September 17, 202
I don’t want to make people feel bad about themselves and most other people don’t either. That common human sentiment has a place, it’s good that people feel compassionate. However, compassion can be misconstrued such that it becomes cruelty and even active harm. Every parent wants their kids to feel good and happy and confident. But every parent also knows that affirming every whim of a child will lead to serious harm. No matter how badly your 5 year old cries and begs to drive the car they just can’t be allowed. Even though they may be deeply upset, may get mad at you may yell and cry and call you names. Loving them means placing restrictions on their behaviour and teaching them to feel bad when they violate those restrictions. It is good that they feel remorse, shame and guilt for bad behaviour.
It’s important to understand that God has given humans the capacity to feel for a reason and that includes negative feelings. Yes, some people can be more prone to negative feelings than others, some can even have misplaced negative feelings. That does not indicate that those feelings were a mistake on God’s part. It does indicate that our consciences need to be informed by truth.
Many societal institutions, especially in the humanities, psychology and social work have adopted the position that no one should experience any kind of guilt or negative feeling. This is often discussed in terms of stigma. Stigma describes the societal negative feelings of guilt and shame associated with certain activities. While it’s true that this sometimes causes people to avoid getting help in an effort to hide the things they are ashamed of. It’s also true that this keeps many people from engaging in them at all. The most common examples today are drug abuse and sexuality. The sexual revolution promoted the idea that any sexual appetite is normal and should be satisfied. That, people shouldn’t feel guilty about sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and a woman. However this kind of behaviour hurts individuals and hurts society. People don’t like this they want to do whatever feels good and never have to deal with consequences. This is not how the world works and the stigma attached to sexual misbehaviour while not stopping the problem certainly limited it. People should feel bad about bad harmful behaviour it’s a God given protection.
Now a similar thing has happened with drug use and even crime. There is a vested effort to remove the stigma from behaviour that needs to be stigmatized. Drug use is extremely harmful, and people should feel ashamed of doing it. Our policies aimed at removing stigma and creating “safe” ways to use drugs are a lie. Imagine if Russian Roulette became popular but we were worried because sometimes people were using guns with malfunctioning safeties, so we started giving them free guns which were manufactured to better standards.
God warns that those who don’t know how to blush, don’t know how to feel ashamed of bad behaviour, will fall Jer 6:15. We are witnessing that fall in all our major cities. What’s worse we are complicit because we are facilitating the means of people’s destruction. It is notable that since the new stigma free initiatives have taken hold death from overdose, crime, and homelessness have not improved but in fact have become much worse. Almost like what anyone with a shred of common sense would have predicted.
If we are wise (which we aren’t) we will relearn how to blush, and perhaps limit some of the damage of sin simply by being honest enough to call it sin. That is the compassionate thing to do.
~ Kevin Cleary