*Julie Bishop heckled by students at University of Sydney*
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has been heckled by students unhappy about cuts to higher education while on a visit to the University of Sydney.
......
"[The students were] yelling 'shame' and talking about how terrible these cuts on education are going to be for ordinary students.
"Julie Bishop kind of just like looked bemused, she didn't look shameful at all, she looked proud of what she was doing."
As we (and others around the world) continue to delve into the social and biblical issues of shame and how it relates to the task of 'making disciples' of 'all nations', we continue to be interested to see the rise of 'shame language' in the Western world. As the Western world insists on 'loosening' itself from what it seems to think is a Judeo-Christian heritage bondage, and in the process loses its foundation of God as 'absolute truth' and therefore God as the determiner of what is right and what is wrong, something interesting happens.
Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop has been heckled by students unhappy about cuts to higher education while on a visit to the University of Sydney.
......
"[The students were] yelling 'shame' and talking about how terrible these cuts on education are going to be for ordinary students.
"Julie Bishop kind of just like looked bemused, she didn't look shameful at all, she looked proud of what she was doing."
As we (and others around the world) continue to delve into the social and biblical issues of shame and how it relates to the task of 'making disciples' of 'all nations', we continue to be interested to see the rise of 'shame language' in the Western world. As the Western world insists on 'loosening' itself from what it seems to think is a Judeo-Christian heritage bondage, and in the process loses its foundation of God as 'absolute truth' and therefore God as the determiner of what is right and what is wrong, something interesting happens.
Every human being (as a result of the Fall) has the capacity to know that the concept of 'right' is the opposite to the concept of 'wrong' - ie that there are such things as 'right' and 'wrong' in our world. However, those who refuse to believe God has the absolute authority to define 'right' and 'wrong' also insist that no-one is allowed to 'impose' their idea of right and wrong on anyone else as absolute truth (ie it is believed that my 'truth' is as valid as your 'truth').
What results is that those who share one particular view of what is right or wrong find themselves drawn together. Subsequently each 'group' establishes what they believe to be 'right' and 'wrong'. But because there has developed a mind-set that no-one can 'impose' their 'law' of what is right and wrong on someone else, a new 'law' emerges. It is still a 'law' of right and wrong, even though it is not purported to be such, but it takes on a new form and a new vocabulary.
It takes on a new form, because the only concept of 'wrong' that remains common across all people is the foundational capacity to feel shame, a capacity we were created to be able to feel if we sinned against God. People fast realise that if no-one is willing to be pressured to do something just because someone else says they should, according to that person's 'law', the only other way they can put pressure is to make people feel shame. So by default, 'shame' becomes the new universal 'wrong'.
This then becomes a twisting of the place shame should have in God's world. God made us to have the ability to feel 'shame' (disconnected, separated, rejected, put low, disgraced etc etc) before Him for when we don't live up to His standard of living to honour Him, as articulated for us in the LAW He has given us.
But in Satan's schemes and our sinful state, shame becomes mis-placed (as John Piper said in his book "Future Grace"), and we become more concerned about shame before people than before God. And instead of us feeling shame because we did wrong (ie break God's law), the shame itself becomes the wrong. It becomes a way of saying to someone 'you are wrong in my eyes', 'you don't deserve respect anymore because we believe you have treated us in a way less than what we believe we are worthy of', 'you are disgraceful', 'we don't like you', 'you are not acceptable to us anymore'. Yes it might still be linked to an act that the person considers to be wrong, but there is a new dimension, because the social dynamic is now preventing a sole emphasis on right or wrong according to God's absolute standard. Even though the person still may feel in themselves that something isn't 'right', they can no longer appeal on the basis of absolute 'right' and 'wrong' actions/behaviour (because they have destroyed any social concept of that, so can no longer draw on it). However, they still want the other person to 'feel guilty' for doing something 'wrong', so what results is a society that says that if you do something that the 'majority' opinion at the time deems shameful, you are 'guilty' of doing something shameful.
This is exactly what I believe we see playing out in the news clip above. The crowd of university students, had a reason to say why they weren't happy, but without realising it, they have become victims of what they believe are their freedoms to decide what is right or wrong, for themselves. They have no (or little) knowledge of what God says is right or wrong and they don't want to acknowledge God's standard of absolute truth, so they do all they know to do, and that is to deem someone as 'guilty' for doing something 'shameful'.
We have seen more and more open use of the form and vocabulary of 'shaming' in Western contexts. Have you? We would love to hear your experiences.
No comments:
Post a Comment