/honor perspective but goes into greater detail.

Three Circles: (note that this particular fear/power version uses Muslim terminology because it is intended for outreach to Muslims)




Adam and Eve were the first people that God made. Adam and Eve destroyed their honor when they violated the one command God had given them. In listening to the serpent who encouraged them to do this and then eating the forbidden fruit, they too made a challenge to God, even though they too were nothing approaching God’s equal. Like the prodigal, they wanted to be divorced from God’s oversight. And so God gave them what they wanted. But there were consequences: expulsion from the garden, having to work hard, pain in childbirth, and death, a limit to life. But as hard as these consequences were, they could have been infinitely worse. God was entirely within his rights to “unmake” man (and this is conjecture, but perhaps this was the serpent’s real goal all along). For the angels were there before Adam and Eve were made, and yet it is man, lower than the angels, who is the creature made in the “image” of God.

The world was broken, and Adam and Eve now lived in this broken world, separated from God and completely dishonored. In their disobedience they also brought down the honor of God, partly because the disobedience of children reflects on the parents who raise them and partly because God let them go like the father in the parable.

God had an original design for the world, and that design is that we would be a part of God’s family. God would be our Father, who would love us, who would lead us, who would bless us and who would provide for us, and we would be His children, who would honor Him, who would obey Him, who would follow Him, and who would represent His holy and perfect and awesome character to the world.

But, we did not follow God’s original design, and to not follow God’s original design is called “sin”. Sin is when we disobey our Father, and sin is also when we fail to represent God our Father’s perfect holy and righteous character in this world. What are some ways we sin? We sin by not honoring and loving God above all others, by worshiping created things or man-made deities or idols or philosophies. We sin by not loving and honoring those around us as much as we love ourselves and seek to build our own honor at the expense of others. Some ways we do this includes lying to others, stealing from others, harboring bad thoughts against others, coveting what others have, and dishonoring our own parents. Every one of us has done some of these things and done them many times. 

As a result, we are like Adam. We live in this broken world, and we contribute to its brokenness with our actions. We are without honor, without face.

Many people try to fix themselves, to get back somehow to God’s original design, to restore their honor. But like the prodigal son, they cannot do so. Some may try to restore their honor through good works. But no amount of good works can restore our honor, because God is without sin. He has never sinned, never broken his honor. We cannot undo what we have already done. And the truth for most of us is that even as we try to do good works, we continue to sin even more.

Some well-meaning people may try to restore their honor through religious activity such as attending services, making sacrifices, or giving gifts. But even if this activity is intended for the true God and not a false one, it still is completely unable to restore our broken honor. We remain trapped in the broken world, separated from God.

Many people feel the pain of this separation and brokenness and dishonor even if they do not understand the cause. They may try to drown out the pain through drugs, alcohol, entertainment, or consumerism (the purchase of stuff). But not only do these activities to fail to eliminate the pain, they also do absolutely nothing to deal with the cause of the pain. We feel this pain because deep down we know that we have sinned against God. God, because He is completely without sin, without dishonor, has allowed us to separate ourselves from Himself. We were created to be God’s children, but now, we are separated from God. In fact, we are not His children, but those who behave as enemies of God. With each sin, we declare our independence of Him; with each sin, we only dishonor ourselves further. We do not admit this, but our actions communicate, like those of the prodigal son, that we essentially wish He were dead. Now, separated from Him, we are like the prodigal son, out on our own, no longer living as a member of His family.

Even worse, the first part of Romans 6:23 tells us that the wages of sin is death. We are working to dishonor God, whether we admit it or not. And this “work” has wages of death, eternal separation from God.

But there is good news! Despite everything we have done, God loves us and wants us to be a part of His family. And God did something to make this possible; again, there was nothing we could do.

God entered into the world! 


He entered into the world through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, fully God and yet fully man. He entered into this world, and He honored God perfectly through His obedience. He represented God perfectly in His words, His thoughts, and His actions, and in His character. He was God’s perfect representation in this world. Many people challenged His honor, but He overwhelmed them with His wisdom, His knowledge, and His goodness. He had compassion on those low in honor, both those whose shame was undeserved and those whose shame was a result of their own inappropriate actions. He also performed many miracles as a kind of proof that He really was from God. Jesus entered into this world with unsurpassed honor as God’s Son, but He increased His honor even more through His actions.

The people who challenged Jesus eventually lost so much honor through these confrontations that they sought to have Jesus arrested and killed. Although Jesus knew it was about to happen, He continued to perfectly obey God. God willed Him to go through it, and Jesus, even though He did not deserve it at all, experienced shame as He was mocked and brutally beaten, and He died the most shameful of deaths on a cross. Why did God will it? Because Jesus was the only one who could “cover” our “nakedness.” Only Jesus could take our place as the one separated from God. Only He could do something about our situation; He could give up His honor and die a shameful death in our place. But in taking our shame upon Himself, He took our shame from us.

How do we know that God allowed this, that Jesus’ undeserved shame removed our own?

Because after three days in the tomb, Jesus rose from the dead! This was a confirmation that Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf was accepted!

After He rose from the grave, God gave Jesus the greatest seat of honor in the whole entire world, and He made Jesus king of the world.

