I am not ashamed

I've grown to associate Paul's assertion here, that he's not ashamed of the gospel, seeing how it's the power of God for the salvation of all active in belief, with a kind of evangelical militancy. I grew up with such people in such churches: people who can be difficult, intrusive, not understanding - all because there focus is on "getting people saved" or "being God's man or woman in the midst of the fray." And so I've found a certain distaste in it's proclamation, in so far as I feel it's proclamation to have the depth of a mere slogan, or else an evasion.
Keck points out that Paul is speaking ironically: he really boasts in the gospel - why would he feel any shame? But I think that this text highlights the notion of shame. It's an honor and shame society that Paul and the early believers live in, as many commentators observe. Paul is not saying that the gospel might be something he's tentative about, reticent to voice - but what he's saying is that that proclaiming the gospel is actually an honor: an honor that runs counter to what Roman society considered worthy of honor. Because God alone dispenses honor and shame, Paul can say that the gospel proclamation does not devolve into shame for him, but conversely, honor.
It is now, after a hundred years of individualism as the guiding mindset of the the West, that shame takes on a different cast, an interior condition, an aspect of diminution towards the outside. And shame is more than embarrassment. Embarrassment is a momentary condition that flows from anxiety.
Shame, I am discovering, is hammered into us during childhood. We are taught to be ashamed of our bodies, our thoughts, our desires. As we grow older certain social constraints depend on the inculcated shame people have.
The gospel should be one means of attacking this shame. Shame is after all an interior idol, a quality that we attend to at the expense of worshiping God: that is, being who we are as God created us. But this voice of the super ego, the constant critic, attacks. In many ways this interior critic is too much taken for granted as part of our voice, and we may be slow to oppose it. Yet all sorts of perfidy flow from the super ego. It nags and threatens. Cognitive therapy puts a cap on it, but its source howls away inside.
I am fortunate that I have some guidance in questioning this voice. I have to say that reading Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle has been immensely helpful. Even more so than anything I've read from Jung. Definitely more concise than anything I've read through Zizek or Kristeva from Lacan. Nancy Chodorow's Reproduction of Mothering is immensely helpful too.