Shame, Punishment and Hell
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Transcript: You have never deserved punishment. Believing you deserve punishment blocks your ability to connect
One of the things that I think keeps people so locked into the idea of hell is the belief in the power of punishment and the usefulness of punishment. Jesus did not believe in the usefulness of punishment, and neither do I. By punishment, I mean punitive action towards another, which is different from making somebody pay for something they broke, restoring something, or making restitution. It’s also different from locking up someone who is dangerous and hasn’t been able to move through whatever is making them dangerous—not to punish them, but to protect other people.
What I’m talking about is simply punitive acts, like spanking a child. There’s no value in it. It doesn’t replace whatever was damaged, and it doesn’t actually address the behavior. It simply causes a person to experience pain as a way of modifying and controlling their behavior.
This punitive mindset was central to the religion of Jesus’ day. The God people believed in acted heinously—raining fire down on cities, drowning the entire planet except for a few people and animals, even commanding his people to hamstring horses. This was an incredibly punitive God. Jesus’s message about punishment was therefore radical: there is no value in punishment.
The criminal justice system in this country, based on punitive methods, is not moving people forward in their lives. In fact, it is patently cruel. Around 95% of people in prison have intense trauma histories. They need love, not cages. That’s not to say some people don’t need to be restricted for safety, but the belief that if I’ve done something wrong I need to be punished is so deeply ingrained in our culture. It’s hard to overstate how deeply.
But what if that’s not true? What if punishments aren’t useful? Jesus taught the opposite of retribution. He said, if a man makes you walk a mile, walk another with him. If he asks for your cloak, give him your shirt too. If he slaps you, turn the other cheek. He never suggested retribution was appropriate, nor that God was in the business of punishing.
I believe this belief in punishment is the underlying reason people remain locked into the idea of hell. And that belief keeps them spiritually locked up. If you believe the spiritual Father—the very essence of love within your soul—is in the business of torturing people eternally, you will experience cognitive dissonance. You’ll move toward your head and away from your heart. It’s a tremendously destructive point of view.
The God who punishes is an old invention, used to control people. Jesus had nothing to do with that. He never suggested it. The idea that he “took our punishment” was written after the fact and added onto his story. The truth is, there is no hell, and punishment is not something any of us deserve.
When we believe we are unworthy and feel shameful, there can be comfort in the idea of punishment, because it suggests we can be restored. But that logic doesn’t work. The truth is we are eternally valuable and uniquely worthy right now. We don’t feel that way because of old patterns of thought stuck in our heads—parts of us trapped in past moments of shame and abandonment.
Those parts of us can meet our God-image. And that image of God can say, “No, you are worthy, and you belong here with me.” The good news is, there is no hell.
Transcript: Shame is a profoundly spiritual problem
Shame is the somatic experience of worthlessness, and it is a profoundly spiritual problem. There is no reason for you to have shame in your system whatsoever. Jesus was not ashamed of himself, and he did not shame others.
Shame is the belief that I am less valuable. It’s a judgment of one’s character, and it is absolutely rampant in our culture and in the church. This one doesn’t just land on the church—it is woven into western civilization.
Shame shows up when you say to a child, “What is wrong with you? Why did you do that? You’re lazy. Are you stupid?” Any variation of those global judgments is shaming. That is completely different than saying, “Can we talk about how you didn’t clean your room?” or “I wonder if you did your best on this math assignment?” The latter are not shaming, because they don’t question the innate worth of the person. They address a specific situation with curiosity about the behavior. That’s valid criticism. The former is shaming.
Valid criticism, when done in a safe setting with trust, usually won’t invoke a somatic response. Shame, however, is a literal sensation. For example, I can recall a time as a teenager when I did something embarrassing in front of a group. Just thinking about it now sends a wave of energy up my spine—a horrific feeling I absolutely hate. The only other time I experience something similar is walking alone in the woods at night and hearing something in the bushes. It feels like my life is at risk in the present moment, layered with existential dread.
