Almost everyone experiences some form of body shame during their lifetime. Body shame comes from negative judgment either from others or from oneself when he fails to meet his own standard. The person then feels exposed because of his differences which leads to distancing from others and God because he feels unclean/unacceptable. For example, a young lady pictures her body as overweight, filters it through societal ideals of thinness, and assesses herself as inadequate, leading to shame. This article will define shame and body image, then look at how society’s and the individual’s own expectations pressures a person to feel shame when he or she does not measure up to the ideal image. We will then examine shame’s origin and how God provides a way out via atonement, how a God-defined body filter must replace our subjective one, and finally wrap up with a biblical theology of the body.
Experience of the Problem
Shame and Body Image
Shame. Shame on you.
These words evoke certain responses since they are common in everyday life. Although shame impacts everyone’s lives, here in the West, people normally do not take the time to understand shame and how it impacts them. Ed Welch, in his book Shame Interrupted, understands shame as “the deep sense that you are unacceptable because of something you did, something done to you, or something associated with you. You feel exposed and humiliated.”[^1]
Notice how shame preys on the differences in individuals. A person feels shame when he feels he does not belong. He feels less human, and the worst part is that witnesses exist. Another author rightly hits some implications of shamed people by showing when people think they “are not quite good enough” and “are insignificant,” it drives them to “perform, to compete against others for the right to exist. Or it is manifested in the desire to hide, to withdraw, to retreat into some safer world where no one can hurt or destroy.”[^2] Shame follows a person’s feelings and beliefs in which he sees himself as less than normal and exposed. This naturally leads him to self-protect or perform to minimize his perceived defects.
A major area of shame relates to one’s body, either how others perceive it or how a person sees himself. A helpful yet simplistic way of thinking about body image is how one visualizes one’s body. Lainey Greer, drawing on her doctoral studies and lifelong study on the topic, expands this definition to show three basic components of body image: “a mental picture, subjective filter, and resulting assessment.”[^3] First, a person draws a mental image of his physical form. Next, he filters his mental image through a self-defined subjective framework. Finally, his “biased filtering results in an assessment,”[^4] which produces one’s body image. Although what other people believe significantly influences one’s filter, body image still comes down to what an individual believes his body should look like and whether it meets his criteria.
Body shame then explains the ensuing feeling of the body not meeting the expectations, which includes any negative judgment against the body. It expresses itself in two dimensions: external shame, by externally directed attention with “the perception of being negatively judged by others;” and internal shame with attention “focused on a negative image of the self.”[^5]
For example, humans commonly comment on other people’s size or genetic traits. Recalling school days in particular, many examples should surface for the reader. A child might have a bigger nose, so others called him “big nose,” “hooked nose,” or “Jewish nose” because of it. Has anyone ever been exempted from some criticism about one or more of their body parts? Think about how even “compliments” on a body part which the individual perceives as abnormal, will likely reinforce the hidden negative element, “it is not normal.” Other comments directly target one’s habits and tendencies.
Social Shame
Within the USA, Americans will not likely experience the level of shame the untouchables in the caste systems of Japan, India, or other countries do. Unlike the systemic exclusion of groups like India’s Dalits, Western shame often centers on individual traits like body size, though both reflect social rejection. People attune themselves to social cues, including the Western value that gets the most attention: one’s body size. This social value claims that “feminine attractiveness [is] represented by thinness” and thereby relegates non-thin people to the fringes, which increases their chances of “being criticized, blamed, attacked or rejected” for not complying.[^6] One of human’s greatest fears is being shamed or shunned. In fact, Jonathan Haidt argues people care more “about the threat of ‘social death’ than physical death.”[^7] One prominent example comes from Monica Lewinsky’s telling her story of the cyberbullying and news coverage of her affair with (then) President Clinton.[^8] She argues the public humiliation and shame seemed worse than death itself.
Social media not only has become an echo chamber for stories as cited above but also has pushed the image of the ideal self. Research suggests social media significantly shapes body conceptualization, often amplifying societal ideals and prompting early self-awareness in children, even at young ages.[^9] This globalization and accessibility of ideals lead most users to judge themselves and feel ashamed when they fall short of the unrealistic beauty standards.[^10] To avoid the threat of shame, people use all sorts of means to improve their appearance, which thereby raises their status in society (e.g., going to the gym, restricting food intake, filtering posts). Many social media users hide personal attributes they do not like (e.g., body size, scars) before posting. Known as self-presentation (or perfectionistic self-presentation), this process involves a person feeling the need to hide his or her imperfections and shortcomings while actively promoting a perfect image.[^11] In other words, social media encourages people to strive for an unrealistic self-image and pressures people to manipulate their posts in order to be perceived as normal and thereby acceptable to the viewers.
