I remember as a child, if you were naked, the first thing the adults commented on our child-bodies was “shame, shame, puppy shame.” On hearing such comments, the child immediately runs to either hide their nakedness from the public or picks some clothes to cover their nakedness. Such comments ingrained a sense of ‘shame’ to the body of a child. Shame continued to govern the lives of human beings in more than many ways. Again, back home in India in our local village, when our Dalit community members cooked beef for dinner, and when our friends asked what did we eat for dinner, we always said, “That.” There was a sense of shame in eating beef, for those eating beef are considered polluting by the dominant castes, and so in order to cover the shame associated with beef, it was always talked about in that code word of “That.” Our Dalit women, whose bodies have been battered and bruised by the systemic practices of patriarchy and caste, carry the heaviest burdens of shame enforced on them, and the growing caste honour killings are a case in point.
In the context of the heinous caste system, for Dalits, people who are born outside of the caste hierarchy, the ex-untouchables, shame is enforced on them because of the untouchability ascribed to them. Priyanka Singh on writing on Dalit trauma explains, “starting with the idea of pollution attached to their identity, Dalit minds were trained to feel a profound sense of shame about who they were and the work they were assigned. This is “learned cultural shame” and it is an intrinsic quality of the contemporary Dalit identity.[1] She continued to comment that even when Dalits enter institutions of higher learning through the state’s Constitutional affirmative actions called ‘Reservations’ they are shamed and discriminated for their Dalit identity. It is such a shame that today shame occupies a prime area in the public sphere, where the women, the Dalits, the indigenous communities, people with disabilities, the LGBTQI+ communities, the migrants, the refugees, are all judged and shamed based on the norms constructed by the dominant and powerful people’s narratives and tools.
It has become so prevalent in the society today, where ‘shame’ and ‘celebrate’ are things that are associated with what we think is wrong and right. As a person of Indian origin now living in the UK, I have noticed how the word ‘shame’ has some specific cultural overtones and differences. In the UK, as I have heard it, if a colleague of yours is unwell and is unable to attend a scheduled meeting, it was said, “it is a shame that she can’t make it to the meeting.” Here shame is understood as sad, rather than wrong. Not to say it doesn’t have a meaning of social reality to the word ‘shame.’ However, speaking from the perspective of my Dalit experience, shame is something, which is indoctrinated socially, politically, culturally and religiously upon people based on the tools of the powerful, bringing in a sense of inadequacy to the very ‘self’ of one’s life. Shame alienates oneself from their own selves, and alienates oneself with the rest of the community. In other words, shame creates a sense of distrust and mistrust with the self, with the community and with the divine.
Psalm 25 expresses the reflections of the psalmist who is threatened by the situation of his guilt and shame and who seeks to find trust, hope and confidence in the divine. The psalmist begins his reflection by asking God not to put him to shame (2v) and concludes the psalm by again reiterating his plea of not putting him to shame (20v), which explains the gravity of shame that he has been carrying on his life, explaining the seriousness of his situation. The psychology of the psalmist’s context thrived on the binary and dualism of honour and shame, where ‘honour’ was for the righteous and ‘shame’ was for those burdened by guilt and disgrace. On recognising the politics of shame as that which is enforced/ indoctrinated by the powers and principalities, which the psalmist calls ‘enemies’, the psalmist as a victim of shame acknowledges at least two dimensions of shame. The psalmist firstly prays to God asking God not to put him to shame (2v) and then pleads God to not put to shame those people who wait for God (3v). The psalmist cries out loud, and exposes the tangents of both, the individual shame and also the corporate shame of his community, seeking refuge in the trust of God. By expressing such corporate shame, the psalmist was building a ‘solidarity for people with shame’ in his community, seeking collective ways for systemic changes in overcoming shame. In the context of the discrimination for Dalits, both individual and corporate psyche of Dalits are traumatised with shame, and Dalits continue to live with a ‘wounded psyche,’ seeking corporate annihilation of caste in our contexts.
It is also interesting to note that the psalmist prays in verse 3, “let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous,” where he wants those that are unfaithful and betraying the vulnerable, to experience shame that he has been experiencing, for only then they might understand what it means to be inadequate in one’s self, and what it means to lose trust in oneself. It is in a way a strategy of using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house who have been enforcing shame on the vulnerable and powerless.
The psalmist earnestly prays, petitioning God not to put him to shame, for it affects the inner self of his very being. The root word ‘bos’ for shame in Hebrew has meanings that range from humiliation to public disgrace. So therefore, when the psalmist begins his prayer in verse 1, “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul,” for in prayer the psalmist brings the ‘shamed self,’ ‘humiliated self,’ ‘broken self,’ which resonates with the lives our Dalit communities who live with such ‘self’(s), unashamedly into the presence of God. The divine becomes the space where ‘shamed selves’ finds trust, home and solace, for the ‘shamed selves’ are ‘un-homed’ in the public sphere for the normalizations of oppressive status quo rules and prevails there. In verse 7, the psalmist pleads the divine not to remember the sins of his youth or his transgressions, for those sins have added a sense of ‘shame’ on him, for his public sphere always remembers them and haunts him of his doings. The psalmist has no place to hide except to come on to the presence of the divine, where he finds trust (2v) and comfort. When our Dalit ancestors chose to become Christians, they found that trust, hope and home for their ‘shamed selves’ in the space of Christian faith, for the faith in Christ offered courage, which brought them to ‘come open’ as Dalit Christians in the public sphere to lead a life with self-dignity and self-respect.
