Toni Kim has a new book coming in August 2026—Shame Redeemed: Learning to Live in Christ’s Freedom. She is a Taiwanese-American pastor who tireless worked on a seminary thesis about shame in Scripture and this book makes all that studied research accessible.
This conversation covers the critical distinction between unashamed and shameless, how social media cancel culture has turned shame into a universal experience, and why the church has yet to become what it should be: a place where people can walk in with their shame and be covered rather than condemned.
Toni and DJ also get personal — talking about shame that feels like blinding condemnation in the moment, why community is essential (not optional) for healing, and what to actually do when you’re frozen and can’t think your way out.
Show Notes
- Shame Redeemed: Learning to Live in Christ’s Freedom by Toni Kim
- K-Pop Demon Hunters (film)
- 3 Great Quotes from Toni Kim
- “We should be unashamed — but we shouldn’t be shameless.”
- “The survivor of abuse feels shame, while the perpetrator feels neither guilt nor shame. It’s so wrong.”
- “There’s a lot of shameless shaming that goes on in social media cancel culture. We’re all swimming in it now.”
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Transcript
DJ: This is the Erasing Shame podcast. I’m your host today, DJ Chuang, and I am with Toni Kim, who has authored a brand new book titled Shame Redeemed: Learning to Live in Christ’s Freedom. Welcome to the Erasing Shame podcast.
Toni: It’s a joy to be with you, DJ.
DJ: You have a book titled with “shame,” so Erasing Shame is the perfect place to learn more about how this book came about and who you are — all the good stuff. We have listeners who are both Christians and non-Christians, so how does a book about shame and Christ’s freedom help someone who may not be Christian?
Toni: That’s a great question. The book is definitely written for a Christian audience, but obviously the topic of shame is something that affects Christians and non-Christians alike. I love that your podcast has listeners who share the Christian faith and listeners who don’t.
I think we are all designed to live lives that are free from shame — to be unashamed. But most of our lives are characterized by experiencing a lot more shame than we want to. I wanted to address the complex problem of shame.
Sometimes we tend to think of shame as completely negative. A lot of it is very negative, but there are instances where we should feel shame. I think we should be unashamed, but we shouldn’t be shameless. Shameless means having no regard for right or wrong — and when we’re shameless, we might end up doing things that are actually shameful and increase our shame problem rather than decrease it.
One way I distinguish this: oftentimes the survivor of abuse feels shame, while the perpetrator feels neither guilt nor shame.
DJ: That’s so wrong.
Toni: Exactly — it’s so wrong. So we don’t want to get rid of all shame, because the perpetrator should feel shame. That shame should, first, make them refrain from the act in the first place, and secondarily, cause them to stop, repent, apologize, and make things right.
Shame is part of the human condition.
DJ: Right. And for me, I need all the help I can get — so spirituality is a helpful resource. One of the things I’ve learned in my mental health journey is that there are many resources out there: psychotherapy, art therapy, medication, religion, and spirituality. The conversation has grown over the past five or six years. Post-COVID, mental health became part of our conversations — even in Asian and Asian American spaces where it wasn’t so much before.
What I’m learning in the mental health space is that there’s actually a growing value and respect for the place of religion and spirituality as part of our healing. While spirituality may not be helpful to everybody — it’s kind of like medication with side effects — if it’s helping people, awesome. If it’s not, we don’t need to degrade that.
So let’s get into who you are and how this book came about.
Toni: Who I am is such a big question. I’m Taiwanese American, born and raised in Houston, Texas. Within the Asian American context, we just live shame — shame is part of our culture of origin, and shame is part of what it’s like to navigate not being white enough to be American and not being Asian enough to fit with the home country. So you have this experience of navigating different kinds of shame.
I became a Christian in high school, and then in college through InterVarsity, they gathered Asian American leaders and gave us language and vocabulary for talking about shame — talking about it as something that Asians and Asian Americans have real insight into. The Bible, coming from more of a shame culture, actually talks a lot about the problem of shame but also the healing for our shame. That began a real journey — what does the Bible say about it?
