“The first thing that must be said about shame is that it is a good thing. Shame is a painful feeling that we are not the persons we ought to be: to be ashamed is to have a sense of our fractured lives, a longing to be whole. To rid ourselves of shame is to lunge into make-believe: for to be without shame is to live in the illusion that we are all what we ought to be. I think this must be said, for in our time we are hell-bent on purging ourselves of shame.

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“But shame itself can be distorted. It can give false signals that make us feel pain when we should feel none. So, after the Fall, shame came into our lives to make us feel the truth of our condition; but in our fallen confusion shame itself is often misplaced.” (>>)