So, we learn from this Psalm that in situations of shame, when people are burdened with sins and transgressions that push them to shame, when the public sphere reminds and remembers all those shame-full acts, which are acts done against the norms of the powerful, the presence of the divine offers hope, trust, and welcome. In that trust in the divine, one can unashamedly open up their positions and postures, for God receives people as they are and as they wish to come. God doesn’t blame and shame any names, rather God calms those who come unto him with heavy labour of shame. As followers of such a divine, the task is on us to offer home and hope, to (re)build trust for people whose psyches are broken due to shame, to be unjudgmental on people’s shame and to love them unconditionally.
In the context of shame, when the self is experiencing inadequacy, the psalmist rather than explaining the reasons of his shame, or narrating the story of his shame, which might be traumatising to retell or giving a detail about the ‘enemies’ who are enforcing shame on him, the psalmist waits on God, on God’s paths and on the characteristics of God for help and refuge. Look out the characteristics of God that the psalmist mentions here, which includes God’s trust (2v), God’s mercy (6v), God’s salvation (5v), God’s steadfast love (6,7v), God’s goodness (7v), and God’s faithfulness (10v). These characteristics of God are the characteristics that the psalmist who is living in shame is longing for and waiting for, which the psalmist speaks out loud in his prayer. With the overpowering of shame in his life, the adequacy of life is vacuumed with distrust, mercilessness, oppression, hatred, unfairness and unfaithfulness, and therefore he expresses a longing in God, who has abundance of life in Godself. The words in prayers are words that the person praying is longing for in their lives. They are not mere words, but visions for their longing and belonging.
On this first Sunday in Advent, when faith communities are waiting for the arrival of the divine in Jesus Christ, we are called to recognise that there are many people in our contexts who are living in shame, and whose longing has been to overcome the inadequacy in life and build back trust with themselves, with the people in the community and with the divine. Advent is a season for such longing, where justice, peace and equality are the visions for faith communities in longing and belonging. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to turn those visions into actions by offering compassion and love to the entire creation, and make Advent a real possibility and a reality for all.
Trust is the starting theological response to shame that the psalmist is longing, looking and loving for. “O my God in you I trust, do not let me be put to shame…” (2v), for in the God of steadfast love and mercy, the psalmist seeks trust, defying the gods of patriarchy, colonialism, and violence. The God of Psalm 25 is a God of ultimate trust, who not only accepts people in their shame, but also is a God who comes down to rebuild the trust with oneself, with the community and with the divine self. Shame and public-ness are antithetical, for those living in shame, their person(alities) feel inadequate with a loss of trust and are pushed into the situations of exclusion and marginalisation. So, the theological relevance of Psalm 25:1-10 for our context is to know that ‘in God is our trust’ who brings us out into the public unashamedly and live out life in safety and courage. In believing such a God, the call for the listeners is to offer love and loving-kindness for people living in shame, to build confidence and trust by affirming them as equal cohabitants of our collective public sphere. To ‘come out’ as our natural selves into the public is itself liberative and therapeutic, and faith spaces should welcome and facilitate such expressions.
16 days of activism against gender-based violence which begins from 25th Nov to 10th Dec, is an opportunity for faith communities to reflect on gender-based violence today in our contexts, which has become so prevalent particularly during the lockdown, to acknowledge the amount of shame that the victims of violence are enduring and to seek ways through which hope and love is offered publicly. The characteristics of the God we believe are to be reflected by faith communities, to make faith relevant for our public sphere. 29th of November is observed as UN’s International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, which is again an opportunity for the faith-based communities to show solidarity publicly, to recognise the rights of Palestinians and strive for just peace in Palestine Israel. With the ongoing ‘occupation’ the shame imposed on Palestinian people is beyond measure, and offering public solidarity and striving for their rights and justice is a way to offer hope and love to them.
The gospel text for this week on lectionary from Luke 21:25-36 explains that on discerning the signs of our times, with the anticipation of the Son of Man, redemption comes near and the kingdom of God comes near.[2] In other words, when shame is one of the ongoing signs of our times though spoken but mostly unspoken, the arrival of the Son of Man, the nearness of redemption and the kingdom of God is a possibility only when shame and disgrace are overcome by love and grace by being and becoming a home of hope, by rebuilding trust and by embracing people who are feeling inadequate and seek ways to ensure life in all its fullness. For our Dalit communities who are burdened with shame, the gospel of this text is to overpower shame with grace by building solidarity with wider communities on similar paths, for the divine is walking with us in our shame, taking on our shame and striving with us in overcoming shame, for O God in you we trust. By the way, as Dalit communities we continue to share Beef curry whenever we cook for dinners with our friends and now boldly say it is ‘Beef’ and not use it in the code word of “That.”
Rev. Dr. Raj Bharat Patta
11th November 2021
(Written for Political Theology blog for the Politics of Scripture and be read on: https://politicaltheology.com/the-politics-of-shame-reflecting-on-psalm-251-10/ )
[1] https://feminisminindia.com/2020/10/21/intergenerational-dalit-trauma-caste-violence/
[2] For further reflection on this text read https://politicaltheology.com/the-coming-near-of-god-luke-2125-36/
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