The title I chose for my testimony on shame and performance culture is from Frederick Douglass’s book on becoming free, it is called “My Bondage and My Freedom”. It is also meant to evoke Exodus imagery . Yet still, there is a deeper message I want to convey, and I understand not everyone has read this book or is familiar with what the Bible means when it uses slavery (i.e., in Egypt). My message about shame was meant to describe a framework that has similarities with slavery. I felt this post could be an opportunity to delve deeper on why I choose this title and book for my work.
There is much more that I could say about slavery in its historical, economic, and theological contexts, and I do not want to collapse those realities into a metaphor for personal struggle. My aim is to draw from a particular insight Douglass’s work helped me see–bondage is not sustained only through physical restraint. It is also sustained through systems of belief–ideas about power, worth, hierarchy, and whose humanity is permitted to matter. The classic scripture that applies is in the book of Exodus, where God tells Moses, “…I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt.”
In the book, Douglass talks about his literal experience with being a slave. But he also talks extensively about the systemic structure that governed and permitted it. I read this book in college and again after I started teaching the Bible. What I saw both times was the power of narrative literature to touch the human soul and translate one persons understanding to another. His work exposed both the brutality inflicted upon enslaved people, and the moral corruption of a system organized around economic interest at the expense of humanity. It was a catalyst in exposing the corrupting economics of the slave system and advancing the abolitionist movement that lead up to the Civil War. That context of a system with moral corruption and economic interest at the expense of humanity matters for how I use the book. I am not equating shame with American chattel slavery, and I am not attempting to treat the history of slavery primarily as metaphor. What I recognized, in partial application, was a broader principle about bondage. Dehumanization becomes easier to tolerate when power, status, or economic gain is valued above human dignity. Because we become what we worship.
He states “the grand aim of slavery, which, always and everywhere, is to reduce man to a level of brute”. That language struck me because the Bible also uses beast-like imagery to describe humanity when we are governed by appetite, fear, anger, instinct, and the fallen nature rather than the dignity and order of God’s image. See Revelation 13:18. This is not to say that human beings become less human, but that a system has the characteristics of bondage when it works to suppress the qualities through which human dignity is expressed–reason, agency, compassion, mercy, grace, conscience, identity, and freedom–while training humanity into distorted ways of seeing human worth. The irony is that slavery tries to “brutalize” the enslaved, but Douglass repeatedly shows that the institution also brutalizes the slaveholder. A system built around the worship of power and economic gain injures all participants because it also morally reshapes the people who benefit from and administer it.
Biblical imagery constantly invokes the use of Egypt to convey God’s people leaving a place of freedom with Him and seeking relief, or release elsewhere. What often drove the Israelites was not trusting God’s goodness. In many ways, the Bible brings to life the reality that (1) we are free agents with free-will, (2) we are called to a real purpose to reflect our Creator’s image on earth, and (3) there is a real spiritual opponent that opposes this. The Bible shows that humanity struggles to reflect God’s glory [mercy, grace, compassion, love], and needs a redeemer to reconcile us with His nature. The redeemer is Jesus Christ, and He delivers the people out of bondage. One of the ways He does this is by illuminating what bondage actually looks like. Because the truth is, bondage does not always look like bondage.
Every time we chase external things looking for meaning in them, we become bound to it. It is a harsh task master. It requires you to morph and remove parts of your identity and even purpose, if it could be conceived unfavorably. It teaches people to shrink and blend in. To look at other people to see who and how they should be. When we believe that the external things we have accumulated empower us to mistreat other people, we become a perpetuator of a system that is exploitative. The more people attach their worth to external things, the less they care about helping people in need. Instead, they care more about how things can personally benefit them and how any action they take could make them appear to others. But my posit is that, that mode of evaluation, or “calculator”, is broken. The world, and the direction it is headed, will need more able people to look past themselves and their immediate reality to how they can play a role in helping people in need and genuinely playing their part in making the world a better place.
A huge part of being able to actively help other people is recognizing when cultures or reward systems condition people to remain consumers. Shame can make the collective gaze disproportionately influential, to the point that people with so much more to offer become highly optimized for someone else’s system. Jesus calls people out of the sheep pen. Sometimes, this looks like a higher level of ownership and agency that many of the systems of this world disincentivize. The incentives often reward successful participation within an existing structure rather than the agency required to question the structure, leave it, or build something different. Building God’s Kingdom looks like implementing governance structures in a way that employs God’s order while still being profitable. The thing about employing God’s systems, is that it’s not only the system that benefits, but the people benefit also.
In many ways, society and the values that govern it can subtly erode at a sense of will, identity, and purpose. Algorithms, AI, and instant gratification rewire brains and nervous systems. Even things that are useful can misalign us when they begin to govern us. Or rather, when they are intentionally designed to perpetually engage us. In that sense, bondage can become neurochemical. When you overvalue things that strip you of agency and independence, you may not consciously be having your agency seized from you, but spiritually, something similar can be taking place. My point is to shed light on a larger trend that is slowly changing the course of history, people, families, and children. My concern is that this dynamic grows successively stronger with younger generations.
Finally, many of these societal patterns trickle in to the economy. When a culture (or nation, tribe, environment etc.) increasingly prizes visibility, performance, speed, and wealth, those values begin to shape how people understand work itself. I believe there has been an erosion of dignity around service work and ordinary labor because people have increasingly been taught to associate success with appearances. Jobs like waiting tables, catering, home care, caregiving, cleaning, food service, and other forms of hands-on work are often treated as a source of shame or beneath people rather than as a needed form of labor that calls on craftsmanship, character, and service to other people. There is dignity in these roles, and how people show up can be a form of reverence to God. I have rode on a public bus where it felt like I stepped on the bus of a shepherd who took the responsibility for the safety of the people on her bus seriously. That, to me, was dignity in labor.
Each younger generation encounters these dynamics earlier and with more intensity. People can feel their work and career must make them look successful and communicate importance. But when these become the motivating drivers, entire categories of socially necessary labor begin to dwindle in supply despite society still remaining dependent upon the people doing them. This pattern also translates into consumerism. Company objectives around maximizing profit at the expense of value, and generating demand when there is none, can weaken quality and responsibility toward consumers. We increasingly live in an economy where extracting attention, maximizing consumption, or deceiving consumers is financially rewarded. Companies can profit from products (i.e., food) and practices that are harmful to human health and well-being because profitability has been elevated above responsibility. I hope to shed light on the fact that this all reflects a governing value system. Disordered governing values flow downstream to shape labor markets, businesses, institutions, families, and ultimately individual behavior. The system teaches people what is aspirational, what is shameful, what success looks like, and ultimately what kinds of lives they should pursue.
When agency and independent thought are disincentivized, people can subconsciously create conditions in which they passively acquiesce to governing principles–whether those principles come from culture, environment, or general societal norms that go unquestioned. Fitting in can be valued at the expense of authenticity. Over time, independent thinking can weaken, and that still, small voice within can be silenced. I have learned that the only true way to freedom begins with Jesus Christ. The power to follow Him while living within the systems of this world comes through the Holy Spirit.
Journal Prompts
- What external things have I believed define my worth and value?
- What in my life am I holding onto, that is progressively causing me to lose parts of my true self?
- What does playing a personal role in making the world a better place look like to me?
- Do I look to other people for acceptance before looking to my Creator?
- What has religious culture taught me about Jesus Christ that I may need to unlearn?
Tobi Owoyemi 
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