Guilt or shame?

It is a commonplace of anthropology to distinguish between a guilt-culture and a shame-culture. In a shame-culture, social mores revolves around the related ideas of honor, duty, country, glory, loyalty, name, praise, and reputation. It is very much concerned with group-identity. Paradigm cases are the Iliad, the Indian caste-system, imperial Japan, Chivalry, and the Mafia.

Warrior-cultures are shame-cultures. This extends to certain subcultures that are either genuine warrior- cultures (e.g., the military), or quasi-militaristic (e.g., street gangs, professional sports).

Another commonplace of anthropology is to distinguish between ascribed and achieved status. Tribal cultures are shame-cultures. You have an ascribed status that is assigned to you by birth—by your place in the clan. However, it is also possible, through honor or dishonor, to acquire an achieved status that either raises or lowers your ascribed status.

A guilt-culture, by contrast, lay emphasis on individual responsibility irrespective of social stigma or social approval. Ancient Israel is an interesting example of a guilt culture built on top of a shame culture.

Left to their own devices, most cultures are shame-cultures. Certain conditions must be in place for a guilt-culture to arise.

How did ancient Israel become a guilt-culture? It was adopted and redeemed by God. This had several effects.

First of all, it had a leveling influence. Everyone, regardless of their social standing, was ultimately answerable to the one true God, and not to their clan.

Secondly, their standing with God was an ascribed rather than achieved status. They did nothing to deserve their adoption or redemption.

Thirdly, confession and contrition brought pardon for sin.

A capacity for self-criticism is impossible apart from these conditions. A shame-culture is all about self-justification. A guilt-culture is all about divine justification.

Unless you feel it is safe to lower your guard and admit your transgressions, you will be very defensive of your honor. Without redemption and remission of sin, confession is culpable rather than exculpatory.

It is often said that justification by faith is antinomian. To the contrary, it is a shame-culture that is antinomian. A member of a shame-culture cannot afford to indulge in a candid self-image. That would be ruinous to his self-esteem. It would implicate his social circle. So he must live in denial. He must bend the rules. Anything to keep up appearances.

By contrast, a member of a guilt-culture doesn’t feel the gnawing need to put on a false front. Sin is shameful, but there is nothing shameful about the confession of sin. Repentance is honorable. For it honors God. It honors the justice of God. It honors the mercy of God. Grace is the mother of morality.

To a guilt-culture, a shame-culture looks immoral. For what counts in a shame-culture are not the objectivities of right and wrong, but the conventional perception of right and wrong. In a shame-culture, there is no such thing as winning by unworthy means. To lose is to lose face, and that is the essence of dishonor. To win is to save face, and that is the essence of honor.

A Christian culture is a guilt-culture. To the extent that Western civilization is a Christian culture, it is a guilt-culture. To the extent that Western civilization is a post-Christian culture, it reverts to a shame-culture.

You can see this play out in the current conflict between Islam and the West. This is a three-way relation.

The House of Islam is a classic shame-culture. America, as the most Christian country in the Western world, is more of a guilt-culture. And the Contingent, in its studied secularity, is another shame-culture.

This is why many Americans find it hard to fathom either the European or the Muslim mindset. For Europe, the grand transgression of the United States is to openly flout world opinion.

This also explains European sympathy for Islam. For they are both shame-cultures. The very notion of an "international community," bound by international law, moves within the orbit of a shame-culture.

In a shame-culture, the only unforgivable sin is a fault-pas. What the United States did was worse than a crime—it was a breach of social etiquette. And as with other social taboos, this insusceptible to rational analysis.

To the average American, the hew-and-cry over multilateralism is simply a practical and moral irrelevancy because it isn’t moored in objective morality, and offers no practical strategies for coping with a real world crisis.

But because guilt-cultures and shame-cultures are morally incommensurable, Americans can never win this debate. No matter how reasonable and realistic we sound, it does nothing to persuade or dissuade the opposing side because the glue of a shame-culture consists in a sticky tissue of social conventions rather than the adhesive web of a rational value-theory. Like superstition, it is inherently ineffable and anti-intellectual.

Americans also find it hard to grasp how it is honorable for Muslims to lie, cheat, and steal, foster a cult of martyrdom, strap dynamite onto the backs of their sons and daughters, and massacre innocents with impunity.

But, in Islam, you are either of the House of Islam, or else an infidel. There is no a common code of honor in dealing with Muslims and infidels alike.

Americans are further perplexed by the absence of individual initiative and personal responsibility among Muslims. Why don’t they do more to better themselves? Why the apathy in the face of failure? Why not roll up your sleeves and solve the problem?

But to better yourself would be an admission of guilt. And that would be shameful. It would bring dishonor on the family name.

The only ultimate solution is for a shame-culture to evolve into a guilt-culture, and that can only happen through the preaching and role-modeling of the Gospel.