Freedom is overrated. We are all slaves: of our “human nature” which is a euphemism for our fleshly desires; of habit and custom; of conscience; of law; and if only we realise — of God. Levels of service, in the highest forms also called love, give meaning to our lives; not degrees of putative or perceived freedom, at least not in the current age.
Shame on the other hand, is underrated, or perverted: it is deemed something we have to overcome by all necessary force to reach what we call freedom. The thing we feel shame about must per se be good and desirable and fully deserving of rapturous gratification, based on the fact that there is shame involved, a shame that you have to numb yourself to, in order to become, what you call, “free”. We invent all sorts of physical, medical, ethical, human-logical, arbitrary reasons supporting our own case and providing justification. Never does it, nor do we allow it to occur to us that the shame may be there for a reason, to protect us: from the actual thing we feel shame about becoming a blind evil, an evil we follow blindly. If repeatedly indulged in and accustomed to, it will indeed numb our sense of shame successfully, which we than deem progress and release from bondage.
Maybe so. There are kinds of shame we absorbed from our parents and other examples, or accepted via social norms. But we are lopsided. If we encounter a blend of lust and shame, should we not at least weigh them up against each other, at least also ask ourselves what our sense of guilt may be telling us? Maybe the only way to consistently and permanently live free from guilt is returning to a space within the confines of our conscience, the natural and given law, and — our Creator, if He gives us the faith to believe in Him. We can realise that confines are not slavery at all but the best freedom we can have, while the freedom we aimed for earlier was in fact the true slavery of rebellion and selfishness. Because these confines are nothing more and nothing less than: our design.
But no, we pity those who remain stuck in their guilt and take pride in our alleged freedom. The little grumblings of shame or guilt that remain in the back of our minds we count as remnants that have to be fully quashed. And then we may find ourselves stuck in our biggest guilt in the end, missing the mark of living according to our good design.
Shame.
