Shameful Driving

     These days many people are sufficiently cut off from their neighbors that they no longer care what others think.  Last summer a fellow drove over the cones I set up to protect the fresh sealer I was spreading on the church parking lot.  I raised my arms as if to ask what he was doing.

       He gave me the finger.

       Honestly, I’m glad my disapproval bothered him enough for him to offer me his own.  I’m more worried about the kid who later drove through the wet lot and laughed.  Such people, as we say, “know no shame.”  They seem unfazed by the disapproval of others. 

       It’s a problem.

      And for that reason our culture has intensified its attempts to embarrass such people.  In varying degrees people may deserve this rising tide of ridicule. Businesses may deserve their negative reviews on Angie’s List.  Cheating boyfriends are ousted in front of a thousand friends on Facebook.  Celebrities become fodder for late-night farce while our most fragile people have Judge Judy scold them on national television. 

       Other people are slandered for a mere lapse in judgment.  Others have just taken moral stands that are completely misunderstood.  But in all these cases we seem to justify shouting at them; we boycott, threaten and single people out for public scrutiny—not because we are calling them to a transcendent moral standard, but because their behavior makes us mad.

     This culture of shame is a much bigger problem.

     Shame is an intensely painful embarrassment that will not easily go away. It spawns every form of defensiveness.  It’s the primary emotion which drives addiction and leads to death.  It is such a problem that after humanity made its first mistake, God fashioned clothes to hide our nakedness.  Jesus teaches us, that "If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you.”  The love of God covers over a multitude of sins.  The gospel offers people who have otherwise fallen into disrepute an opportunity to find in God a refuge from the disapproval of others.  

      God does not want to “put them to shame.” God doesn't want them cut off; he wants them integrated with their neighbors so that their neighbors feelings mean something.  I’m not sure it helps us or others to honk at people for their shameful driving. I’m not sure that publicly exposing people and creating a culture of perpetual outrage is doing any of us much good.