I ended up in seminary at Regent College, where I wrote a thesis on what the Bible says about shame, and specifically how that affects Asian American evangelism and spiritual formation. That was over 30 years ago. But really, through my time in vocational ministry, I’ve had the opportunity to see that shame is not just something that affects Asian Americans — it affects people of all cultures.
DJ: You’ve mentioned our bicultural experience as Asian Americans, navigating the space between our Asian heritage — whether Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, or Southeast Asian — and this multicultural, dominantly white American space. How have these cultures influenced how we deal with shame?
Toni: Those cultures definitely influence how we experience shame. As Asian Americans, we more intuitively understand shame. White American culture has often been very individualistic and oriented toward independence.
But I think the massive culture change that has kind of overridden everything is social media cancel culture — which is entirely shame-based. Because social media has taken over our lives, everything has become a shame culture. Something we do might go viral and ruin our lives forever. When social media first started, people would say things online that they would never say face to face, because it would be shameful to act that way in public. But social media has changed the rules. There’s a lot of shameless shaming that goes on — and I think that culture has magnified everyone’s experience of shame. Now we’re all kind of swimming in it.
DJ: “Shameless shaming” — that’s a catchy phrase. Maybe it’ll go viral. We’re finding language to wrestle down shame, because we haven’t had language for it.
Toni: That’s right. And that’s part of why it’s so elusive — and so painful and insidious. It festers.
DJ: Brené Brown has really popularized it in mainstream culture.
Toni: That’s right, and that’s been really helpful. Though as an Asian American, some of it still doesn’t fully connect for me, because I need to sort through it in my cultural context.
For me personally, shame often feels like condemnation — the feeling that I’m not doing enough, I’m not good enough, why did I make that mistake. That even happened to me this past week. So how can you bring spiritual healing into that? Is there a difference between condemnation and conviction?
Toni: Absolutely. Shame makes us turn in on ourselves — feel inadequate, feel like we need to hide, fear exposure. If people knew what I did, if they knew what I thought, they would reject me. That’s terrifying.
Those voices of condemnation make us spiral downward. But what we’re trying to figure out is: how do we not spiral? How do we say — I did this, I’m really ashamed, but it does not define who I am. This abuse I experienced was horrible, I feel so much shame about it, but it does not define me. And we need each other to believe that and live it out.
We also have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, because conviction is real — sometimes you need to hear: that was wrong, what you did was wrong, and you need to repent. That word just means admitting what you did was wrong.
DJ: Why can’t we just put that into the “guilt” bucket?
Toni: Guilt and shame are theoretically separable, but they’re connected — definitely overlapping. What we do and who we are are separate, but they impact each other greatly.
DJ: So tell us more about what spiritual healing looks like. You started by talking about identity, but when I experience shame, it shouts so loud I can’t even think. I feel trapped. I feel stuck.
Toni: Did you see the movie K-Pop Demon Hunters?
DJ: I have not — but I’ve heard about it. Tell me more.
Toni: You need to see it. It’s all about shame, and I think that’s part of why it’s become so viral. The main demon literally says that it’s the characters’ shame, and she can use it against them. Those voices of condemnation — the K-pop demon hunters sing and dance and hunt demons, but at some point the voices of shame take over them. “I’m too much.” “I’m not enough.” Those voices are loud and they feel true.
DJ: How do we fight that shame? How do we fight those voices of condemnation that feel so real?
Toni: We have to fight it together. The movie shows this — it’s not just one kind of superhero saving the day. It requires everybody. So much of how we’re wired in America is to treat this as an individual problem to solve alone. But it’s communal. We need each other to “re-family” us, to help us know what is really true about us.
DJ: Truth makes a big difference, I’m hearing.
