Inequality, Shame, and Violence

On Friday afternoon I led a Bible study with a circle of men in the Fresno County Jail. It included entering the biblical story ourselves and experiencing Jesus countering voices of shame we hear. I passionately invited them to imagine Jesus’ loving gaze when they hear shaming voices. One way or another, I address shame about once a month in the jail Bible study. Why so often?

Inequality feeds violence. James Gilligan, a psychiatrist who served as director of mental health for the Massachusetts prison system, explains that dividing people into categories of superior and inferior feeds violence. He states that as societal inequality increases so does violence. In a previous blog and in a section of this website, I have summarized research that shows that many problems, not just violence, increase with inequality—and everyone is affected, not just the poor. Why? Why does greater inequality feed these problems? Gilligan’s writing on violence powerfully displays the answer. At the root of violence, he found shame; and increased inequality is a catalyst for shame. My friend, and sociologist, Bob Brenneman found the same thing in his research on why people join gangs in Central America. There are a number of contributing factors, but the one that stood out was shame. Therefore, as we work for shalom, two key things to pursue are lessening inequality and healing shame.

The men in the Bible study come from a high security pod. Most are gang members. Violence is a part of their past, if not their present. What would Gilligan’s and Brenneman’s books tell me? If I dig beneath the tattoos and the criminal records what will I find? Shame. Therefore, I frequently proclaim liberation from shame through Jesus. That Friday, after doing the shame-healing exercise we had a time of prayer. I invited them to speak the names of people they love who have needs that the inmates themselves cannot address or solve. By naming them we would be asking God to bless them and do what we are unable to do.

We spoke names, one at time. The names kept coming, often tumbling one over the other—rarely a gap of more than a few seconds. I felt loving concern echo off the cement block walls. After five minutes I spoke a brief closing prayer—not because of awkward silence, but because our time was up. We shook hands, embraced. They thanked me for coming. Robert said, “thank you I needed this today. I look forward to Friday’s. This is reorienting.”

After the correctional officer took the men back to their pod he came to unlock the closet where I turn in my report on how many attended. He asked me, “How were they?” From time to time a C.O. asks me a “how did it go?” question that feels supportive, interested. This felt different. I replied, “Fine, it was a good study. They engaged well. They treat me well. Thanked me for coming.” All he said in reply was, “they are the worst of the worst.” I assume he was making a general comment about them coming from one of two high-security pods in the building. I guess on paper, if you look at the number of past infractions, and assume that tells you who they are—then yes, “worst of the worst.” But the words shocked me. I did an internal double-take. “What did he just say?” Is he talking about the same men who just lovingly prayed for others? Who thanked me for coming? Yes, they acknowledge they have done bad things in the past, but they long for a chance to live differently and not be defined by their past. As I rode home on my bike I pondered those words, “worst of the worst.” How does that categorization seep out through the words, the looks, the actions of that C. O. and shower the men with shame? What does it do to the men to wear that label? If Gilligan is correct, that correctional officer and the shaming system he is a part of will increase, not decrease the level of violence in society. I do Bible studies to counter shaming voices frequently . . . perhaps not frequently enough.

Thankfully, however, not everyone in the system thinks and acts as that officer does. Earlier this year I was walking with a different correctional officer to same closet. I said, “How have you been? I have not seen you for a while.” He replied, “I was on yard duty.” I asked, “Is that good or is it better to be on one of the floors?” He said, “You could say it was punishment.” I did not press for more information, but he went on. “I refused to do something I was told to do, because it was not right. These men are people too.” He named the number of a legal code, and said, “I refuse to go against that code.” I then asked him if he had heard of Bryan Stevenson and told him about the line from his book Just Mercy, “Each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done.”  He said, “yes, I have done bad things. These men have done bad things too, and yes, the quote is right.” Then he said, “I call them men, I do not call them inmates.”

He has worked in the jail and before that prisons, for years. This week I heard him say to another. C.O. that he had not had a break all day. I asked him why. He said, “A couple of the other guys working are new. I can’t leave them alone. The men would eat them alive.” (I assume he meant take advantage of them.) He is not naïve, but unlike the other C. O. he works with intentionality to lessen shame. He refuses to divide them into an inferior category.

