The Odyssey and the War to Conquer Shame

It doesn’t have one eye, a buffet of lotus flowers, or the ability to turn sailors into pigs—but it’s more sinister than all of them combined. And if you’re anything like me, it just might be the same thing stopping your life from advancing, too.

It’s shame.

The Odyssey, officially the highest-grossing film of Christopher Nolan’s directing career, is part of a brilliant year of movies reviving the theater experience across the globe. And though it’s stuffed with jaw-dropping action sequences, undeniably immersive practical effects, and a world-class score from the already-legendary Ludwig Göransson, I can’t stop thinking about how it puts the debilitating power of shame on dazzling and horrifying display.

If we’re honest, we all (myself included) have things in our past (and maybe even present) we’re not proud of. Some of us choose to ignore those things, some of us have dealt with them, and some of us still obsess over them by wallowing in guilt. I’ve been in all of those spaces. But no matter where you find yourself on that spectrum, take it from our favorite King of Ithaca—shame is likely the real giant blocking your path forward.

If we zoom in, shame is often the reason we excuse our own mistakes yet judge others so harshly. It’s why we are terrified of showing our true selves, despite our confident outward appearances. It’s why we’re somehow chronically insecure yet wildly prideful all at the same time.

But there is good news. Shame doesn’t have to win. It doesn’t have to control you, live rent-free in the back of your mind, or hold you back from living freely anymore. There is an antidote.

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to take you ten years, a flower-induced coma, and losing your entire crew to various mythical creatures in order to find it. We just have to look at the lesson learned by a band of unusual suspects: Odysseus, Paul the Apostle, and the first humans to ever exist.

Odysseus: the Bronze-Age Oppenheimer

Just in case you don’t remember reading The Odyssey in high school English, here’s a very crude synopsis:

It’s roughly 1200 BCE, and the ten-year Trojan-Greek war has come to an end. Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, begins a tumultuous journey home, one that will lead him through multiple encounters with Greek monsters whose names you easily confuse with one another. Despite adversity, Odysseus eventually makes it home, only to have to go John Wick on an army of suitors fighting to take his throne and his wife. He kicks some ancient rear end and takes back what’s rightfully his and rides off into the sunset. The end.

But as thrilling as that journey is, that’s actually not the hinge point of our hero’s story. His shame, which we get flashback teasers of throughout Nolan’s ingenious work, comes before Odysseus even points his boat toward home.

Early in the story, stuck on the beaches of Troy and on the verge of surrender, Odysseus conjures up a plan to end a decade of stalemate warfare. He and a band of soldiers will hide inside a giant statue of a horse and offer it to the city of Troy as a gift. When the Trojans pull the horse within their city gates, the Greeks will sneak out and conquer their enemies from the inside. The idea works, alright. It turns into a bloodbath.

In the scope of history, and for most of the film, this plan is viewed as a brilliant war tactic—a cunning strategy to outwit an enemy and win a long, grueling contest. But as the movie unfolds and reaches its climax, we come to realize that’s not at all how Odysseus recalls the events.

In a vulnerable monologue during the final act of the film, Odysseus remembers the night Troy was sacked. But he’s not reciting it while beaming with a victor’s pride. Instead, he's stricken with remorse, tearfully recounting the story to his wife:

"What if the Odysseus you knew lost his way? What if... one night, in a strange city, he saw things that made him think the home he knew couldn't possibly be there anymore.

What if... when he left the belly of the horse, and opened the gates of Troy, he saw ten years of rage pour into that city in one night?

We left them a gift, an offering of peace, that they took into their home. We violated all that's ever sacred between people. It turned a fight into a hunt.

To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world-entire. Including his home.

What if he knew, that very night, as he walked through fires, anarchy, and pain—and in a daze of sweaty celebrations that followed—what if he knew exactly what he'd done?

One man's idea. One man's trick to break Zeus's law forever. We lived in a world of palaces and trade, language, blind to its beauty, until we broke it.

Maybe he couldn't bear to see the ruins of what he’d done. Anywhere. Least of all, his home.”

Despite being hailed as the wisest amongst the Greeks, Odysseus views himself as no better than his ‘enemies’ in Troy—perhaps even worse. In desperation to win a war, he exposed his true nature, broke “Zeus’ Law,” and overthrew everything considered sacred in ancient civilization.

In fighting monsters, he realized he had become one himself.

The master storyteller that he is, Nolan slowly unravels the real reason Odysseus hadn’t made it home in the long years following the victory at Troy—namely that there is a part of him that doesn’t actually want to make it back. He feels unworthy, and fears the implications of his mistakes washing up on the shores of the land he loves.

As a result, he lets pride and seep in as a counteracting drug. That pride drives him to take the eye of the Cyclops, challenge the temptation of the Sirens, and white-knuckle his way through the power of the gods to get himself and his men to safety. The guilt of his past choice is always looming. It influences every decision he makes. He won the war, but didn’t gain freedom.

He’s drowning in shame. And it leaves him stuck—far, far from home.

A Tale As Old As Time

The Odyssey is, of course, a fictional story—but the implications of coming face-to-face with our own guilt and shame are as real as it comes.

Shame says the same things to us as it did Odysseus: that we are too much, too flawed, and too far gone. That we can never return home.

