There is a normal kind of shame which is proper and which functions in a healthy person. In this article I don’t mean the wrong kind of shame which wicked people cast upon an innocent. I am speaking of shame which is rightly felt when we wrong someone or sin in some manner and later come to the realization of what we have done.
RASNs (revilers, abusers, sociopaths, narcissists) are shameless. They are never truly and rightly ashamed. I have seen this evil in play many times. Someone, for example, who is a divisive person in a local church, who causes great harm to others there, and who is finally expelled from the fellowship, very typically will be absolutely shameless. They will smile and glad-hand you later as if that entire history never happened.
One example I know of was in the case of a full-blown narcissist who wrongly and sinfully divorced his wife. She was a wonderful person but by his monstrous ego made her life rather miserable. After he divorced her and went off with another woman, he returned to his victim’s house one afternoon, knocked on the door, and asked her, “Do you have a copy of the recipe for that chili that you make? I would like to have it.” Shameless, you see. A normal, functioning human being with a conscience would never have been able to show their face unless it was to confess their sin and in real brokenness ask for the forgiveness they don’t deserve. But not the RASN. No conscience, Never wrong. No empathy. And thus no shame.
In another case a very self-centered woman, a user of others, continued to ask favors of the people she had so used and wronged after the damage her sin had caused resulted in destroyed relationships. And yet even after all of that, she could shamelessly contact the very people she had used and try to use them again! They were, to her, people who owed her. People whose very purpose was to serve her. How could she even show her face to them? Because these kind of people have no shame. They have done nothing wrong, you see. And everyone owes them. Try to point their toxic traits out to them, and all you are going to get is more toxin throw at you. There are indeed people who are non-redeemable.
This shamelessness can take you by surprise, so foreign is it to a normal person. Here they come, smile on face, greeting you as if their dark history of sin never happened. And if they claim to be a Christian, this shamelessness is regarded by them as holy saintliness. “See how fine a Christian I am? See how big my heart is? I don’t hold anything against anyone.” The level of shamelessness this requires is exponential.
Such a shameless approach takes you, as I said, by surprise. You don’t process it quickly enough so after the encounter you find yourself musing – “I should have said….”. But you didn’t because the whole incident was so alien to you. I do remember the one time I was able to respond “You should be ashamed!” But there have been many more incidents in which, as the first lady I mentioned, I retrieved the chili recipe and gave it to them.
For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. (Php 3:18-19)
Praying Lady
Amen, Pastor Jeff!