Shame

We too often try to conceal feelings of guilt. But "these things are very natural and we need not be ashamed of them. But unless Christianity is wholly false, the perception of ourselves which we have in moments of shame must be the only true one" (Problem of Pain, 50). Guilt and shame help us better understand what we've done wrong and how we can go about correcting the problem. We show that we need help in our moments of weakness- we realize we can't do it on our own. We have the need to be forgiven and move on. We need shame in order to realize we're doing something wrong.

Consciousness: how we feel about ourselves in moments of shame. Lewis goes on to say that this "must be the only true feeling". I was puzzled as to what he meant by this. I started to wonder if this means this is the only feeling we can trust. We can't trust our perception of how to be "good enough", but we can trust that gut-feeling when we know we've done something wrong. We cannot understand the fact that all men are sinners until we first acknowledge our own sin.

We have left God alone when He wants to be in community with us. I don’t think He always brings suffering as a result of bad choices, but I think it can be a warning sign. When we see our badness, it seems hard to realize how we never saw it before.
We can see that, just as we look on past civilizations as “cruel”, they now look on “our softness, worldliness, and timidity” with disdain. Primitive Christians were pious because they saw a need to rely on God- we don’t intend to. The holier a man is, the more he realizes He needs God to correct His failings.