As a result, we build shiny reputations for ourselves to forget how fallible we are. We point fingers at others to take the focus off our own mistakes. We never give ourselves more than a few seconds alone so we don’t have to face our own thoughts that whisper we're unloveable. We hide from God so we don't have to deal with his supposed disappointment. We measure ourselves against others, and when we don’t measure up, we change the scale.

These medications soothe the symptoms, but then shame comes knocking again. It holds us back from taking risks out of fear of failure. It scares us out of truly connecting with others, thinking they will reject what they see. It tells us we can’t approach God for grace because all he will do is slam the door in our face.

We all do it. And funny enough, we’ve been doing it since…forever ago, literally the first pages of the Bible.

You probably know the story. God creates a perfect world. In it, He places a beautiful garden. He drops two humans there—Adam and Eve—with only one rule. They still break it. When our story picks up, their shame has them hiding from God.

“But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?”

The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:9-13).

Adam and Eve had one job… and they muffed it. Royally. The way they react to that failure isn’t too far off from how most of us still react today. They hid. They pointed fingers. Their shame made them view God as a cruel judge—someone to escape from—and each other as the enemy—someone to blame.

Even though one of God’s defining characteristics is his grace and patience, Adam and Eve handled their mistake with the elegance of a baby deer on roller skates. I do the same thing, honestly.

When I mess up, I often do everything but come to God with the broken pieces. Instead, I give center stage to the internal voices telling me I am too broken, too unlovable, or too far gone. I distract myself from my own brokenness by judging those closest to me. I brush up on my good deeds as to feel more clean. I numb out and hide amongst countless vices. None of these things actually help. There is only one move that would actually heal me: returning home to God with my hands open, willing to take the blame.

It works the same for Odysseus. Our hero can’t make it home until he stops eating the emotion-and-mind-numbing lotus flowers, forcing himself to face the reality of who he is and what he has done. He lets go, relinquishing control over his past and present circumstances, and offers himself to Poseidon, the god of the sea. It’s only then that the barriers preventing his return are removed, and he washes up on the shores of Ithaca.

The sin of Odysseus wasn’t without consequences, and in many ways, it did follow him home. But the prison he’d locked himself in—one of shame, guilt, and despair—was finally opened. It was then and there, after ten years and countless trials, storms, and monsters, that he was free.

Paul’s Progression

Paul, an early leader in the Jesus movement and author of more than half of the New Testament, knew a little something about shame, too. When we first encounter him in the Scriptures, he’s actually persecuting the early believers, on a witch hunt to destroy this fledgling faith by killing its adherents.

After a dramatic conversion, where he comes face-to-face with Jesus, Paul’s life takes an unprecedented turn. The man who killed Christians is now one. He wasn’t immediately welcomed into the fold.

While it’s not explicitly recorded in the scriptures, many scholars believe Paul spent a significant amount of time after his conversion—as many as three years—living alone. The Church had a hard time trusting him, and his old friends didn’t want anything to do with him either. During this time, he must have wrestled with the debilitating mistakes of his past.

In what scholars believe to be his first letter, Paul says this to the church in Galatia:

For you have heard of my former life.. how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it… But [God]... called me by his grace…” (1 Corinthians 1:13-15)

Paul didn’t define his life by his greatest mistake. Grace had a better answer.

That didn’t mean he ignored his past. Despite all that he had done to advance the early Jesus movement—Paul’s ego didn’t grow larger over time. In fact, as he gets older, Paul becomes more aware of his own brokenness and his need for a savior. It's all there, in black and white, in his letters:

“I am the least of the apostles…” (1 Corinthians 15:9).

Five or so years later…

“I am the least of all the saints…” (Ephesians 3:8)

Another five or so years later…

“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy 1:15)

As the years passed, Paul actually began to see that he was more broken than he had previously thought. But this honest identity didn’t keep him from a life of impact. In fact, it was the catalyst. Right after declaring himself the worst of all sinners, Paul dared to write these words:

“But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” (1 Timothy 1:16)

Paul’s shame turned to freedom as he discovered the antidote to his brokenness: believing that God is ready to forgive his past and usher him into a brand new day. This allowed him to see his weakness not as something to hide, but an opportunity for the grace of God to shine through all the brighter.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (1 Corinthians 12:9-10)

In God’s kingdom, shame is defeated not by ignoring it, but by bringing it into the light.

The Freedom to Return Home

Odysseus finally made it home when he owned up to what he had done. Paul found freedom when he quit hiding his own brokenness. And freedom has come the same way in my own life—by owning my mistakes, offering them to God, and believing what he says about his limitless forgiveness.

Maybe you’re drowning in shame, believing you’re way too far gone for any life of purpose, true connection, or relationship with God. I’ve been there. Maybe you’re sitting pretty, thinking you’re not that bad, having not hurt as much as a fly, rarely giving shame a second thought. I’ve been there too. But the model we see of both these heroes (fictional and real) is that honestly addressing our brokenness and failures is not the path to despair, but to peace.

Paul was sure that nothing—not even his worst mistakes—could separate him from the love of God. That same is true for you. And for me. And I suppose even for Odysseus.

Living in that reality, more than anything else, is the fastest way to make it back home.

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Disclaimer: This article is 100% human-generated.

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