Shame is supposed to be a good thing. We want criminals to feel a sense of shame so that they are less likely to reoffend. On both sides of the Atlantic, there have been television series called Shameless about families who, we are supposed to assume, don’t feel any shame about how they behave.

Yet when we open Genesis, we find that shame is not part of God’s perfect order. In chapter two, before the fall, Adam and Eve are reported to have “felt no shame”.

Dr Curt Thompson, a Christian psychiatrist, has written an IVP book called The Soul of Shame. He says that it is reasonable to believe that “shame as an interpersonal neurobiological process plays a necessary role in helping us develop proper self-regulating behaviour”.

We might say that in a world with sin, we do need to understand what actually is sinful. Deciphering it is like picking up a pan that’s too hot: it’s useful to have nerves that tell us that it is burning us. But we wouldn’t want to be feel a burning sensation all the time. We put our hand under cold water and hope the pain goes away quickly.

And the problem with shame is that, all too often, it isn’t like the quick message from the pan, helping us understand moral choices. Instead, it’s an ongoing, painful affliction. That’s because, Dr Thompson argues, shame is a weapon used by the devil.

He writes:

Shame is not just a consequence of something our first parents did in the Garden of Eden. It is the emotional weapon that evil uses to (1) corrupt our relationships with God and each other, and (2) disintegrate any and all gifts of vocational vision and creativity. These gifts include any area of endeavour that promotes goodness, beauty and joy in the and for the lives of others …

Shame is a primary means to prevent us from using the gifts we have been given. And those gifts enable us to flourish as a light-bearing community of Jesus followers who work to create space for others who wish to join it to do so. Shame, therefore, is not simply an unfortunate, random, emotional event that came with us out of the primordial evolutionary soup. It is both a source and result of evil’s active assault on God’s creation, and a way for evil to try to hold out until the new heaven and earth appear at the consummation of history.

So shame can be a very unhelpful, paralysing emotion that that comes in the way of us using our gifts.

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The theme of shame is picked up in Christ is Risen, by the Christian songwriter Matt Maher. The lyrics say:

Let no one caught in sin remain
Inside the lie of inward shame
We fix our eyes upon the cross
And run to Him who showed great love
And bled for us
Freely You bled, for us