Views of the cross #2: shame and reunion

Let's say you do something stupid and selfish and it hurts someone else. What do you feel? I guess in that situation most of us would say "I feel guilty". So what would take that guilt away?

In our legal system we atone for our crimes by doing a punishment, after which we have "paid our debt to society". But does that work in everyday human interactions? If I have hurt someone, do I ask them to name a punishment, and when I've done it, do they feel better? Do I?

Some have argued that what we often feel when we do stupid, selfish things is shame rather than guilt - or perhaps as well as guilt. Shame is a feeling of badness - not that I have done something bad, but that I AM bad. It's not focused on what we've done but on ourselves. When I hurt someone else, I don't focus on the thing I can do to make it better; I agonise over the damage I have done and feel diminished as a person. Doing a punishment doesn't change anything - I am still bad.

A punishment won't take away shame - what is needed is the restoration of the relationship. Shame is overcome by reunion, by loving acceptance of the transgressor. When we are ashamed, we hide away; our shame is taken away when we are brought out of our hiding place, back into a relationship of love.

On the cross, some have argued, Christ shares our shame and wins us back into a relationship of love with our Heavenly Father. Christ seeks us out in the places where we are hiding, our faces turned away, and draws us back into a community of love - Father, Son, Holy Spirit and - miraculously - us too.

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