"Scorning the Shame"
How Jesus willingly suffering the shame of the cross helped create Western Individualism
Read this article at our Substack here
If there was one verse in the “New Testament” that is severely under-appreciated for its cultural context, it would be Hebrews 12:1-2:
“…let us [fix] our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.”
It's very important to point out how the above verse says that Jesus endured the shame of the cross — i.e., it does not say that he endured its pain. Now of course the pain of Roman crucifixion would have been absolutely horrific — among the most physically gruesome of fates one could imagine, in fact. But even so, despite the horrific torture and unrelenting pain that such a fate entailed, there was something else about crucifixion that was, in fact, much worse.
“I don’t care what you think of me!”
I remember yelling such things when I was younger — whether at bullies or others. Now if I was completely honest, I would have to admit that, like most children, I did in fact care what others thought of me. Like most, I wanted to be liked, appreciated and to be popular. But if I felt rejected or made fun of, sometimes I could muster a certain degree of defiance to tell others that I didn’t care. Of course I could never actually be free entirely of the shame (and hurt) of rejection, but I had enough “individualism” to at least project some “hutzpah”.
But little did I know at that the time that for most in other honor/shame cultures throughout the world, most children (and adults for that matter) have extreme difficulty mustering defiance of the standards in which they are raised. As I discuss here, there are 5 major types of honor/shame cultures (to over-simplify the point). When I felt that I did wrong, I experienced shamed internally; and when I felt I did well (honor), I also (to various degrees) experienced an internal sense of pride. But historically, this common western internal experience is strange. Where did this individualism come from? For all ancient societies (and most non-western countries even to this day), how could this historically collective sense of shame (experienced before others) have instead been driven inward?
According to the Book of Hebrews, Jesus of Nazareth had “scorned the shame” of the Roman cross. And amazingly, it seems that the majority of “Christendom” has lost the sense of the historical significance of this — how hard it would have been for just a single man to “buck the trend” of this heavy honor and shame context, especially in the face of the prospect of suffering the worst kind of shame possible (before men — and even more so — before the Ancient of Days himself, Yahweh). As I explain in my book, the absolute horror of undergoing “trial by fire” of ridicule and shame was actually much harder than just simply trying to withstand the worst of torture deaths (pure physical/physiological pain). Despite how appreciative I am at Mel Gibson’s more honest portrayal of the actual brutality of Roman crucifixion in his The Passion of the Christ, I can see more clearly now that the true shame of crucifixion has never been properly/truthfully reproduced in film (in a way that westerners can appreciate). The soul-crushing shame of crucifixion has been truly lost to us.
In a sense, Jesus of Nazareth was the ultimate “individualist”. Whether anyone believes in this “Christ” or not, from the perspective of the origins of our western internalization of (previously collective) “honor and shame”, literally everyone in the west has been profoundly influenced by the Nazarene. In a sense — from the perspective of the different types of honor and shame ethos — we are all Christian.
Jesus was the original trail blazer of “scorning the shame” (defiance of pervasive community judgment). What was virtually impossible for everyone else (the ancient world was addicted to gaining public glory before others, and letting go of that pursuit was virtually impossible), Jesus had an uncanny ability to suffer through the scorn (horrific shame) of the world, blazing his own unique trail. And then, as the verse from Hebrews says, he was “raised to the right hand of the throne of God”.
Modern people argue about the physicality alone of resurrection, but for the early Christians, what was even more impressive was that he was raised to the “right hand of the Father” (the place of honor) AFTER having been humiliated in the worst way. Thus, in their conviction that their Lord had defied the implications of the most shameful of deaths, they believed that they themselves also could be raised to glory and honor (an honor and pride they likely had never known before).
And so here I was, as a kid — 2 millennia after this original Nazarene and his historic “scorning the shame” — I also mustered some strength to at least try to defy the judgments of others. You see, regardless of my own claimed convictions — like everyone else in the west — I have inherited this historic example of the willing suffering of the Nazarene. Jesus himself had famously said:
"No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down [to the shame of the cross] of my own accord." (John 10:18)
2,000 years later, we have become completely detached from the extreme courage, individualism, and "hutzpah" that it took for Jesus, in a severely collectivist culture, to do this.
So why do I myself (sometimes) tend to individualism? No doubt a big reason is because I come from a long Christian heritage which ultimately had started with the Nazarene on the Roman cross of shame, suffering in defiance of the ridicule of the world and (apparently) of the Divine also, anticipating that — despite it all — he himself would eventually be seen “coming on the clouds of heaven”.