A person’s family and close friends greatly influence how he perceives himself. The conversations regarding dieting, workout routines, and other people’s physiques naturally push him to pick up the same priorities. But more influential than this indirect influence are the negative comments his family or friends make regarding his weight and form. Those types of comments tempt him towards a negative body image. Other close pressures come from his peers expecting him to play a certain sport which requires a certain body size (e.g., gymnastics, swimming). These external pressures then take root in his internal perception of himself.
Personal Shame
As noted in Dr. Greer’s definition of body image, one’s belief about the world corresponds with how he sees himself. The shamed (at least functionally) believe their action(s) or something associated with them relegates them to society’s margins. Shameful messages are internalized when repeated or emotionally charged action or words embed the belief of abnormality in one’s self-concept. This feeling of shame is reinforced by memory and other social feedback. The waging war inside their heads screams that God made a mistake by giving them this body with all its particularities. They internalize the belief that their size, genetics, and form are abnormal. For example, the size of one’s nose can lead him to internalize his abnormality and then lead to a disgust of his defects. He reasons that if people find his nose disgusting, he as a person cannot be any better. Many other personality tendencies or aging examples abound. The point: many people internalize shameful body messages and can vividly recall those messages even 50 years later. They then believe they must perform to cover up the deficiencies in their lives so other people will not notice them.
When other people make real or imagined judgments regarding someone’s body, it affects the person’s “sense of being and belonging.”[^12] The judgments make one feel naked, uncovered, exposed, and disgraced. It feels as if people stare because something is different or just as bad; they look away because they are disgraceful. This culminates in the person feeling unpresentable to others. Some call this feeling “uncleanness” or even “social death.” They feel less human and wonder if they have a right to exist. These perceptions of rejection and existence on the margins of society often induce a perfectionistic tendency. When a person is rejected, he will attempt to perfect the conversation or his image the next time to compensate for the previous blunder or to divert attention from his undesirable traits.
Do not miss the cyclical nature of shame. Feelings of rejection lead to self-protection. Self-protection leads towards perfectionism. Perfectionism increases anxiety because they “fear the shame of public failure.”[^13] This anxiety then goes full circle back to self-protection accompanied by the feeling of rejection and being exposed. Breaking this cycle often requires external support, such as biblical counseling or community, alongside the theological restoration provided by God.
Biblical & Theological Application
Exposed and Covered
Nearly every person will feel unacceptable to others and to God at some point in his life, so he must understand how it started. Although the theme of feeling shame starts very early in the Bible, it does not start at the beginning. When God created humanity, they had no conception of shame. They had no shame over any part of their body, any task they did, or anything pertaining to them. The Bible explicitly states that Adam and Eve “were both naked and were not ashamed” (Gen 2:25, LSB).[^14] They stood before each other and God without sensing any defect or inferiority. God created the world perfect, and He defined how they saw themselves.
Then something changed. Adam and Eve decided to venture into realms where God told them not to go. They ate of the forbidden fruit and their eyes “were opened, and they knew that they were naked” and when Yahweh came, they “hid themselves” (Gen 3:7,8). This sinful act prompted them to conceptualize their bodies in a painful way and experience shame for the first time. Why the shame? Because they undermined the “foundation of covenant-keeping love.”[^15] They could no longer trust each other for the threat of being shamed and they no longer felt God’s peace. The act made them guilty of transgressing God’s command but also brought shame for their disloyalty to God.[^16] As a result, verse 7 continues by saying “they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings” (Gen 3:7). They attempted to make things right by covering up, but removing shame requires a sacrifice.
Adam and Eve’s self-atoning did not satisfy God and remove their shame. A few verses later, the text says “Yahweh God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and He clothed them” (Gen 3:21). As John Piper rightly notes, this verse has both a negative and positive message. Negatively, humans must wear clothing to confess they are not what they should be but also positively, to testify that God Himself will one day make humans what they were designed to be.[^17]
The death of innocent animals covered Adam’s rebellion and partially restored the relationship. The animal skins, requiring the death of innocent animals, foreshadowed Christ’s sacrificial death, which fully covers humanity’s shame and restores their relationship with God. But just like Adam and Eve’s attempt to clothe themselves, any self-atonement will not work before God. But God’s people can rejoice with Isaiah because Yahweh has clothed them “with garments of salvation, He has wrapped [them] with a robe of righteousness” (Isa 61:10). God’s first act of clothing humanity and His promise of clothing in Isaiah points towards an ultimate covering.
