shame

158:7.5Af­ter they had re­cov­ered from the first shock of Je­sus’ sting­ing re­buke, and be­fore they re­sumed their jour­ney, the Mas­ter spoke fur­ther: “If any man would come af­ter me, let him dis­re­gard him­self, take up his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties daily, and fol­low me. For whoso­ever would save his life self­ishly, shall lose it, but whoso­ever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s, shall save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? What would a man give in ex­change for eter­nal life? Be not ashamed of me and my words in this sin­ful and hyp­o­crit­i­cal gen­er­a­tion, even as I will not be ashamed to ac­knowl­edge you when in glory I ap­pear be­fore my Fa­ther in the pres­ence of all the ce­les­tial hosts. Nev­er­the­less, many of you now stand­ing be­fore me shall not taste death till you see this king­dom of God come with power.”

172:5.13Ju­das was tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the ridicule of his Sad­ducean friends. No other sin­gle fac­tor ex­erted such a pow­er­ful in­flu­ence on him, in his fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion to for­sake Je­sus and his fel­low apos­tles, as a cer­tain episode which oc­curred just as Je­sus reached the gate of the city: A promi­nent Sad­ducee (a friend of Ju­das’s fam­ily) rushed up to him in a spirit of glee­ful ridicule and, slap­ping him on the back, said: “Why so trou­bled of coun­te­nance, my good friend; cheer up and join us all while we ac­claim this Je­sus of Naz­a­reth the king of the Jews as he rides through the gates of Je­ru­sa­lem seated on an ass.” Ju­das had never shrunk from per­se­cu­tion, but he could not stand this sort of ridicule. With the long-nour­ished emo­tion of re­venge there was now blended this fa­tal fear of ridicule, that ter­ri­ble and fear­ful feel­ing of be­ing ashamed of his Mas­ter and his fel­low apos­tles. At heart, this or­dained am­bas­sador of the king­dom was al­ready a de­serter; it only re­mained for him to find some plau­si­ble ex­cuse for an open break with the Mas­ter.

140:4.7“By their fruits you shall know them.” Per­son­al­ity is ba­si­cally change­less; that which changes—grows—is the moral char­ac­ter. The ma­jor er­ror of mod­ern re­li­gions is neg­a­tivism. The tree which bears no fruit is “hewn down and cast into the fire.” Moral worth can­not be de­rived from mere re­pres­sion—obey­ing the in­junc­tion “Thou shalt not.” Fear and shame are un­wor­thy mo­ti­va­tions for re­li­gious liv­ing. Re­li­gion is valid only when it re­veals the fa­ther­hood of God and en­hances the broth­er­hood of men.