Bulletin Articles: Full Article for Record Number 1073
Shame And Blush
by Larry Ray Hafley
"Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush" (Jer. 6:15). Whenever God’s people lost their sense of shame and the ability to blush, they were condemned to fall. The same is true today.
Shame has been replaced by, "When you’ve got it, flaunt it." One who blushes is mocked and scorned as a Puritan prude. The shameless soul is led by an impenetrable, impregnable heart. His "conscience is seared with a hot iron" (1 Tim. 4:2). "Even their mind and conscience is defiled...,being abominable, and disobedient" (Titus 1:15, 16).
Shame is a gate, a restraint, and to blush is to protest impropriety and profanity, whether it be of mind, body, or speech. Those who cannot blush know no law. The shameless are uninhibited. Unable to blush, they have no fence to contain lusts and passions. "A blush is a sign that nature hangs out to show where chastity and honor dwell."
An individual who has no shame has no sense of personal pride, no sense of respect for the rights, duties, property, and privacy of others, and no sense of regard and concern for wisdom and experience. Thus, an individual who has no shame has no sense.