God’s plan of an ultimate covering came through Jesus. Jesus entered humanity’s shame and dealt with it once for all. Listen to Isaiah’s words depicting Jesus:
He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our peace fell upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed. (Isa. 53:3-5, LSB)
In Christ, believers are clothed with His righteousness, not their own performance. Because of what Jesus did, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). Christ extends an opportunity to restore the relationship which was broken back in the Fall; in that relationship, no one will receive condemnation. By God’s intervention, Christ sets people free from the shame of not being at peace with God which originated at the Fall. In other words, Adam and Eve’s self-atonement (their attempt to cover shame with fig leaves) was insufficient, but God made provision of reconciling humanity to Himself through sacrifice. Next, we will address how Christ’s atonement reverses the shame caused by living with untrustworthy people which also started in Eden.
A God Defined Body Filter
Going back to the previous dialogue about shame’s ugly entrance into the world in Eden, the reader must notice that Adam and Eve’s bodies had not changed, only how they perceived them.[^18] They not only lost their perfect relationship with God, but they also replaced what God said about their bodies with their own subjective filter. They now “knew that they were naked” and exposed which meant they no longer felt safe (Gen 3:7). Since Adam chose independence from God and made himself central, he was essentially a selfish person now. He would put himself first which means Eve could no longer totally trust him. He would likely shame her if it benefited him. Suddenly, their body vulnerabilities became precarious.[^19] Again, the problem was not their bodies; it was how they perceived them.
Pulling from the previously stated definition of body image, the defining part of body image comes from people screening images of themselves through their self-defined subjective framework. Adam and Eve lost their objective filter because they sinned against God and put themselves in the center of their lives. Now, they considered what the other untrustworthy person thought about them instead of defining themselves by how God saw them. How others perceived them now defined their filter. Even today, the driving force of people’s fear is that “others will make fun” of them or “not accept” them if their “body fails to look a certain way.”[^20] This is a problem, as Jeremy Pierre points out, since “human self-perception has always been dependent on God” (Genesis 1:26-28).[^21] God gave humanity an objective standard to see themselves ontologically. Believers must remind themselves of their identities given them by God.
Children of God must remember that God gets to define them and that their subjective identities must be seen in light of God’s objective standard. When God adopts people to be sons of God, He clothes them “in the perfect righteousness of [His] Son.”[^22] Jesus’s sacrifice not only justifies one before God, but it also gives one a new identity through adoption. Therefore, God must be the filter by which one sees himself. A proper body image for a Christian has a mental picture that corresponds to reality, which requires that his subjective filter is informed by God’s objective standard.
The truth of grounding one’s body identity in God does not minimize the pain of shame. However, this shame can be transferred to God and it does not have to define the person. Hebrews 12:2 calls believers to emulate Jesus by fixing their eyes “on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” This verse commands Christians to gaze to Jesus in special ways, including a “continual act” since only He gives the necessary strength to overcome shame.[^23] The Son of God absorbed the world’s shame and conquered it by assigning it no control over Him. Jesus “attributed no worth or influence to it; he treated it as an outcast.”[^24] How could Jesus look past the rejection of His people, the mocking, the shaming of crucifixion, etc.? It came back to His connection with the Father; He allowed God to define Him. If shame speaks of exposure and condemnation, Jesus represents forgiveness and acceptance. Believers today must continually look to Jesus and embrace how He defines them. Fixing eyes on Jesus involves daily practices like prayer, meditation on Scriptures which affirm God’s acceptance (e.g., Rom 8:1), or seeking community to reinforce God’s view of one’s worth.
Biblical View of the Body
Another theme from Scripture that addresses a negative body image is the biblical theology of the body. Believers need to know what the Bible says regarding their bodies in order to have a God honoring body image. A passage with pertinent applications comes from 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. While Paul addresses sexual immorality in 1 Corinthians 6, his principles about the body’s sanctity and purpose apply to body shame, as both involve misusing or devaluing what God calls good.
Paul writes that “God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power” (1 Cor. 6:14, LSB). The promise of future restoration should remind everyone of the sin-infused state of this world, which includes bodily imperfections. This promise of future perfection allows struggling believers to accept imperfections in their bodies now. Only God can provide a perfect body, and He will in the resurrection of the saints. Hence “it is foolish to seek one now.”[^25] Believers must not buy the world’s lies that promise some form of a perfect body.