Which of these two men represents more accurately the system as a whole, society as a whole?  Sarah Koenig, of the Serial podcast, has spent months interacting with people in Cleveland’s criminal justice system. How would she answer the question? I listened to the first episode of season three while working in our garden. Her words near the end of the episode led me to put down my spade and, through the lens Gilligan’s work, sadly ponder the implications of what she said.

A felony judge I was talking to for a different story in this series told me he was thinking of giving a defendant serious time. “What's serious time?” I asked. He explained, well, to someone with common sense, even one day in jail is devastating, life changing. To someone who's got no common sense, maybe they do three years, five years. Means nothing. They go right back out and commit more crimes.

I knew what he meant. Punishment is relative. What it takes to teach you a lesson depends on what you're used to. But there was a more disturbing implication as well. One that prowls this courthouse and throughout our criminal justice system. That we are not like them. The ones we arrest and punish, the ones with the stink, they're slightly different species, with senses dulled and toughened. They don't feel pain or sorrow or joy or freedom or the loss of freedom the same way you or I would.

“We are not like them.” What a potent shaming mechanism prowling through our justice system and society.

To be an agent of peace is not just to defuse and de-escalate a situation of active violence. It is also to work at the root causes of violence. James Gilligan would tell us that includes lessening the inequality gap, alleviating shame and building dignity. Clearly Jesus knew this before Gilligan. Whereas the first Correctional Officer’s words sound like things we hear from the Pharisees, Jesus’ words and actions match and go beyond those of the second officer.

What are ways we as individuals contribute to making distinctions between superior and inferior? What are ways our church communities do that? How do we participate in and go along with ways society builds the inequality gap?

What actions can we take toward dismantling or transforming systems that contribute to the inequality gap? How can we follow Jesus in alleviating shame and restoring dignity? What are ways we can lead the shamed to experience Jesus’s loving embrace?

Needed in the Court of Reputation—Alternative Voices

What compels us to do the right thing? In the more individualistic West, the answer would be: one’s conscience. In most of the rest of the world, it is the collective, the group. The evaluative gaze of others compels right behavior. In the first I do the right thing to avoid internal feelings of guilt; in the latter I do the right thing to gain honor and to avoid the shaming of my group, my family, and myself. In our recent book, Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures, Jayson Georges and I provide insights and tools for evangelism and discipleship in contexts that have a collectivist orientation. We give numerous examples of mistakes, including our own, that flow from a focus on the individual conscience in an honor-shame context. Yet, even in the West, to only focus on the individual conscience is problematic; it is an error to ignore the honor-shame dynamic even in individualistic contexts. Here too, communities and peer groups become courts of reputation. Although forming an individual to think correctly about Christian ethics is of fundamental importance in the individualistic West, that alone will not lead people to do the right thing.

I recently heard a person talk of turning his conscience off so it would not bark at him saying, “You’re doing a bad and evil thing.” Why was the ethical direction from his conscience not enough? What pushed him to turn it off? What implications does this have for the church? As you read this story of a Vietnam war draftee, note the presence of both the individual conscience and the honor-shame dynamic. 

Tim O’Brien, is one of the people interviewed in Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s documentary series, The Vietnam War (episode 7). O’Brien grew up in Worthington, Minnesota, a farming community of about 8,000. He described it as a town where people knew each other, knew what was going on in others’ lives, who was doing well, and whose kids had taken a wrong turn. He was drafted in June 1968. His parents had both been in the Navy in WWII. He explains, “They had believed in service to one’s country, and all those values. On one hand I did think the war was less than righteous. On the other hand, I love my country. And I valued my life in a small town and my friends and family.  And so the summer of ’68 I wrestled with what to do. That was for me, at least, more tortuous, devastating and emotionally painful than anything that happened in Vietnam. . . Do you go off and kill people if you are not pretty sure it is right? And if your nation isn’t pretty sure it is right? If there is not consensus? Do you do that?”

“I was at Fort Lewis Washington, and Canada was what, a 90-minute bus ride away. I wrote my Mom and Dad and asked for some money and my passport. They sent them to me—with no questions. ‘What do you want this for?’ I kept this stuff, along with some civilian clothes, stashed in my footlocker thinking, ‘maybe I will do it.’ It was this ‘maybe’ thing going on all throughout training. As Vietnam got closer and closer and closer. . . In the end I just capitulated. . . It wasn’t a decision. It was forfeiture of a decision. Letting my body go. Turning a switch in my conscience, just turning it off so it wouldn’t be barking at me: ‘You’re doing a bad and evil and stupid and unpatriotic thing.’”

