Is Shame Always Bad?
2 Thessalonians 3:14 – “If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed.”
Do the final five words of this verse make you uncomfortable? They probably should to some extent. When you think of shame, perhaps you imagine someone intentionally belittling/mocking others in order to embarrass or silence them. This kind of vindictive spirit is not godly and ought to make us uncomfortable.
But Paul speaks in this text of a kind of shame that is actually helpful in someone’s life, a kind of shame that wakes someone up to the truth, to what really matters. We live in a culture where it is nearly unthinkable to take an action in order for someone else to feel a sense of shame. But if truth indeed exists and if sin indeed is a destructive reality, then shame might be used by God to wake someone up to the truth or to the reality of sin.
Notice that in this verse, the action taken is not shaming. Rather, shame is the result of the action (or even the intended goal of the action). The actions in this verse are (1) noting someone who has rejected the truth or by extension who has given themselves to sin and (2) stopping Christian fellowship with that person. We ought not act as if we have unified Christian fellowship with those who reject the truth or who live in open, unrepentant sin. That does significant harm to the gospel and confuses the world about what the true gospel is and does in someone’s life.
To try to make this a bit more tangible, if you were to catch some people shoplifting in real-time and yelled after them, “Stop! Bring those clothes back! You didn’t pay for those!” would you not be intending to cause them to feel a bit of shame for their wrong actions? To wake them up to the reality of what they were doing? In this instance of shoplifting, truth-telling is the action, and shame might be a powerful motivator as a result. Any shame felt shows that the God-given conscience is working. If the shoplifters stop, it is likely because their conscience kicked in and caused them to feel ashamed. And this is a good thing.
As Pastor Conley said in a recent sermon, “We need to be more afraid of sin than we are of shame.” Listen to the rest of his explanation of this verse below.