What Shame Does to Us

Years ago, I had a conversation with a Carmelite monk while I was visiting a monastery. The monastery was built in isolation within the woodlands of the Midwestern United States. All the monks that lived there never left the monastery grounds. They lived their lives under vows and dedicated their lives to praying for the Church and for the conversion of sinners around the world.

The monk I spoke with was young, no older than his late twenties, and he had only entered the monastery a couple years before then. I asked him what it was like to leave the world, to rid himself of everything he owned, and to begin to live a monastic life. His answer blew me away, and since then I find myself thinking back to it all the time. This was his answer:

Imagine you are sitting alone in a dark room. In front of you is God. You know He is there, but you cannot see Him. All of the sudden, the floor drops out from under you. Out of the dark depths come up all these things in your life— deep fears, past wounds, roots of shame and ugliness. Some of these things you knew about, others you did not. These things slowly creep out of the darkness, and once you see them for what they are, you are then able to push them into the light so that God can take them from you.

His answer was beautiful, to say the least, and since that conversation my interest was sparked in a particular way towards shame. What is shame? Why do we experience shame?

“And the man and his wife were both naked, and they were not ashamed.”

Genesis 2:25

Genesis 2:25 is essential in understanding both man’s original sinfulness and his original innocence. The text found in Genesis explicitly states that before Adam fell, he lacked shame. It was not that man had little shame or that man was even aware of shame, but that there was a non-presence of shame. Shame was nonexistent. Shame could not be compared to anything else nor could man begin to perceive the idea of shame. It wasn’t until man’s fall into sin, into the knowledge of good and evil, that he realized he was naked.

Genesis 3:7 marks the moment Adam and Eve gained self-knowledge— when shame was born.

“Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.”

Genesis 3:7

St. John Paul II conveys that shame has a direct link in how man perceives his body. More specifically, shame affects the way man perceives his body before a woman, and it affects the way a woman perceives her body before a man. It is an experience of fear in man’s search for the proper affirmation in his body. It is his search for intimacy and his subsequent failure in finding the fullness of that intimacy.

Before the presence of shame, man was able to experience the fullness of reality. The fullness of his very self. To rightly understand this “fullness” in man’s original innocence, we must go to the innermost depths of man’s being.

First, we must go back to the definition of man’s shame— the fear and knowledge of man’s nakedness before the other. Masculine before feminine; feminine before masculine. Shame directly affects our ability to “commune” with the other. It limits man’s communication at the deepest level, and limits man’s ability to express his being as he ought.

Shame acts as a barrier between man and woman; between man and the world. Shame pulls man inward, when the true nature of man was meant to be outward. Shame suppresses man’s true nature and prevents himself from experiencing the fullness of expression. Man exists in a perpetual state of vulnerability, in a knowledge of his nakedness, and falls into isolation from his Creator due to his original sin and the sin of the world.

Shame, from the moment of Adam and Eve’s fall, has made man believe he is an inward creature, and convinces man in his heart that to transcend above the world is impossible and unnecessary. Shame fools man into thinking he is all alone in the world, and that even his companion(woman) is far from his heart. It is only through Jesus Christ that man is able to travel back to his original innocence. It is only through Christ that man is able to confront his roots of shame and bring them into the light, so that God can take them from him.