“What prevented me doing it [fleeing to Canada]? I think it was pretty simple and stupid. It was a fear of embarrassment, of ridicule and humiliation. What my girlfriend would have thought of me, and the people in the Gobbler Café in downtown Worthington. The Kiwanis boys and the country club boys in that small town I grew up in, the things they would say about me, ‘what a coward,’ and ‘what a sissy for going to Canada.’  I would imagine my Mom and Dad overhearing something like that. I could not summon the courage to say ‘no’ to those nameless, faceless people who, in essence, this was the United States of America. I couldn’t say ‘no’ to them. I have had to live with it now for 40 years. That is a long time to live with a failure of conscience and a failure of nerve. The nightmare of Vietnam for me is not the bombs and the bullets.” He pauses and with a quivering voice says, “It is that failure of nerve I so regret.”

O’Brien thought then, and thinks now, that the better option, the “right” thing to do was go to Canada rather stay in the army and go to Vietnam. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with what he considered right, let’s reflect on the dynamics of the decision itself. The honor-shame dynamic of a small tight knit town overpowered his individual thinking on the matter. He opted to do what the town would consider the honorable thing to do in order to avoid the shame of people talking about him in a disparaging way.

What did he need? What might have led to a different outcome? He needed a counter community with a different honor code. He needed voices that would honor his decision to desert and neutralize the shaming voices of others in the court of reputation.

Let’s think of this in an analogous way. Imagine in a ministry setting you work hard to shape someone’s beliefs about a particular ethical stance that differs from mainstream society. They are convinced. Then, however, like O’Brien they are alone with only their individual conviction, they are surrounded by people and media pressing them to do the opposite. Individual conviction may be enough, but it very well may not be.

As we call people to radically re-orient their lives to the way of Jesus, we must work with intentionality at honoring them when they take steps that will bring scorn from the mainstream. This can be dramatic, as in this incident, reported by Bob Brenneman, that Jayson and I included in our book. Brenneman tells of a Central American gang member, Roberto, who converted and left the gang. For Roberto the church community became an important “alternate court of reputation,” as he sought to follow the way of Jesus rather than the way of the gang, and the broader society. There were many challenges, perhaps the most difficult was when his younger brother was murdered. Brenneman states,

Such events place a recovering gang member in a difficult position. According to the moral logic of the street, a “good brother” defends the honor of his fallen kin by avenging his death with “payback.” And indeed the offers for assistance in “making things right” came swiftly from Roberto’s former associates. But just as quickly came the support and reminders of his new “brothers in Christ.” “Violence only begets more violence,” his pastor told him. “That’s no way to respond.” Roberto decided not to seek out vengeance and to relinquish his “right” to kill his brother’s killers (Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures, 225).

Although not as dramatic, my friend with a position in a large big-city law-firm probably felt as much pressure to do the obvious thing and continue putting in the hours so he could become a partner and earn an immense amount of money. Yet, with encouraging voices from fellow Christians he did what his peers and others in society considered ludicrous. He quit his position and went to work for a small firm in a small city in order to have more time for his family, for ministry, and for other activities.

The value and importance of a church community honoring an individual’s Jesus-like actions is not just in relation to big and dramatic decisions, but in daily actions and decisions. I think of my friend Mario in Honduras. I once asked him how it was that he lived in ways so differently than other men and resisted the dynamics of machoness.

He first affirmed how strong the honor code of machismo is. For instance, one aspect of machismo is drinking. A commonly heard saying is “One who does not drink is not a complete man.” In his teen years his friends started pressuring him to “be a man” and drink. He already felt shame for being poor, so to avoid more shame he began to drink. Some years later [after another night of drunken brawling]. . . he started attending church and five meetings later accepted Jesus as his Savior. . . As Mario reflected on how he was able to step away from the ways of machismo. He mentioned three things. A man from the church, Hector, spent a lot of time with him offering support and affirmation. Secondly, the Christian men at work and the people at the church provided a counter chorus. Just as friends had shamed him into drinking, old friends around him began ridiculing him and shaming him for becoming a Christian; they pressured him to continue in his macho ways. Christians countered these shaming comments of Mario’s friends by praising him for his efforts to stop drinking. Lastly, as his new identity as a loved child of God grew he felt increasing security to step away from other aspects of the machismo honor code and walk in the ways of the honor code of the New Testament. His church continued to affirm and honor him as he took these steps. The shaming comments of other men did not stop, but they do not have the power over him that they used to (Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures, 223-24).

