Dealing with Guilt
By Dave Redick
Hwy 20 Church of Christ
Sweet Home, Oregon
"When I kept silent about my sin my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord'; and Thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. Selah."
Introduction
(Read Matt 26:57-75)
I doubt there could be a clearer picture of guilt than what we see in this account of Peter's denial of Jesus. Three times he is accused of being with Jesus, three times he repudiates it and even punctuates it with a curse, and then the God-appointed feathered foreman of the jury delivers the verdict: Guilty! The effect on Peter was devastating. Matthew says "He went out and wept bitterly." Imagine the intensity of Peter's guilt as he watched them crucify Jesus, knowing that after all his boasting, he had proven to be a coward when Jesus needed him most.
Guilt is one of the most powerful and distressing emotions in the experience of mankind. Few feelings are as painful as guilt and personal disapproval. Strong self-condemnation can turn a happy life into a nightmare. Guilt can gnaw on the conscious mind by day and invade the sleep and dreams of a person by night. It is behind much unhappiness and is certainly a factor in many cases of depression and suicide. Since it comes from inside it is not something that can be escaped by simply running away.
Jules Feiffer wrote in a poem about the futility of escaping guilt by running away:
Mental hospitals are full of people who have been unable to escape their own self-condemnation. Others not as severely effected just grind out their existence from day to day under a thick, black cloud of self-condemnation. Guilt is like background noise to others - not sever enough to bring them down but always there, spoiling all that life could be.
Not all guilt is bad. Guilty feelings can provide strong motivation for change and responsible behavior. For instance a husband may go to work when he would rather go fishing or play golf simply because he knows his wife and children need him to be consistent in financial support. A spouse may remain faithful to a mate because he or she knows that intense guilt would be associated with any infidelity.
Perhaps the best example of the good side of guilt can be seen in conversion. Genuine repentance occurs only when we are brought to the place where we feel guilt and remorse for our sins before God. But guilt continues to be a fact of life we must cope with even after conversion. That is what this message is about.
I'm sure that all of us struggle from time to time with guilt. Some of us live under a constant cloud of it and it robs us of the joy of living that ought to be the birthright of sincere Christians.
Are you one who struggles with guilt? Is there any way to make sense of it? Is there any escape from it? How can we separate destructive and invalid self-condemnation from the kind of guilt God uses to goad us into living right? What should be our response to guilty feelings? How can we cope?
In order to be sure we're starting on the same page, let's see if we can clarify just what we mean when we speak of guilt. What is it that makes us feel guilty?
I. What Is Guilt?
The conscience is in some way associated with guilt. A group of children, ages five through nine, was polled with the question, "What is a conscience?" One six-year-old girl said a conscience is the spot that burns when you're not good. A six year old boy said he didn't know, but thought it had something to do with feeling bad when you kicked girls or little dogs. A nine-year-old explained it as a voice inside that says "no" when you do something like beating up your little brother. She said her conscience had saved him a lot of times.
While it may be difficult to define the concept of conscience, I think we would all agree that guilt occurs when we violate our inner code of conduct as evaluated by our conscience. Guilt then is an emotion that occurs when we receive a message of disapproval from the conscience that says in effect, "You've done wrong. You should be ashamed of yourself."
Descriptions of the effects of guilt can be seen in a number of places in scripture. In Psalm 32:3-5, David wrote:
"When I kept silent about my sin my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I did not hide; I said, 'I will confess my transgressions to the Lord'; and Thou didst forgive the guilt of my sin. Selah."
Notice David's mention of that pressing down feeling that is so commonly felt when we are under the strong effects of guilt.
In Psalm 31:9-10 he wrote:
"Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; My eye is wasted away from grief, my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; My strength has failed because of my iniquity, and my body has wasted away."
Sorrow, distress, wasting away from grief, sighing, failing strength… these describe some of the mental and physical effects of guilt.
