Over the six episodes of Broken Father Michael meets several people going through terrible struggles. One of the saddest is the case of Roz, a lapsed Irish Catholic woman who comes to confession and tells Michael her secret. Roz is holding down a responsible job and living in a nice house with her three teenage children; she is an attractive woman and comes across as successful and capable. But Roz has stolen over £230,000 from her employer over the past eight years in order to fund her gambling addiction. She knows her days of keeping this quiet are numbered: soon her employer will find out and therefore she is planning to end her life. She won't be able to live with the shame, she explains. She can't stand the thought of all her neighbours and friends knowing what she's done and, as she puts it, "wetting themselves" with glee.
Michael tries hard to dissuade Roz from her terrible decision. He's done much worse things than she has, he confesses, and shares a little of his troubled youth. Roz seems to respond well to his vulnerability, but denies that he understands her predicament. Michael is living with secrets he feels guilty about, whereas Roz's crime will soon no longer be secret. "Guilt is when you know you've done wrong," she explains. "Shame is when everyone knows."
Over the past few years I've become very interested in the issues around guilt and shame. Some Christian theologians argue that 'shame' describes the 21st century human predicament - particularly in the West - better than 'guilt'. According to the literature, guilt is knowing you've done something bad, whereas shame is believing you are bad. Guilt is more of an individual problem, whereas shame causes you to be estranged from the people around you. Guilt can be dealt with by taking your punishment - as in the justice system, where you are sentenced to a spell in prison, community service, perhaps a fine, and then you have 'paid your debt to society'. Shame can only be dealt with by a healing of relationships, bringing the offender back into the embrace of the community. In missionary literature some cultures were traditionally described as 'guilt cultures' and others 'shame cultures'. Japan was given as an example of one such 'shame culture', where misdemeanour was understood to be dealt with via community pressure, shaming the offender into changing their ways. This is probably a massive oversimplification, however. Although ours is supposedly a 'guilt culture', personally I hugely identify with the problem of shame, and I suspect I'm not alone. My secret fear is not that I do wrong, but that I fundamentally am wrong, and that one day everyone will find out. Thus I think it's really important to understand how the cross of Christ deals not just with guilt, but with shame too. It's not only that the just punishment is paid by Christ, thus dealing with guilt, but that the shame which has estranged the offender from God and from their community is dealt with too. Christ welcomes us back into a relationship with God and into a community of others which, at its best, welcomes us too.
Unfortunately Roz believes that her community will not welcome her, but instead will delight at her appalling crime and enjoy watching her misfortune. What she imagines God thinks of her we are not told. Father Michael asks her to join him in a prayer, and it's a really simple and beautiful one. "This is Roz Demichelis, Lord. She doesn't know how much you love her. Please would you find some way of showing her. Amen."
Very thought provoking post. I haven't watched the series yet, but do have the first episode downloaded on iPlayer.. .
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