Although those of us in individualistic settings have tended to focus on the Bible providing ethical instruction, if one puts on honor-shame glasses, the dynamic described in these examples comes to light. For instance, looking at I Peter through these lenses we see that the Christians Peter wrote to were being shamed and scorned by their neighbors—pressured to abandon the way of Jesus and return to the mainstream. Repeatedly in the letter Peter affirms the alternative honor code of Jesus, and affirms them for following it. And he seeks to undercut the shaming voices of their neighbors. (See chapter 11 of our book to see the list of ways Jayson and I see Peter doing this.)

How might your community more actively support and honor those who seek to go against the current and live according to the ways of the Kingdom of God? I encourage you to pray and ask God’s Spirit to give you a heightened awareness for opportunities to honor others, an imagination for how to, and the initiative to do so. Let us become active members of an alternative court of reputation.

Helping the Poor: Getting Beyond the Superficial

Generally there is some truth in obvious answers. But often digging deeper leads to greater insight. For instance, in recent years countries in Central America have led the world in murders per capita. Gangs are one of several contributing factors. With greater urgency people have asked: why do youth join gangs? Perhaps the most common answer is poverty and a lack of jobs. My friend, sociologist Bob Brenneman, agreed that poverty is a crucial factor. But he made the important observation: not all, not even a majority, of impoverished youth in the same neighborhood join gangs. So, he dug deeper asking: why these youth? What is different?

In his book, Homies and Hermanos: God and Gangs in Central America, Bob describes joining a gang as a desperate grasp for respect. Repeatedly, the sixty-three ex-gang members he interviewed carried profound shame from painful years in especially dysfunctional families and other experiences of social exclusion. The honor and a sense of belonging offered by gangs had a special power of attraction for these youth. Bob’s digging led to this and other insights. It is a great book filled with captivating narratives and excellent analysis. I commend it to you. I also commend following his example—digging deeper rather than simply accepting conventional wisdom. For instance…..

Many use levels of wealth as the obvious and simplest indicator of quality of life—a rich county is a better place to live than a poorer one. In response to the question:  How do we help the poor suffer less? The obvious answer is increase a poor individual’s income, or a poor country’s GDP. We might think of this as poverty line thinking—what matters is helping boost people above that line into a better life. I certainly had that mindset when I lived in Honduras. Granted, a certain amount of resources are necessary for thriving, but if we dig deeper this answer is not necessarily the best one.

Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson go deeper than the obvious answer in their book The Spirit Level. They combined various measures of well-being, such as life expectancy, literacy, infant mortality, incarceration, mental illness, addiction, social mobility, obesity and homicides, and found that, amongst developed nations the ones with the highest level of well-being were not the richest ones, but those with the lowest levels of economic inequality between the richest 20% and the poorest 20%. And those with the worst levels of well-being were not the poorest but those with the highest levels of economic inequality.

Levels of economic inequality

Note in this graph that Portugal and the USA stand right next to each other in level of inequality, yet if the graph displayed per capita income they would be at opposite ends of the graph and it would be Norway, not Portugal right next to the USA. If we went with conventional wisdom equating wealth with quality of life the USA and Norway would be best, and Portugal the worst. But in fact Portugal and the USA are next to each other, the worst, in the following graph of well-being.

Inequality is the key determining factor. Another way of making this point is to look at a graph that charts income rather than inequality. Unlike the above graph, there is no correlation between the two factors—the dots are scattered all over the graph.

What we observe in these summary charts matches chart after chart on the individual factors, and charts that compare states as well.