David's guilt in these instances was the result of violating God's law. The source of his self-condemnation was the knowledge that he had knowingly and willingly transgressed God's commandments. In the earlier of the two passages he said, "Thy hand was heavy upon me…." That brings us to an important question:
II. Does All Guilt Come From God?
Certain guilt feelings can indicate that a person isn't right with the Creator. Very often the guilt we experience comes because we violate the clear teachings of God's Word.
A certain couple decided to take a two-week vacation one summer and hired a fifteen year old boy to water their lawn and bring in the mail while they were gone. They gave him a key to the house and asked him to maintain the property until they returned. The boy did an excellent job and was paid for his time. Several months later, though, he came to the house again and knocked on the front door. As he stood there trembling with emotion he confessed that he had taken a stick of gum he found lying on their kitchen table. Since he had stolen the gum, he told them, he had suffered intense guilt. In tears, he took a small coin out of his pocket and asked them to accept it as payment for the stolen gum and requested their forgiveness for his dishonesty.
We might say a stick of gum isn't worth that kind of trouble but that is sometimes the way guilt works. It’s a good thing, too, because a young person with such a sensitive conscience will probably never become a shoplifter or a hardened criminal.
Guilt has a way of being used by God to put pressure on us to behave responsibly. But not all guilt comes from God.
A number of years ago James Dobson explained in an interview how workers in pediatrics hospitals frequently encounter parents with feelings of guilt because they have given birth to physically and mentally retarded children. These are parents who have never abused drugs or done anything to adversely effect their health, yet they feel somehow that it must be their fault. Though such things are totally out of their control and the unavoidable and unpredictable result of errors in genetic material, these parents nonetheless feel guilty. He said that sometimes he had even seen the crush of such guilt end of the marriages involved.
Clearly God doesn't hold such grief stricken parents under His disapproval. They did not intentionally produce physical limitations in their children. Their guilt doesn't originate from God but from within themselves.
Yet someone might ask, "Could it be that God is somehow punishing such parents and showing them his disapproval for something?"
Though I have heard such things suggested, I cannot see how such could be true. If it is true that God punishes certain parents by causing their children to be retarded, it must also be true that others are being rewarded for having healthy ones. I have seen some very wicked parents give birth to very healthy children and very godly parents give birth to children with very serious limitations.
Actually, I believe great comfort can be found in the Word of God on this subject. You might remember the question asked of Jesus in John 9 about the man born blind. "Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he should be born blind?" Jesus gave the answer that can liberate such parents: "It was neither that this man sinned, nor his parents; but it was in order that the works of God might be displayed in him." The reason God allowed this man's blindness from birth was so He could reveal Himself in a very special way through the man's life.
Some feelings of self-condemnation then, do not originate from God and should rightly be dismissed into the realm of false guilt.
By the way, this is one area where we need to be on our toes. Satan will certainly try to fan the flames of such false guilt and use it to attempt to persuade us that we're not right with God. He isn't called "the Accuser of the Brethren" for nothing. One of the keys for handling guilt is to sort out what originates from God and what is self-inflicted.
A mother walked toward a busy street with her little three-year-old son. They were going to check the mailbox on the other side of the road. They had done this quite a few times. The little boy would run ahead and stop at the curb until his mother told him it was safe to cross. On this particular occasion the mother was thinking about something else and nodded in approval when the child asked, "Can I go, mommy?" The little boy ran into the street and was hit by a semi-truck and trailer. The mother gasped in terror and helplessness as she watched the front and back wheels of the eighteen wheeler crushed the life from her precious little boy. Hysterical, she ran into the road and gathered the broken remains of her child into her arms. She had unintentionally allowed the death of her little son. The last words she remembered him saying were, "Can I go now, Mommy?" That women will experience guilt over and over again as her tormented mind plays that scene back to her, but I don't believe God holds her personally responsible. The last thing in the world that woman would have intended was the death of her little boy. It was an accident. Not all guilt comes from God.
