There’s No Schadenfreude — or Shame — in Heaven

They shall forget their shame and all the treachery they have practiced against me, when they dwell securely in their land with none to make them afraid. (Ezek 39:26)

I blame my Southern upbringing for my delight in the “Am I the Asshole?” phenomenon that began on Reddit but is now ubiquitous throughout social media. These microdoses of blame narrative, in which someone asks the void (aka their virtual audience) whether they are the jerk in a particular situation, are obviously just the author’s way of seeking validation for their choice. And they rely on the idea — enter here my Southern roots — that there is one right way of doing things. In my childhood, this singular correctness included thank you notes, not wearing white after Labor Day, voting for a certain party, sitting in a pew every Sunday. In the AITA threads, audiences differ as to what the Right Answer is, but there definitely is one.

The trajectory of my life has veered from embracing The One Right Way. For one thing, I’ve learned that if you are what the world sees as different — for example, my son’s neurotype — you may not have access to The One Right Way. You may, for example, not be aware of the unwritten social rules that were, in my case, geographically codified as a metric for being The Right Kind of Person. And once you learn those rules, you may realize over time (and with the aid of your particular Wrong Kind of Person, i.e., your progeny) that you no longer have any regard for such a code, because it was just written to make people feel safe and keep the Wrong People out. (For my part, there is nothing that makes me feel more temporarily safe than being in the “right.”)

Damn if I don’t love to pick out the villain of the story anyway. And damn if that isn’t because, secretly, I’m afraid it’s me. Because at their core, these stories serve to redirect our energy away from self-examination and onto judgement of others, so that we can be distracted from our shame. And apparently, I am here for it.

But the question itself — ”Am I the asshole?” — is a distraction. The other day, I was watching the modern-day retelling of Home Alone with my sons when the older one left the room during a part where a mom shushes her kid while she’s talking on the phone. Upon my son’s return, I asked why he left, and he said, “Because that reminds me of what y’all do to me sometimes.” OOF. Am I the asshole? Well, yes. But also? Maybe don’t try to have a conversation with me while I’m having one with someone else? Because, as life and Nancy Meyer’s filmography tell us, It’s Complicated. And the only “correct” answer to the question “Am I the asshole?” is … yes. And no. But in the end, that’s not the point.

As we all know, Christmas arrived early this year via Netflix, and I also am reeling from my viewing of Wake Up Dead Man. I have been in too many churches like Monsignor Wicks’ — where the actual word wolves was used to describe a marginalized group — and I am still searching for one led by someone like Father Jud, who instead says things like, “You start fighting wolves, and before you know it, everyone you don’t understand is a wolf.” There are churches and environments where a word like “fortitude” isn’t in the title but is the kind of quality lionized: self-preservation in the form of apparent strength and “rightness.”

All I can say is that I have never been changed — beyond surface-level — by shame, only by hope offered in the form of acceptance. By not having the question “Am I the asshole” answered, but by having it rendered ultimately irrelevant in the form of an outstretched, scarred hand. When Father Jud offers absolution to the “villain” in the movie’s story, he unclenches their hand too — not by giving them pat assurances of their own rightness but by naming even the less obvious (than murder) mistakes; not for the purpose of shaming them but for freeing them from their shame. Because whatever we grasp in our attempt to control ends up holding onto shame as well.

When some relatives cut me out of their lives a few months ago, God was so kind to me. He sent some other relatives to tell me, “We’ll never give up on you.” There was a part of me that reverted back to being a naughty child that asked, “Am I the asshole?” And in one version of the story, I’m sure I am. Could I have done some things differently? Of course. But the Spirit whispered louder than the hissed accusations, telling me that whatever shame I was tempted to feel was not of God; but also, there was nothing to be gained by turning this into a narrative of easy categories. Specifically, I felt these words uttered: “There’s no schadenfreude in heaven.” While I have no business heaping shame on myself, it’s also not my job to heap it on others. Which is so unfortunate, because I’m, like, really good at that. Especially on social media.

In between now and heaven, is there any better time than Advent — which is all of “between now and heaven,” really — to reckon with what Fleming Rutledge calls “the dark side of ourselves,” so often the source of our shame, and let it instead be what drives us deeper into not our own fortitude but grace? (Did you catch that detail in Knives Out? The name change of the church from “Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude” to “Our Lady of Perpetual Grace”?)

It’s so often that God shows us his love through the Wrong People. Rian Johnson, a self-professed lapsed Christian who has a better understanding of grace than most unlapsed ones. Father Jud, who killed a guy. There’s a certain artist who repels me personally, but I can’t quit his lyric, “I’m trying to right my wrongs, but it’s funny them same wrongs helped me write these songs.” Or as Martin Luther put it,

The Kingdom of Christ is to be found among the lowly and despised in persecution, misery, and the holy cross. Those who seek Christ anywhere else find him not. The Wise Men discovered him not at Herod’s court, not with high priests, not in the great city of Jerusalem, but in Bethlehem, in the stable, with lowly folk, with Mary and Joseph. In a word, they found him where one would have least expected.

This morning I sat by our Christmas tree and felt a mixture of sadness and marvel at the way the incongruous Australian summer light glinted off the ornaments — there was a time when the only “right” way to celebrate Christmas was in the short days of winter. But these days, ALL is redeemed. What greater gift could there be?! All is redeemed in the hands of the one who knows that justice and comeuppance are not the same (spoiler alert: not me). All of it is redeemed by the only One whose shame is my glory. The One who bounces summer light off winter trees and is the only safe repository for our shame, within whom it is transformed, rays of light glinting off its new edges through him like a diamond.