Thus, after digging deeper we observe that, in a general sense, the most important thing to do to help the poor thrive is not increase income levels but to lower the level of inequality. (Even as I write that sentence I resist. Something in me shouts out: “but raising incomes levels matter!” and protests: “This study is only of ‘developed’ nations.” True. There are countries, contexts, and individuals where increased resources are crucial. But, even in those situations inequality matters—poor people in a poor country with low inequality are better off than poor people in a poor country with high inequality.) Returning to the earlier poverty line image, we might conclude, certainly it is a good thing to help people get above that line, but we are missing something crucial if we only look at that one line and not also the line at the top that identifies the very wealthy. We must pay attention to the two lines and the gap between those lines—and seek to lessen that gap between the rich and the poor.

When one digs deeper you find not only better answers to the question asked, but discover important things you were not even asking. Here is a big one. As Wilkinson explains in a Ted Talk it is not just that the poor are worse off in countries with high inequality—those in the middle and the rich are affected to. All across the income spectrum people are affected negatively by high inequality. So, lowering inequality helps not just the poor; it helps all.

This calls for action. We can increase shalom for all by lessening the inequality gap. One response is at the macro level. Wilkinson calls for this sort of action in his Ted Talk—careful to give suggestions that those on the right could embrace and others that those on the left could embrace. Certainly these are worthy of our attention and effort. Again, however, digging deeper has value. What is behind this? Why does greater inequality lessen shalom? The Ted Talk does not answer address that question, but in their book Wilkinson and Picket do. After comparing data from various countries, their conclusion is: “Greater inequality seems to heighten people’s social evaluation anxieties by increasing the importance of social status” (43). Status competition increases, and with it shame for not measuring up. They make clear that this is not just an emotional or psychological issue. This shame and the stress related to status competition negatively impacts health and interpersonal relationships.

Shame. Our digging has brought us to the same place that Bob Brenneman’s digging brought him. What does this mean for us as Christian communities as we seek to help the poor (and everyone else) by addressing the problem of the large inequality gap?

We can and should take concrete actions to increase income levels of the poor around us. But we simply cannot push people up high enough and fast enough. Even as we push people above the poverty line they still will face a larger gap of inequality than they would have thirty of forty years ago because in the United States in recent decades the gap has grown larger and larger; it is much larger than most think it is.

Clearly the United States, working from both the right and left, needs to address structural issues and lessen this gap. Christians should be involved. It will be a long challenging task. Yet, right now, today, Christians can take action that will have immediate impact—provide liberation from shame and buffer people from social evaluative anxieties.

- Let us proclaim liberation from the burden of shame through Jesus, using texts like Luke 7 and Luke 15. (Luke 7 magazine article, Luke 15 Bible study video.)

- Shame is a relational wound and the healing must be relational. Let our churches be places of healing and protection from shame. Through this recent election season and now in the first weeks of the Trump presidency walls of division and status anxiety have increased. The need and opportunity for the church to center on Jesus, invite all to the table, and live out Galatians 3:28 are great.

- Of course, if the church is truly to be a haven and place of healing, then, in the words of former student Kathy Streeter, let us “refuse to let inequality enter the doors of the church.” We can be, as Jim Tune, another former student, writes, “an alternate community where things aren't measured by ‘performance’ or economic and social status…. In Scripture James warns against favoritism. I think the church may need to become more vigilant in guarding against this.”

- Let us, in the words of Father Greg Boyle, “stand at the margins so that standing there the margins will be erased.” Father Boyle talks as powerfully, and engagingly, as anyone I have heard on the power of kinship to dismantle shame and disgrace. Listen to this Ted Talk or this On Being interview and allow him to feed your imagination of how we can undo damage caused by the inequality gap through kinship.

- Refusing to let inequality enter the church means resisting consumerism and other forces that do so much to feed status anxiety.

Taking these actions to lessen the shaming power of the inequality gap will have multiplying impact. If the deep digging of Brenneman, Pickett, and Wilkinson is correct, these actions will have ripple effects touching many aspects of people’s lives—contributing to broader and deeper shalom.

To focus on shame does not mean to ignore economics. Many Christians who own businesses will sit in church this Sunday. They have great opportunities to address the inequality gap both through how they structure pay and how they treat workers. I look forward to writing more about this in the near future.

Let us not settle for superficial answers, and as followers of Jesus may we be in the forefront of addressing issues discovered through digging deeper.