We need to test the premise of shame as the fulcrum of humanity's relationship to God. One test will be whether or not shame is revealed to be an abiding element of Gospel stories, when theological accretions and convenient conceits have been stripped away.
I am reminded of the exasperating experience of hearing a radio preacher holding forth on the scriptural evidence for hell as a real place and a real experience--an exasperating experience not because of any failing on his part to produce and present applicable scriptures to prove the point, but rather because of his revealing proclivity to hold to Scripture here and to ignore it there. I will explain.
The preacher's contention about the actuality of hell was well-founded in the biblical passages he presented, but as it turned out a revealing twist accompanied his last reference--the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus. The implication of hell as a real torment is undeniable in this story, though admittedly the mention of the Bosom of Abraham seems destined to admit of only a symbolic interpretation. The preacher's invocation of the story of Lazarus and the rich man, however (though it was well-accompanied by evidences for hell, especially eternal hell, in the preacher's thesis) lurched in a most awkward moment at the very finish. The preacher lamented that the rich man was consigned to eternal damnation because he did not know Jesus (neither, I will surmise, as an explicit knowledge nor as that knowledge-by-extension available to Jews through the "Moses and the prophets" deposit described in the story as accessible to the living.)
The preacher, obviously, held to the common radio-religion emphasis on Christian "faith alone" salvation--the fact that the rich man enjoyed good things while Lazarus had only bad things (though this fact is recounted pointedly by Abraham) is not to be understood in this emphasis to legitimize any "works-based" salvation. However, the plain truth in this unraveling of the preacher's method is held properly to be the impropriety of holding to direct meanings in Scripture here and forsaking direct meanings in Scripture there. The Story of the Rich Man and Lazarus has only the self-indulgence of the rich man and the deprivations of Lazarus (set off by the strong implication that the rich man stepped over Lazarus with regularity) as its earthly action. Nothing done by or attributed to the rich man or Lazarus says anything about their beliefs or lack thereof.
Moreover, the story is preceded in the text of Luke by Jesus' declaration that not one letter is to drop out of the law and that divorce is the equivalent of adultery, and the story is followed in Luke by Jesus describing horrid punishment for those who lead "little ones" astray. The plain meaning of the lesson of The Story of the Rich Man and Lazarus is that doing bad things in life will lead to bad things in the afterlife.
It may be seen that there are three conceivable arcs of thought that overshadow the mere text of this story on the page. There is, at bottom, the story as related simply in its very words. In addition, if an interpreter is to postulate some generalized theme of Jesus' teachings, then there may be thought to be at the very top an overarching interpretation (which, like the "shame" interpretation I have proffered, must be put to the test.) And then (as is most typically the thought-process supplied by the preachers) there is the supra-textual though incompletely-warranted sort of interpretation that begs at every juncture to have the benefit of every available doubt, and that squirms and dodges away from any definitive test.
This last sort of interpretation--this type of interpretation that I have called incompletely-warranted--occupies a space (or might properly be seen to arrogate to itself a space) between the simple text of a scripture and the properly top-most (and properly sought-after) general theme of Jesus' teaching. Nothing better typifies the incompletely-warranted interpretation than the notion of "faith alone," which flies in the face of the self-same "simple" renderings of Scriptural thought that the "faith alone" preachers claim to espouse. In the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus, as I stated above, there is not a hint of a notion that faith is an operative element in the progression of the two men's lives. It might always be said that people who do good things do so out of "faith" in something, but it need scarcely be said that this is casting a conceptual net too wide to serve any of the preachers' purposes. Indeed, the story itself casts the net of possible interpretations even wider, stating only that the rich man got good things and Lazarus bad things--leaving it to the hearers (the rich man and us) to attach the earthly events to any motivation of the men at all.
What really happens in the post-death part of the story is the shaming of the rich man. The rich man's plea for the slightest of comfort to be had from Lazarus is hurled back at him with the simple rejoinder from Abraham that Lazarus in life had only bad while the rich man had only good. The existence of the impassible chasm is stated matter-of-factly, but only after the rich man is hit with a gratuitous explanation of why Lazarus' ministrations would be withheld from him at any rate. The punishment of the rich man will be accompanied by shame--this is undeniable from the very text of the story.
And then the rich man asks for Lazarus to be sent to the rich man's surviving brothers. Either the rich man is still shamefully limiting his concern for what he thinks of as his own (for he might as well ask for the rising-from-death testimony of Lazarus to be beheld by all humanity), or the rich man has been beset by the shame of having failed in his fraternal duties. In either event the result is the same.
The theme of The Story of the Rich Man and Lazarus is shame.
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