On healthy shame

Perhaps the most widely-known example of community shaming is the A affixed to the chest of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne didn't have much good to say about his American Puritan ancestry, and his novel, once upon a time foisted upon just about every American high school student, didn't hold much back. 

The truth? I've read it twenty or thirty times in preparation to teach it in a class in American literature, loved it every time, always, in large part, I'm sure, because while Hawthorne may have despised his Puritan heritage, he never for a moment lost his serious regard for sin. The Scarlet Letter is all about sin, which is familiar territory for someone like me, someone of the Calvinist persuasion.

Jane Griffioen's London Street grew from similar soil, although the "sin," in the memoir, was secreted away, not displayed upon the chest. Something happened years before, something secret that nonetheless tainted the life of subsequent generations. The memoir slowly--and effectively--works at loosening the knot used to bind the hearts and souls of those who suffered that sin's after-effects. Sin, in London Street, is as serious matter as it is in Scarlet Letter.

I couldn't help wondering about all of that, especially the shame that grows so abundantly in Calvinist communities like my own, communities so tight and close that departing the paths of righteousness was unthinkable.

Today, that kind of shame--or so it seems to me--is considered a bad thing. In the Covid era, half the American populace are vehement about not being shamed into wearing a mask. They refuse to feel any guilt about something they believe is their right to refuse as a citizen of a free nation. They refuse to be shamed by my wearing a mask.

Because I wanted to understand more about shame, I picked up Lewis Smedes Shame and Grace. Smedes grew up in a world I understand; his theology and background, to me, is helpful. He claims, as well he might, that there is something to be said for "healthy shame," as difficult as that is to believe. "Our feelings of inferiority are a sure sign of our superiority, and our feelings of unworthiness testify to our great worth," he says. That's a line I needed to read several times before moving on.

The next line helps, however: "Only a very noble being can feel shame" because "if we never feel shame, we may have lost contact with the person we most truly are." I like that.

And this: "If we can still feel the pain, it is because we are healthy enough to feel uncomfortable with being less than we ought to be," he says, "and less than we want to be. This is healthy shame."

And now this blog post will take an unhealthy turn.

If we believe the historical record, my people administered scarlet letters in a uniquely grotesque form, shame masks, like the handsome one at the top of the page. For public sins, the guilty were sentenced to shaming masks some artists must have had a ball creating. Can you imagine say, six weeks in this?

Right now, you might well guess where all of this is going because I know of only one person who lives, self-confessedly, without shame, a man who once told an interviewer that he'd never done anything for which he'd needed forgiveness. 

Tomorrow, the Senate will begin deliberation on the impeachment the House took last week, indicting the President for feeding mob frenzy to interrupt the lawful proceedings of the legislature. Instead, he perpetuated "the Big Lie," the claim that he had actually won the election in a landslide. Didn't happen. Should that man, the Pres, be kept from ever running for office again? 

What's ahead of us is not going to be pretty, and, as Fox News says, it will make his true believers even more furious.

I say, dump the proceedings. Just sentence the Donald to five years of wearing a shame mask. Let him wander through a museum to choose which he'd find least horrifying, but then make him wear it always for five years. 

Shame him. Let him learn some healthy shame.