In Christianity, we are set up for shame because we are taught that we are born sinners, we fall short, we are worthy of hell, and we need a savior. That builds massive shame from religious teaching. But society at large is also shaming—because shame is effective. People hate the sensation, so when you shame them, they change their behavior.
Yet Jesus was not ashamed of himself. And we cannot connect to the God-image within us when we believe we are less than his child. As children, we are often shamed by parents or outsiders, but those external voices eventually get internalized. By adulthood, most of us don’t need outside shame—we carry the voices in our heads. These inner critics shame us constantly: “You’re lazy. You’re a slob. You’re worthless.” They’ve taken over the job of those external people.
It even feels like the only way to be okay is to shame ourselves, because that’s how external correction worked when we were young. This is why it’s so important to work with those parts of ourselves. The church often teaches, “You are perfect, blameless in his sight, 100% cleansed.” Yet at the same time, culture and church both shame us for not being good enough. That contradiction creates even more shame.
One of the most shameful things, ironically, is admitting that we feel ashamed. The Bible teaches that we are white as snow, so we feel pressure to act as if we don’t struggle with shame. That pushes the sensation further down. But the more it is suppressed, the more it blocks our ability to authentically connect with God.
We end up so tied up in believing our own worthlessness that we don’t even feel worthy to stand before God and connect. This is why shame is not just psychological or cultural—it is a profoundly spiritual situation.
Transcript: What Jesus taught about “sin,” forgiveness and hell
Jesus understood that we are all innately good. In fact, we’re more than good. We are made of God. We were made from the essence of God. We bear the image of God. We have a God image within us that is our core of truth and it is our authentic self. It is how we truly connect to the divine.
When we refuse to acknowledge that center, when we disconnect from it and when we live from an intellectual place instead of from that inner knowing of what’s right, we go against ourselves and hide that from ourselves. We lie to ourselves about it. And so when Jesus dealt with the idea of sin, it was always about what’s true.
When he was with the woman at the well—she said, “This guy I’m with isn’t my husband”—he replied, “Well, yeah. In fact, haven’t you had like seven husbands?” He was simply saying, let’s talk about it. Let’s be real about what’s going on in your life. Is going through these men your authentic expression of your deepest and highest self? Maybe, maybe not—but that’s the question.
Jesus was never concerned or angry when he used the word “sin.” I was taught in Sunday school that sin means “to miss the mark.” It’s going against yourself. It’s acting from a place of fear, anger, shame. It’s being stuck and looped in our head and then acting from that instead of settling, calming, and connecting to our true center.
Jesus never got angry at sin or said, “You’ve got to stop that or God will be angry with you.” Instead, his message was, “If you stop that, you’re going to become more truly yourself, more connected to reality, more real, and you’re going to have an authentic divine relationship.”
When we are trained to believe in hell, that we are worthy of hell, that we drove the nails into Jesus’ hands and should feel ashamed of ourselves—“sinners in the hands of an angry God, snatched from the jaws of hell by the thinnest of margins”—we get trapped in a false belief. We go against ourselves. Then we do bizarre things: we stop loving others, we start hoarding resources, amassing wealth and personal esteem for ourselves. If we were authentically connected to ourselves, those things might happen or they might not, but they would not be what drove our lives and decisions.
Forgiveness is simply saying, “Yes, a part of me was stuck in this situation and it did something that harmed another person, and there has been a chain reaction from that.” It’s acknowledging it without judgment and without shame. That’s all sin is about.
Sin isn’t sending us to a physical hell. There’s nothing innately bad about us. Sin is going against ourselves, living in shame and fear that causes us to harm ourselves and others, creating ripple effects of harm. It’s confusion, it’s mind-stuff. It doesn’t separate us from God.
In fact, the moment we acknowledge areas of our lives where we could be more authentically ourselves, we are immediately divinely connected again. And that is all Jesus was saying.