Wednesday
Wednesday
Shame and Blame
Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Genesis 3:7
Shame and blame were two of the immediate consequences of the fall of Adam and Eve. Firstly, shame. As a result of their disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit, “the eyes of both of them were opened.” It was not, of course, their bodies’ eyes but the eyes of their conscience. They now saw with unclouded clarity the folly and wickedness of their rebellion against God. Moreover, their physical nakedness, of which they had previously “felt no shame” (2:25), now filled them with embarrassment, which was symbolic of their sense of guilt before God. But, although they confessed their sin, there is little evidence that they realized its magnitude if they thought they could overcome their shame by pathetic aprons of fig leaves (3:7)!
The second device to which both Adam and Eve resorted was to shift the blame from their own shoulders. Adam blamed Eve for giving him some of the fruit to eat and then went further to blame God for giving her to be with him in the garden (v. 12). Then, when God challenged Eve as to what she had done, she blamed the serpent for having deceived her (v. 13).
This shaming and blaming is right up to date. We can become very ingenious in our superficial attempts both to lessen our sense of shame and to shift the blame onto others. “It’s my genes,” we say, “or my parental upbringing, or a congenital weakness that is not my fault.” But it is an essential feature of our Godlike humanness that we accept responsibility for the choices we make.
For further reading: John 16:8–11