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Sirach 29:14 "A good man will be surety for his neighbor, but a man who has lost his sense of shame will fail him."

 

Sirach could have juxtaposed a good man with a bad or wicked one, but he instead contrasts the good man with one who has lost his sense of shame, which is a lot more subtle and thought-provoking. I don't think any of us thinks of ourselves as a bad person. Most often we think we are good, with some weaknesses or sinful tendencies that we have to work on. Even people doing very bad things will usually try to find a way to justify what they are doing so they can still think of themselves as good people. That's all problem enough, but when we start thinking of our behavior as not even wrong, and lose our sense of shame, things get much worse.

 

We should feel shame when we have behaved badly, the feeling is meant to make us want to repent of and confess our sin. Before we are ready to do that, shame often causes us to try to hide or explain away our behavior. In a weird way, even that's somewhat of a good thing, at least we are recognizing the wrongness of it. But when we come to think that our bad behavior is not bad, and therefore we lose our shame, then we are endangering not only our own souls (because we will not atone for what we don't think is wrong), but also society at large (because we will not accept societal consequences for our misbehavior, and instead will set about trying to change society to accept it). We see examples of this lack of shame and concurrent damage to society all over the place these days. "Shout your abortion" comes to mind, but there are many others. Behavior once rightly known to merit repentance is now not only shame-free, but demands vocal approval.

 

Notice that Sirach is not suggesting we should try to make other people feel shame, he is talking about an individual who has lost his personal feeling of shame. We, of course, should be as loving and merciful to others when they have sinned as God is to us. But we should not be waging a war against shame in ourselves or in others. Shame is is an appropriate internal response to sin. Our communal loss of the sense of shame has caused tremendous confusion and harm to ourselves and the next generation. We have failed them, because we are men and women who have largely lost our sense of shame.