The man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame. It is important to distinguish between guilt and shame. We feel guilt (or at least we should feel guilt!) when we make a mistake. We feel shame when we imagine that we are the mistake. Adam and Eve felt no guilt because they were comfortable in their own skin. Just being who they were as they were was as it should be. The gospel story of the woman who was Greek, a Syrophoenician, tells the story of a woman without shame. She knew who she was — a mother who was going to do anything to help her daughter. She could not be shamed out of her identity by anything anyone said.