Toni: It certainly does. The feelings are valid, but they’re not always true. We tend to take a nugget of truth — “I’m so selfish” — and totalize it. A guilty action becomes an all-consuming condemnation. What does it look like instead to hear the good news of Jesus: I’ve made you my children, and there is nothing you can do that will make me love you less?
The most true thing about me is that I am loved by God — loved by a God who loved me enough to give his Son as a sacrifice. If that were the thing I believed was most true, then those voices of condemnation might speak, but I can say, “Quiet down — the loudest voice is that I am loved by God, bought with a price.” And I belong to a body of believers who will remind me of who I am.
DJ: Let’s unpack that more. It sounds very grounding to have that cosmic, meta-narrative question answered spiritually. But in the moment — I feel stuck. My stress response tends to be freeze rather than fight or flight. What can I do in that moment when I can’t even think?
Toni: If you’re by yourself and you’re freezing, start with a basic prayer: God, help. This is where I am. Even if you don’t believe in God: God, whoever you are, help. Then reach out to someone — reach out to a friend and say, “I’m struggling with this.”
We often think: I know what the right answer is, so why would I bother telling anyone? They’ll just tell me the right answer and I need to get myself to believe it. But it’s something very different when you tell a friend, “I’m struggling with X, Y, or Z,” and they say, “That’s okay. I’m with you. Thank you for trusting me with this. I’m going to come alongside you.” That is what defeats shame — because shame says you have to hide, everyone will reject you, you have to go it alone. Exposing yourself is the risk, and you have to choose wisely who you reach out to. But if we can learn to treat each other with grace rather than shame, the message is: don’t try to do it on your own.
DJ: In my experience, it’s hard to find safe people.
Toni: That’s right.
DJ: Even in the Christian context, we’re not exactly known for being accepting and grace-filled — the kind of place people come knocking when they feel shame. So how do we find those people, and how do we cultivate spaces where that becomes the norm?
Toni: That’s exactly right. What you’ve done with destigmatizing mental health, DJ — that’s basically what we need to be doing with shame too. You say the church is not known as a place where people can bring their shame, and I want to say: not yet. It can become that, because that’s who God is. God is the one who welcomes sinners. God is the one who is close to the brokenhearted.
We need a complete culture change within our churches — going back to: who is God, and how do we be more like him? So much of the time we present an angry God who’s going to punish you for your sin. But no — God is one who does not treat us as our sins deserve. When he calls us, he’s not calling us out to condemn us. He’s calling us out to cover us. He’s saying: you screwed up, but you’re still my children and I love you.
I want to not just create safe people, but safe churches — because that is what the real gospel proclaims: a God who knows we’re going to mess up, and through Jesus makes clear: I love you, and I’m going to be with you to the end.
DJ: Wow. Thank you for painting us a brighter future — for churches, for us dealing with shame that comes up, shame from our past, and shame that gets thrown on us unexpectedly.
So tell us: when is the book releasing, and what are you most excited about?
Toni: The book releases August 4th. What am I most excited about? Having people have these conversations about shame — because no one actually wants to talk about shame; it’s uncomfortable. But if we can get over that discomfort and ask, “Is there good news about shame?” I’m excited about people talking about what the Bible says about shame, because when they realize all that God has done and is doing and invites us into, it has the potential to transform the way we see ourselves, the way we treat each other, and hopefully eventually the way churches invite people in when they’re feeling ashamed and afraid of rejection — so that churches would become places of welcome.
DJ: Wonderful. Thank you for writing this book. I hear it’s a long process, and I’m so happy to see you found a publisher that values what you have to say. Thank you for sharing it here on the Erasing Shame podcast. Look forward to seeing you in person next time.
Toni: Yes — wherever God takes us. Sounds good. Thanks so much, DJ.
DJ: Thank you, listeners and viewers of the Erasing Shame podcast. You can find the show notes and a direct link to pre-order the book at erasingshame.com. Pre-order and you’ll be among the first to receive it — free delivery if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber.