The Gift of Shame: Why Feeling Bad Is Good for the Soul

By Dr. Barrett Mosbacker

Have you ever considered that shame is a blessing and its absence a curse?

We all experience shame, and we all do our best to avoid its searing intensity. While shame is a consequence of sin, it also holds the potential for our salvation and sanctification.

When Shame Entered the World

The fall introduced shame into human experience. Genesis 3 records the first instance.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself (Genesis 3:7–10).

Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked. They felt ashamed and hid. Innocence and its joyful freedom were lost. This was not just physical self-consciousness; it was a profound rupture in their relationship with God, with each other, and with themselves. Before the fall, they had peace with God, peace with each other, and peace in their minds and souls. After the fall, that peace was shattered, and in its place, shame entered. Shame became the painful, humiliating spiritual, psychological, social, and emotional residue of sin; a signal that something was dreadfully wrong. Like the thorns of work, the pain of childbirth, and death, shame is the horrible result of turning away from God and his commands.

Shame Is a Moral Sentinel

Though shame originates from sin, have you ever considered that it becomes a blessing? Shame acts as a moral sentinel, alerting our conscience to disorder and exposing what should remain hidden. It signals that something has been violated, reminding us that we have transgressed a boundary, dishonored a relationship, or deviated from our true nature as image-bearers of God. Without shame, we would lack internal resistance to sin, feeling no compunction, hesitation, or desire to hide and turn away from what is dishonorable.

Shame is to the soul what pain is to the body: it hurts but is essential for health.

There is a disease called anesthesia or sensory neuropathy. This condition can result from diabetic neuropathy, leprosy, peripheral nerve damage, spinal cord injuries, or certain genetic conditions such as congenital insensitivity to pain. It is a dangerous condition. The inability to feel pain eliminates the body’s primary warning system, leading to severe and often life-threatening consequences. Injuries such as cuts, burns, and fractures go unnoticed and untreated, allowing infections to develop and potentially progress to sepsis. Repeated undetected trauma can cause permanent damage to joints and bones. Additionally, the absence of pain signals means that serious medical emergencies such as appendicitis or heart attack may advance without warning. This condition demonstrates that pain, though unpleasant, serves an essential protective function without which the body cannot defend itself from harm.

Shame serves the same purpose for our souls.

It warns that something is wrong, that we have damaged our souls, damaged our relationships with others, damaged our relationship with God, and damaged the tranquility of our own souls. Shame warns us of danger and damage. Shame prompts us to change course, to repent.

More dangerous than anesthesia or sensory neuropathy is the absence of shame in the midst of sin. The absence of shame can signal spiritual numbness, a spiritually dead soul, or a seared conscience. In the Old Testament, Jeremiah condemns Israel’s debauchery and rebellion by proclaiming that they were unashamed: “Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all ashamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown, says the Lord” (8:12). Likewise, Paul describes the unregenerate and unrepentant as lacking a conscience, lacking shame:

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared (1 Timothy 4:1-2).

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity (Ephesians 4:17-19).

Shame often advances beyond spiritual numbness to the shameless celebration and promotion of sin. Paul warns that the final stage of moral degradation is not merely the commission of evil, but the enthusiastic endorsement of it: “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). Spiritual numbness reflected in a lack of shame devolves into what we see in our streets and public events: pride in perversion, the promotion of perversion through events such as Pride Month and Pride parades. What was once hidden in shame is now paraded in the streets. What was once whispered in darkness is now proclaimed from rooftops. The absence of shame has given way to the celebration of shamelessness, transforming what God calls abomination into public spectacles of deviance. This is rebellion: the collective suppression of the truth and the recruiting of others into the same condemnation.

The absence of shame is not freedom; it is moral and spiritual numbness. The absence of shame is not freedom, it is a sign of spiritual death.

The spiritual nerves have been damaged or destroyed. To be past feeling is to be past hope. A person or a culture that has lost shame has also lost reverence and the ability to repent. If you feel nothing from your sin, you feel no need to repent and to seek the healing of the soul by the Great Physician: “And Jesus answered them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance’” (Luke 5:31–32).

To seek healing we must know we are sick. Shame reveals the sickness of sin.

From Hiding to Confession: How Shame Leads to Life

Shame becomes a blessing when it drives us not to concealment but to confession. When Adam and Eve hid, their shame was operating rightly as a signal, but their response was wrong. Had they turned toward God rather than away from Him, shame would have led them to repentance. This is the pattern throughout Scripture: godly sorrow over sin produces repentance that leads to salvation without regret. “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10).

It is essential to distinguish between guilt and shame, though they often accompany one another. Guilt focuses on what we have done, the specific act of transgression. Shame emphasizes who we are, the condition of our souls as fallen image-bearers. Both can be redemptive when they turn us toward God, but shame can become pathological when it is false shame, disconnected from actual moral failure. True shame arises from real sin and drives us to repentance; false shame arises from distorted self-perception or the false accusations of others and leads only to despair.

Never Weaponize What God Intended for Healing

Although shame can serve a useful purpose for us and for others when it leads to repentance, we are never to purposely seek to shame others. The work of conviction belongs to the Holy Spirit, not to us (John 16:8). Our calling is to speak truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), to admonish gently (Galatians 6:1), and to restore the fallen with humility, recognizing our own vulnerability to sin. To deliberately shame another person is to usurp the role of God, to wound rather than heal, and to drive the sinner further from repentance. Shame may be a natural consequence of sin, but it must never be wielded as a weapon. To wield shame as a weapon is shameful.

Discipline Without Shaming: The Christian School’s Calling

In the Christian school, this means that educators must never shame or humiliate students publicly, mock their failures, or use shame as a tool of control. Scripture warns against causing others to stumble and commands us to build up rather than tear down (Romans 14:13; 1 Thessalonians 5:11). Discipline must be corrective, not corrosive and degrading. It must aim at repentance and restoration, not rejection. The objective of discipline is not punishment for its own sake but the renewal of the student’s relationship with God and the school community.

Yet we must also guard against using a misplaced idea of “grace” to keep us from administering appropriate discipline, including the removal of a student from the school community. Christian educators must be vigilant against allowing an environment to develop where students become desensitized to sin or where wrongdoing is treated with indifference. When a student experiences shame after wrongdoing, it is evidence that the conscience is alive and functioning. The goal is not to eliminate this feeling but to direct it toward godly sorrow and repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10). A healthy sense of personal shame over sin and the consequences of that sin helps guard the school community against corrupting, destructive behavior (1 Corinthians 15:33). Appropriate, proportional discipline administered in love is essential for the students experiencing it and for the school community as a whole.

Shame, rightly understood, is a gift, a hard blessing that calls us back to righteousness, back to God, and ultimately back to ourselves. In the Christian school, a culture that honors appropriate individual shame for sin but never shaming will nurture a culture that honors virtue, protects innocence, and cultivates reverence and right behavior. Students will learn that their actions have moral weight, that character matters, and that they are accountable not only to human authority but to God Himself (Hebrews 4:13). This is the foundation of true education, not merely the transfer of knowledge but the formation of souls.