It is also true that some people are very capable of producing guilt in us. This past week I found the following anonymous communication on a web page:
"The other day I got some money in the mail. It was from my mother. Actually the money wasn’t for me, but for my children. My mother feels guilty living so far from her grandchildren, so sends a couple of twenties now and then. She tells us to let the kids buy something. Included with the cash was a note saying that this was her grocery money but she would figure out some way not to let my stepfather starve. He’d never know if she watered down his tomato soup or perhaps slipped him some extra large raisins in place of his prunes. What was she trying to do, lay the guilt on me for taking the money?"
Some people seem to be experts at laying guilt on others. You may have someone like this in your life, too. This is just another example of guilt that doesn't originate from God.
In coping with guilt, it is important that we identify the source. Have we somehow violated God's law or is self-inflicted? Could this guilt I am feeling be used by Satan to bring me down?
Well then, if not all guilt originates from God,
III. Does An Absence of Guilt Mean We Are Blameless Before God?
Not necessarily.
There are some very notable examples of vicious, evil people who are far from being right with God who seem to feel no guilt at all for their atrocities. There is no evidence that Adolph Hitler experienced any serious measure of guilt during his life, despite the torment he inflicted upon the world and the approximately 50 million people who died because of what he instigated.
Joseph Stalin is said to have murdered between 20 and 30 million people during his long dictatorship, yet his conscience apparently remained quiet and unprovoked right up to the end.
The conscience, which triggers guilt from within, is a fragile thing. It can be damaged. It can be ignored. Perhaps it can even be absent in some cases. Paul spoke in 1 Timothy 4:2 of people "seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron…"
A big "searer" of conscience today is widespread social opinion. "If everybody is doing it without consequences, even the President of the United States, then the protests of my conscience toward immorality must surely be wrong." So, such people adjust their conscience.
I think a lot of Christians are not aware of what is happening to them in this area. Night after night they watch the sitcoms and evening soap opera type programs on TV. They seem totally unaware that as they become more and more familiar with those who flaunt immorality and laugh along with those who make fun of what is right, they are making tiny burns in their conscience. They are singeing away tissue (so to speak) that is difficult, if not impossible, to restore.
Some time ago a young divorced woman who had been involved in a number of affairs with men came to me for advice. She had remarried and now wanted to try to get her family back on track. I suggested a couple of things she might do with them in the evenings that could involve her new husband. One of the things I suggested occurred on a certain night - I believe it was Thursday. She informed me that it wouldn't work because that was the night she had devoted to her favorite program. I asked her what program could be more important than getting her family back on track. She said "Melrose Place!" Now I've never seen anything but previews for Melrose Place and that alone is enough to make me hit the "mute" button on my remote.
My point here is that a clear conscience isn't necessarily an indicator that a person is right with God.
The conscience is an imperfect mental faculty. There are times when it condemns us for mistakes and human frailties that cannot be avoided and times when it will remain silent in the face of indescribable wickedness. Whether it is a matter of condemning us when it shouldn't or failing to collar us when it should, the conscience is only as good as its training in matters of right and wrong. While it and the guilt feelings it produces can be very helpful, it was never designed to function in a solo venue. A balanced life that is both free from unnecessary guilt and yet keeps a healthy hedge against wrongdoing can only result when the conscience is teamed up with a good understanding of the Word of God in us.
Finally, I want to ask the obvious question:
IV. How Should We Handle Our Guilt Feelings?
Guilt feelings need to be subjected to three tests before we accept them as valid. The first is:
A. The Test of the Inner Voice.
The proper dealing with guilt begins with the conscience, which I'm calling here, the inner voice." We've already talked about it to some extent and seen that it can be an imperfect indicator of true guilt. Nonetheless, it should not be ignored. In fact, it should be the focus of the attention of every true Christian. We must listen to it very carefully to see what it is actually saying.
Paul said in Acts 24:16, "…I also do my best to maintain always a blameless conscience both before God and before men."
Paul listened to that inner voice of his conscience.
He wrote in 1Timothy 1:5: "But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith."
In this test we seek to identify exactly what it is the conscience is protesting. It may help to take a piece of paper and write it down. Verbalization will help us clarify what the inner voice is saying. We ask, "What exactly is the problem? Why am I feeling guilty? What is the source of my guilty feelings?" It may help to imagine this: "If I could somehow magically remove one issue from my life so as to make it cease to exist, what would that one thing be?"