Dropping down to verse 19, it says “do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” Paul picks up the theme of temple again (see 1 Cor. 3:16-17) and reminds the believers that the Holy Spirit indwells them. God resides in one’s imperfect body and makes it sacred for His use. God also stamps a person’s body with His presence and therefore, their bodies should be seen as good and holy.[^26] For a believer “to act otherwise would be contradictory” to what God says.[^27] Because of God’s presence, Christians must care for their bodies which includes things like exercise and diets. However, their actions must be done for proper motives. Proper motives include stewarding the body to honor God’s presence and serve others, rather than seeking societal approval or masking shame through perfectionism.
The chapter continues “for you were bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20, LSB). God purchasing believers means “a transfer of ownership” occurred and that Christians belong body and soul to Him.[^28] Reverencing God with their body must be done according to God’s desires and not for selfish reasons. Someone can steward their body in a self-protective way in order to receive society’s approval and thereby mitigate their negative judgement or do it because God calls them to it. Glorifying God in the body also includes fighting against an unbiblical negative body image and the accompanying shame. The task can look daunting but remember God resides in His people. He gives all His children the power and grace needed to transfer the shame and negative body judgment to Christ and let Him deal with it.
In conclusion, shame has not changed much since Eden and it still pushes people to cover and hide.[^29] It causes people to cover up because others might expose their imperfections. While it is true that social media heightens one’s self-perception of their imperfection which furthers their body shame, Scripture reveals the root problem in the Fall and offers a redemptive solution. God calls people to come to Him and allow Him to know and cover them. God does so by Jesus’s death on the cross. So when believers allow their subjective filter to be exchanged for God’s objective filter which sees believers through Jesus’s sacrifice, then they “will be sufficiently equipped to deal with negative body image, tackle challenging emotions, and put a stop to harsh judgments and actions that do not glorify God.”[^30] Body shame can only be properly overcome by reaching out to God and allowing Him to carry the shame and inform one’s body image.
Bibliography:
Bridges, Jerry. Who Am I: Identity in Christ. Adelphi, MD: Cruciform Press, 2012.
Duarte, Cristiana, José Pinto-Gouveia, Cláudia Ferreira, and Diana Batista. “Body Image as a Source of Shame: A New Measure for the Assessment of the Multifaceted Nature of Body Image Shame.” Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy 22, no. 6 (November/December 2015): 656-666. https://research-ebsco-com.ezproxy.sbts.edu/c/4jd22t/viewer/pdf/c6e5v6hl3j?route=details
Fioravanti, Giulia, Sara Bocci Benucci, Viola Vinciarelli, and Silvia Casale. “Body Shame and Problematic Social Networking Sites Use: The Mediating Effect of Perfectionistic Self-Presentation Style and Body Image Control in Photos.” Current Psychology 43, no. 5 (2023): 4073–84. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04644-8
Fitzpatrick, Elyse. Love to Eat, Hate to Eat: Breaking the Bondage of Destructive Eating Habits. Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 2020.
Gardner, Paul. 1 Corinthians. ed. Clinton E. Arnold. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018. Logos.
Georges, Jason and Mark D. Baker. Ministering in Honor-Shame Cultures: Biblical Foundations and Practical Essentials. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016.
Greer, Jennifer Elaine. “The Utilization of a Theology of Human Embodiment to Address Body Image” PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2021.
Greer, Lainey. Struggling with Body Image: Seeing what God Sees. Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2024. Kindle.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024. Kindle.
Lee, Andrea. Body Image: Valuing God’s Good Gift. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2025.
Oliveira, Maria Francisca, Maria Coimbra, and Cláudia Ferreira. “How Does the Experience of Shame Impact Body Dysmorphic Symptomatology? Exploring the Role of Mindfulness and Body Image-Related Cognitive Fusion.” Current Psychology 43, no. 15 (November 2023): 13454–64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05385-4
Owen, John. Hebrews, Crossway Classic Commentaries. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1998. Logos.
Pierre, Jeremy. “Biblical Counseling & Personal Ministry of the Word.” Unpublished class notes for 34300. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Fall Semester, 2025.
Piper, John. This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009.
Roth, Lia A. Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Gaze, Body Image, Shame, Judgment, and Maternal Function: Being and Belonging. New York: Routledge, 2020. Ebook.
Stockitt, Robin. Restoring the Shamed: Towards a Theology of Shame. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012. Kindle.
Welch, Edward T. Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection. Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press, 2012.