Guilt and shame. One is healthy, one isn’t. One is necessary for repentance, one isn’t. One hopefully encourages you to improve your life, while the other takes you further from God and happiness.

In psychological terms, guilt is described as feeling bad about something you’ve done, while shame is feeling bad about who you are. Guilt is about actions, while shame is about the core or essence of your very being.

We see this in the creation and garden of Eden story in the Bible. After God has created male and female, the record reads, ‘And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.’ (Genesis 2:25)

After the serpent manages to manipulate Adam and Even into partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, our first parents¹ hide from the approaching Lord God (Jehovah-Elohim) (Genesis 3:8). In the LDS temple endowment, it is Satan who tells Adam and Eve to make aprons of fig leaves and it is Satan who tells them to hide. We don’t get this in the Biblical account, but we do see that the reason they make themselves aprons is to hide their naked bodies (Genesis 3:7). And when God calls them forth, Adam tells Him that the reason they hid themselves was because they were naked (Genesis 3:10).

That’s interesting, because what Adam and Eve had done wrong was eat fruit that God had told them not to eat. But they weren’t worried about being told off for that. Instead, they were afraid because they were naked.

Now remember, God created them naked. He left them naked in the Garden of Eden. There was nothing at all wrong with them being naked. But once they decided that being naked was problematic – either through their own reasoning or because Satan told them so – they hid from God.

We could spend quite some time talking about this verse and how it contrasts with today and the shame placed on the body by both society and religion – in quite different ways. Society shames people for not looking like a twenty-five year old model, while religion shames people for showing too much skin².

But the main point I want to make is that while the reason Adam and Eve hid was because they were naked, God never comments on that. He’s not remotely upset about it. Instead, He asks them why they partook of the fruit He told them not to. God was focused on the guilt of their actions, while Adam was focused on the shame of their existence.

In His goodness, God created coats of skins for Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21). Again, there is a lot we could say about this, but for the purposes of this post, He is no doubt aware that clothing will help protect them in the wild world they were about to enter. I also believe there is a message here about how God recognises our own shame – no matter how undeserved – and will meet us where we are to try and comfort and provide for us. He didn’t care about them being naked, but they did, so He made them skins.

They way we read and interpret scripture, the way our religious leaders teach these scriptures to us, can influence whether we feel guilt or shame. ‘The natural man is an enemy to God…’ (Mosiah 3:19). We can read this to mean that the core of who we are is an enemy to God, fundamentally wrong if not evil. That means every time we have an impure or unkind thought the idea that we are inherently unworthy leaps into our minds. This shame makes us less inclined to approach God because of our unworthiness. It leads to think we can never be good enough. After all, I’m in my fifties and I’m still having unkind thoughts – surely I’m a lost cause by now. I have no hope of ever making it.

Or we can read about the natural man and think that it means that although we are children of a loving God, it is in over-indulging certain impulses or drives, or satisfying them in unhealthy ways, that will lead us away from God. We have these desires for a healthy reason, and God wants us to enjoy all He has given us in this life. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with us for having desires; we just need to keep them in check, and use them in healthy ways. God’s commandments delineate some of those ways. (See my post about the Natural Man)

When the Saviour taught, ‘…whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart’ (Matthew 5:28), He’s not condemning thoughts that uninvited pop into our heads. He’s condemning behaviour that is active in its pursuit of unrighteous lust. The very reason the man is looking at this woman is for the purposes of lusting after her. He is pursuing thoughts of adultery. That’s not a man who is one with his wife. Those deliberate actions will hopefully cause the man to feel guilt and lead him to repentance.

In contrast, the uninvited thoughts should create no guilt or shame – you didn’t choose those. There’s nothing to repent of if we look for healthy ways to express those feelings and don’t encourage the lusting after sin.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt shame. Any time anything goes wrong, my thoughts immediately go to, ‘That’s because I’m useless.’ Whenever someone express frustration with me, ‘That’s because I’m a loser.’ If I do something wrong, ‘I’ll never be good enough. The world and I would all be better off if I just died now, because I’m hopeless.’

Most people are surprised when they learn this about me, because it’s not usually how I come across. People often see me as self-confident and positive. Partly that’s because I like to share what I think about things, and partly because of the public facade that is only too common in Mormonism.

Cognitively I know that my shame isn’t logical. I don’t apply the same rules to other people, so it makes no sense to apply them to myself. As I learn more about myself, I can begin to see where my shame has come from and why I think they way I do. It doesn’t always help me change them.

A way to tell whether you feel guilt or shame is to ask yourself how you speak to yourself after valid criticism. Your boss points out a calculation error in the figures you gave him. Do you acknowledge the mistake to yourself and commit to double-checking the figures next time, or do you say to yourself, ‘Again? I can’t believe I keep to doing this. I’ll never get it right because I’m just so stupid.’?

If you’re someone who feels a lot of shame, please go easy on yourself. Stop judging yourself. There is nothing wrong with who you are. Repentance isn’t necessary for who you are – you’re a child of God with all the inherent qualities that gives. Stop being ashamed. Easier said than done, I know, but it’s still true.

God made male and female unashamed. That tells He still wants us to be that way.

Now to apply it …

© Copyright Jeffrey Collyer 2026

1. I want to caveat here that although I use the term ‘our first parents’, I don’t believe the creation and garden of Eden accounts in the Bible are intended to be read literally. I don’t know how humans were created or when God designated them His children. Other sources of ancient beliefs, such as the creation account in the Kolbrin, offer narratives that blend a type of evolution with God placing His spirit or breath within humans at some point. I’m open to different ideas.
2. There is so much to say about this …. Most recently the change in the LDS temple garments provide the clearest talking point. It wasn’t that long ago when Church leaders were describing to women (it always seems to be women at fault here, although the garment covered men and women equally) their ‘porn shoulders’ that needed to remain covered up. The latest garments, of course, permit those same shoulders to be shown without any shame whatsoever. I also find it interesting that Utah has one of the highest rates of cosmetic surgery in the US (along with anti-depressant use and suicide), while simultaneously espousing rigid clothing rules and the silent judging of Church members who aren’t wearing garments (there are tell-tale signs for those who know). This all suggests a high level of shame and a culture of shaming.