And God promises that if we would trust in Jesus, if we would trust that it’s through Him that our sins are forgiven and we are brought back into God’s family,

and that we would turn and follow Him (to follow means that Jesus is our king, He’s our master, He’s our leader, and we re-orient our lives to be in accordance with His will),

then God promises that we would be brought into God’s family, that our honor would be His honor, that He would forever be both our patron and our Father, and that we would be called His children,

our sins forgiven,

and we would be promised that we will live with God forever in a place called heaven. Yes, the first part of Romans 6:23 says that wages of sin is death, but the second part says that the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When will we go to heaven? At some unknown date in the future. Some people who trust and follow Jesus will go straight to being with Him in heaven without dying. Others who trust and follow Him will die before going to heaven. In either case, heaven is only available to those that have trusted and followed Him, because it is only as we trust and follow that we are brought into God’s family, our sins forgiven, our honor not our own but Christ’s.

How do we follow Him? We do this with the aid of the Holy Spirit, who is also God, which lives in our hearts. We now, with His help, do good works for God, loving and honoring Him and loving and honoring those around us, not to restore our relationship with God (because God has already restored that relationship if we have trusted in Him and turned and followed Him), but because we seek to grow His honor both in the heavens and here on earth. One way we do this is by telling others about Him so that they too can be forgiven and have their honor restored.

Now you are in one of two places: either you are either trusting in and following Jesus, therefore you are in God’s family, you are God’s child; or, you are not trusting and following Jesus, and you are separated from God. The option to choose to trust and follow Jesus is only available why you are still alive; because we can die at any time, and nobody knows when they will die, it is extremely unwise to put off making this decision if it makes sense to you and you long for a restored relationship with God and an end to the pain of separation from Him.

The question is, where are you? Are you separated from God, or are you in God’s family? If you are separated from God, where would you like to be? If you would like to be in God’s family, the way you get there is by talking to God, which is what prayer is. Just like you cannot really accept a gift without receiving it—taking it into your arms—prayer is how you receive God’s gift of forgiveness and enter His family. In your prayer you tell God that you understand that there is nothing you can do to restore your honor or your relationship with Him, but that you understand that He sent Jesus to die on the cross for this purpose. You thank Him for doing this for you, and you praise Him for restoring you into His family and seek to follow Him.

So, this 3 Circle method is one way of presenting the gospel from an honor-shame perspective. One of my favorite conversion stories is in Acts 16:

The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. – Acts 16:22-24

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!” – Acts 16:25-28

The jailer called for lights, rushed in and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” – Acts 16:29-31

Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At that hour of the night the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and all his household were baptized. The jailer brought them into his house and set a meal before them; he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God—he and his whole household. – Acts 16:32-34

We may not see such miracles like earthquakes that loosen chains as people come to Christ, but every conversion is no less a miracle. It is the Lord Himself that changes people’s hearts, that brings them to repentance. One reason I love this account is because it is in the context of community (hearing the badly wounded believers singing praises to God together) that the jailor asks how he can be saved. As Jayson Georges writes in the 3D Gospel,

“Through a community encounter, unbelievers come to redefine their court of reputation (i.e., who decides which people are honorable) and honor code (i.e., what is truly honorable and shameful) in light of God’s honor.”

He also writes,

“True face only comes from encountering the Face of God. Relationally knowing God’s Face, as revealed in the face of Jesus, is the only definitive source for gaining a new and esteemed status.”

And he writes,

“Eternal glory comes solely through God’s Son (John 17:22) because only God’s opinion will last forever. When people reject God as the lone source and arbiter of honor, they choose finite honor over infinite glory (John 12:42-43). Christian mission replaces false shame (‘I am a worthless nobody’) and false honor (‘My group is best!’) with true honor from God.” –Jayson Georges

Note that Paul saves the jailer’s life by yelling out “we are here.” By choosing not to flee, Paul and Silas potentially sacrificed their own lives to preserve his life and honor. In sharing a meal together, they demonstrated with action the reality that the jailer (formerly their persecutor) was now truly a member of their family, the amazing and diverse family of Christ.

A key point of the series is that the themes of shame and honor run deeply through all of Scripture but our worldview blinds us to much of it; these themes do not naturally resonate for us like they would for those who were around when the Bible was written. As Sam Winfield, a missionary who works within honor-shame cultures, asks hauntingly of those who would share the gospel (which should be all of us, since God commissions us all to do it),

“If I as a messenger happen to be a product of the most individualistic culture in history, how is that affecting my spiritual walk personally, my conception of the community of God corporately, and my message cross-culturally?” – Sam Winfield

The answer is that our western worldview of course affects us profoundly in each of these areas. I think it is important for us to recognize and remember this! Hopefully this series begins to make a dent in our thinking, but I encourage you to continually ask God to continue to open your heart and your eyes to these ideas so that we could know God better and love Him more. I also encourage you to continually ask God to help us to be more effective witnesses, ministers of reconciliation, and ambassadors for our glorious King. May we sing with multitudes in Revelation 5:

You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because You were slain, and with Your blood You purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. – Rev. 5:9

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