Shame and the Innocent Person

A person has no participation or responsibility in their own conception or its timing. Few would argue with this outside of the Mormon cult. We cannot choose our parents or our day of conception, or even our day of birth. We bear no responsibility for any of these matters.

Nevertheless, the Bible is crystal clear that fornication is a sin and violates one of the Ten Commandments (the seventh commandment). When this occurs, there is legitimate shame for the participants and their families. This is intensified when the sinful acts (sex outside of marriage) result in a new life. Some parents will decide to murder the child in order to hide the shame. Others avoid adding a second sin to the first, and people should encourage them for choosing life over death. However, the newborn is the innocent party in this event (Ezek 18:19–20). Human culture often looks down on a child born out of wedlock with the same or more scorn than the parents. They have derogatory names in many languages for such children, ignoring their innocence in the incident that resulted in their conception.

The first-century Pharisees made a false accusation toward the only virgin-born person, Jesus the Anointed One, on this matter (John 8:41). This recorded event shows disdain for the innocent person who was not a participant in the sin, which was even common in that day. This cultural mistreatment of the person who is not at fault is not biblical, wise, moral, or legitimate. Likewise, the breaking of the 7th commandment is not unpardonable if the guilty parties truly repent and trust God’s provision for the sinner by the Messiah’s substitutionary atonement (Luke 7:47–48).

Are parents involved in the sins and mistakes of their children? If it happened despite their teaching, example, home life, and provided environment, then the answer is no. However, since most parents fall short in these areas at least to some degree, there may be legitimate shame and guilt when their children fail to obey biblical standards and that failure produces a child. Nevertheless, a believer in the God of the Bible can also repent of and be forgiven for failing as a parent. Parental failure is not an unpardonable sin either (2 Sam 12:13).

Even though all children are born with a sin nature (Psa 51:5), regarding the conditions of their conception, all children are 100% innocent when the conception did not follow God’s declared pattern and plan. Therefore, it is wrong for grandparents to allow pride to dictate how they treat this fearfully and wonderfully made gift from God (Psa 139:14). No matter how badly they failed as parents or how much their children failed, this new person added to the family is a wonderful, special gift. They need unconditional love from their grandparents. The grandparents therefore cannot hide these children’s existence from their church, work, neighborhood, or other communities. As these children grow up and meet people who knew their grandparents, they should be told how much their grandparents loved them. They should learn that their grandparents displayed their pictures on their desks at work, on their phones, and in their homes, and that they were very pleased with this wonderful addition to their family. Yes, shame was attached to an event, but not to the innocent person. To treat a grandchild differently because of race, skin tone, timing of conception, or disability is wrong and harmful to the innocent person based on one’s sinful pride, prejudice, or fear of shame. I know of people in their thirties and forties who have vivid memories of mistreatment by grandparents because of something for which the grandchild was 100% innocent. The painful memories linger on and distress their families to this day. Don’t make this mistake or encourage others to make it.

To truly love a wonderful gift to your family does not mean you condone the morals of our culture or the current ways of the world system as acceptable, or that you have lowered God’s standards. We must employ biblical wisdom in this situation. Responding to the sin of the guilty is one thing. Their relationship with the Lord will dictate this response. However, the mistreatment of the innocent child is not a biblical response to this circumstance. The arrival of a baby changes everything. It is very hard to know how to respond correctly without seeking advice and thinking through what a commitment to celebrate life over death looks like in your own family. Being pro-life is much more than placing a bumper sticker on one’s car.

So, you may shake your head when you see on social media a picture or a story showing how pleased a grandparent is with their grandchild and how much they love them when the child’s parents are/were single. Your thoughts may be that they should cover up their love and involvement with this child because of the circumstances of the conception. They should not have their pictures in their house, on their phone, or on their desk at work.

Please consider that what you are endorsing is the mistreatment of an innocent party (innocent on this one matter) and ignoring the joy God gives a whole family with a new life and a new soul made in His image (Gen 1:27). You are encouraging others to scar precious lives to avoid public shame. That is both a sin and a serious mistake. The child does not deserve shame for something they have not been involved in, nor to be mistreated or publicly hidden because of the fear of shame of the family members. Our culture is not correct in shaming the child, and this is not a deterrent to prevent childbirth out of wedlock.

The father in Luke 15 shows the posture we should take rather than that of the Pharisaical older brother. Rather than the disdain for the younger brother held by the older brother, the father had an open heart and arms and eyes lovingly searching for his son. He did not disown him. The apostle John reminds us that God is both Light (Holiness and Truth) and Love (Gracious and Merciful) [1 John 1:5, 4:8]. Neither attribute should be excluded; rather, both should be viewed in balance.

Grandchildren are gifts from God. Love them unconditionally and love them well. It is truly amazing how your love for a grandchild multiplies and expands over the months and years. You do not know what this is like until you experience it. Your different role with the child makes it very different from parental love.

Be careful how you treat children of single parents. Jesus warns, “If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matt 18:6 NIV).

Are Grandparents important?

How important are grandparents? By the time I was three, both grandmothers and one grandfather had passed away. Doctors diagnosed my remaining grandfather with manic-depressive illness (bipolar disorder). Before the 1970s, he would receive shock treatments about every seven years and was on medication. My family never left me alone with him, and I only saw him periodically. 

Sometime before I was 8 years-old, I was talking to the older lady next door, and I asked her if she would be my grandmother and her husband would be my grandfather. She said yes and instantly became my unofficially adopted grandmother. She hired me to do yard work from time to time after that. They invited me over to eat watermelon with them on their picnic table under the tree in their backyard when they got one during the summer. By ten I was cutting the grass in their backyard and would go over to their house on Saturday nights to watch Kojak and the Sonny and Cher show. After seeing my friends react with their grandparents, I instinctively knew I was missing something important. My request embarrassed my parents, but it was one of the best requests I ever made. Grandma Hattie Brashier, who hailed from Hertford, NC, had thorough training in country cooking. Her collards were the best I had ever eaten. Grandpa Vernon Brashier was a veteran and was from Kentucky. He was an excellent storyteller. 

These folks gave me time and love over many years. Grandma Hattie had a stroke around when I was fourteen, and she passed away when I was sixteen. I was devastated. It was the first loss of that magnitude in my life. My actual grandfather passed away the following year. I was sad by his passing, but did not have the hole in my heart that I had with Grandma Hattie. I visited Grandpa Vernon from time to time, but I spent a lot of time away from home after getting my license at 16 and was often working on cars. While I was in Bible College, I visited Grandpa Vernon in the hospital (I was about 25 years old) when he was dying of cancer. He had been resistant to the gospel because of geological explanations claiming that different stratus levels of rock proved evolution, which disproved the Genesis record. When I shared the gospel with him, he was open and told my father that it seemed heaven opened when I read Romans 10 to him. I am not sure where he was spiritually when he passed away a few weeks later. But I am so grateful for this couple’s investment in me over so many years when I was just their next-door neighbor and not blood kin. I now know how much I needed them. Providence brought them into my life at an important stage and removed them at another specific time. I hope by God’s sovereign grace I will see them again in glory. God does all things well, and He is all-knowing, so I trust in His wise plan. Many people who invested in me over the years—both earlier and later in my life—have influenced the positive things I have accomplished. Grandparents are important, and good ones can do a lot of good.

Ted Manby