Guilt is the expression of our conscience through our emotions, but emotions are highly subjective. We need an objective grasp of what is causing the guilty feelings.
The inner voice conveys disapproval to our rational mind through feelings of self-condemnation. It is, in effect, an early warning system - a first line of defense. If it is functioning correctly, it flags down every thought, action, or attitude that it perceives to be improper. Like the policeman in a blue uniform who sees a crime or what appears to be a crime and makes an arrest, the conscience arrests every thought, action, or attitude it perceives as wrong. Do our "men in blue" ever make a mistake? Yes, they do. They're human. So, too, the conscience can make a mistake. We must, therefore, be sure we evaluate exactly what it is (and isn't) saying. The policeman must do his paperwork when he makes an arrest. So, too, our conscience must be made to do its paperwork.
Some folks never get to this step, so they continue to feel guilty without ever knowing exactly why. Others stop at this point. But arresting a thought, action, or attitude is only the first step. Once an arrest has been made and the charge has been clarified, a court must be convened. In this court we apply:
B. The Test of God's Word.
The thought, action, or attitude must now stand trial, subjected by the Christian to tests of rationality, which ask, "What does God's word say about this? Is this thought, act, or attitude wrong by the standard of God's word?"
The seasoned Christian will draw upon his or her store of Bible knowledge here. The new Christian may need to query those who are older in the faith and more experienced to find the answer.
The unbeliever runs into big problems at this point. In a relativistic society with few perceived standards of right and wrong and rejection of the Word of God, this trial is considered irrelevant. Given no way to try the accusations of the conscience, the case is referred back to the conscience and feelings where it has to capacity to make one quite miserable as we have seen in some of the earlier examples. This is why so many opt to sear their conscience.
The final test to which guilty feelings should be subjected is:
C. The Test of Intent.
Here the intent of the thought, action, or attitude is reviewed. The question is asked, "What was the intent behind this action? Was it done intentionally or in ignorance?"
It surely seems to me that there is a lessening of culpability in cases where there is ignorance or in the case of accidents.. Though good intentions do not mitigate culpability in every wrong, intention is an issue that has consequences and needs to be reviewed. It is also true that a certain action may not violate the letter of God's law but may surely contain evil intent. The Hebrew writer says,
"For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword… and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart."
Peter said to Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8:22, "… repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you."
Paul said in 1 Timothy 1:13, "Even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor. And yet I was shown mercy, because I acted ignorantly in unbelief."
Though we must still seek forgiveness from God in cases where we did wrong unintentionally, knowing that our intent was not to do evil makes forgiving ourselves and quieting our conscience a bit easier.
[Incidentally, sometimes people are heard to say, "I know God has forgiven me, but I can never forgive myself." My response to such an assertion is to ask, "Are you better than God? Do you consider yourself to be one who can correct the Almighty? Is your evaluation of yourself greater than His? If the Creator of the Universe has acquitted you, who are you to say that things should be different?" You need to accept His verdict in faith and apply it to yourself and veto any future guilty feelings by saying to your conscience something like, "If God has forgiven me, then I am forgiven. I am not guilty." Then turn, as the formerly guilty persecutor, Saul of Tarsus, did and give your life to God in service.]
The outcome of this three part test will determine what comes next. If we are acquitted in the latter two tests, word should be sent back to the conscience to back off. If the verdict is guilty in either of the last two, the remedy is to seek God in repentance, confession, and forgiveness. [This message is for those who are in Christ. Those not in Christ must first obey the gospel.]
Conclusion
Jesus' answer to Peter's guilt was to restore Him. (See the later part of John 21.) He wants to restore us, too, if we need restoring.
Are you living under a cloud of guilt? It doesn't have to be that way. All of us will and should experience guilt from time to time. I do not believe, however, that God intended that we continue in it very long without dealing with it.
Are you guilty? If so, you need to determine the source and either denounce it as false guilt or bring it to God and let Him take it away.
Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.
Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.
All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.
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