I received a question from a pastor in Oregon who is participating in our webinar curriculum, “Journey of Discovery in Honor, Shame, and the Gospel.” His question:

Can you address why/how those under 30 in the United States are so strong on shame?

This is a huge question and whole books could be written on the subject. Here are just a few thoughts and a few resources…

1) Smartphones and social media

Check out these articles—all of which have several references to the intense anxieties of inclusion and exclusion (honor-shame dynamics).

• At Christianity Today: Andy Crouch: “The Return of Shame”. (You’ll need a subscription to CT to read the whole article.)
• At The Atlantic: Jean Twenge: “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”
• At the website for Harvard Graduate School of Education: Leah Shafer: “Social Media and Teen Anxiety”

Smartphones and social media have created a never-ending strain of peer pressure on young people and young adults. (Of course, this experience is not limited to an age group; I have observed social media-related anxiety among middle-age adults, myself included.) There is constant anxiety about inclusion and exclusion. The possibility of shame seems inescapable. According to Brené Brown, shame can be defined as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging … the fear of disconnection.” Peer pressure and the fear of exclusion/shame has always been a part of adolescence. But social media and the smartphone expands this fear of shame into a dynamic that’s 24/7—it never turns off.

2) The diminished status of the law in Western culture

Our society has developed a high level of cynicism about the law. At one time, civil law in Europe and North America was viewed as an extension of the righteous law of God. But the modern world has seen that law and rules are sometimes agents of oppression. For example, in World War 2, in Germany, the Holocaust was perpetrated on millions of innocent men, women, and children by Germans who were ‘just following the rules.’ … Racism and segregation in America was codified into housing and zoning laws, and lending policy (see Rothstein: The Color of Law). … The criminal justice system in America has been critiqued as one of injustice toward minorities. The privileged status of the law has been diminished in the West, and I believe this shift has contributed to the rise of shame dynamics, especially among teens and young adults. (Note to pastors: An overview of the changing views of law and justice in Western history is contained in Atonement, Law and Justice by Adonis Vidu.)

3) Sexual defilement and moral relational pollution

I believe there is a synergy of defilement-related shame in Western culture. (See Alan Mann: Atonement for a ‘Sinless’ Society). Mann says that in the post-Christian West, “sin” is passé—an old way of thinking that doesn’t make sense to modern people. Any yet (Mann contends), everyone still understands the reality of “moral relational pollution,” which would include…

• persistent occurrence of sexual abuse across all levels of social status
• dramatic growth of the problem of pornography—now available via any smartphone
• breakdown of the stable two-parent family, and all the relational brokenness connected to this

Conclusion: Could it be that these dark social dynamics have created a perfect storm of defilement and shame—especially observable among young people and young adults? Could it be we need to teach and preach the gospel in ways that transcend the “legal-framework-gospel”? The Bible is full of stories, principles, and truths (we are exploring these in our webinar curriculum) that speak to the problems of defilement, sin, and shame.

Also, for pastors, teachers and trainers, I highly recommend this relatively short but deep book. It is a pastoral treatment about the atonement of Christ—and how the atonement speaks to humanity’s shame: Philip D. Jamieson: The Face of Forgiveness: A Pastoral Theology of Shame and Redemption.