The Shameless Sham

This morning has been an interesting one. After listening to a rooter crow his heart out in the post office as he waited to be picked up by his new owner, I went shopping at one of my favorite stores - Gordman's.  While there, I witnessed a 20 something woman get caught shoplifting.

She purchased something and started walking out of the store. The man standing in front of me put his item to purchase on a shelf and quickly started to follow her. As soon as she walked out the door, the man BOLTED - I mean he was fast! Then he came back in the store with her and I could hear him telling her they'd call the cops if she didn't do something (not sure what he said as he was trying to be discreet).

I'll admit when he first got out of line to see what the girl was doing and then bolted after her, I thought - 'Wow. He must really want to go out with her and get her number.' Then it all became clear as the workers kept looking over their shoulders at the situation, and I heard comments like,
"She deserves it."
"She's done it before."
"We got a call from our other store to watch for her."

I also overheard another 20 something woman with multi-colored streaks in her hair at the register next to me say, "That's embarrassing." Like she felt sorry for the shoplifter.

A part of me felt sorry for the woman, too, because I was thinking - it couldn't have been much if it fit in her purse, and apparently she couldn't even afford pants! The dress shirt she'd pulled down, hardly covered her. Now, in her defense, I have the shirt she had on and wondered if I too could pull it down over leggings and qualify it as a dress. But I've never done that because I don't think it's a good look for a mid-thirties me.:) But, I digress....

The other customer's comment snagged my brain.

Whenever something snags my brain I try to find out why. This time I came up with this:
The shoplifter SHOULD be embarrassed. She should feel shame. What she did was wrong.

I think as our world gets more PC, and trained to be more sensitive, we have lost the desire to see anyone hurt. Or be embarrassed. And in the light of those good things - being more socially aware, and caring - we have let shame slip away.

I think we need shame. Just like we need pain. No one likes to hurt, but pain is actually a good thing! As Philip Yancy describes in his books, The Gift Nobody Wants, and The Gift of Pain, pain actually is what alerts us that something is wrong. Diabetics don't get their feet amputated because they quit working. Diabetics get their feet amputated because they got a sore they didn't FEEL, and then got a raging infection that caused the need for the amputation. Pain is good. I think shame is good, too.

Shame is our conscience's pain. It's the hurt we feel inside when we've done something morally or ethically wrong. It makes us feel convicted. It shows us that there is a better way. That whatever we did is not good for us, or someone else, and we need to correct the action or the hurting will continue.

Shame points us to God. The only way to really get rid of shame is to be forgiven. Most of us know that when we've hurt a friend or a loved one and we've asked for forgiveness and it is extended by the one we hurt - it makes us feel better. Imagine, what forgiveness feels like from the One that made you. The One who set that trigger inside us to know and feel shame. He did that because He knows a better way to live. He wants us to steer clear of those things that hurt us not only physically, but spiritually, too. And He can take that shame. He offers forgiveness.

I hope that we as a society don't fall into the sham of shamelessness. I hope that we can instead come along side those that have made mistakes, or done something shameful, and love them and help them as they experience consequences, and show them a better way. Because, really, we're all shameful. We all need help.