Guilt
To many, guilt is something that should be avoided. It feels
unpleasant to say the least and can sometimes be excruciatingly painful.
Psychologists have many explanations for guilt. Freud thought it involved the
psychosexual development of young children who were suppressing their desires
to have sex with their opposite gendered parent. Thankfully, most of the world
does not hold Freud as the authority on guilt or other emotions we try to
analyze. Many other psychologists tend to define it as an internal state that
culminates various negative emotions such as anxiety, stress, fear, doubt, etc.
Unfortunately, some people have difficulty exiting this state of mind; they
tend to remain guilty for longer than necessary.
Some may say that they have no control over how they feel,
that they “can’t help” but feel guilty. However real that may seem, it is not
true. Human beings have a choice to be what they want to be, whether they
realize it or not. How a person understands guilt is determined by his or her
worldview. Guilt is real, but we have a choice as to how to view it. It can
either be a monstrously personified emotion rampaging our subconscious, or an
indicator of our mistakes. It can be torment, or healthy correction. It is the
individual’s choice to determine the purpose and definition of guilt.
Guilt is often defined in comparison to shame. Shame is
usually considered the negative emotions that occur from not meeting the
standards of other people; is an externally evoked emotion. If a girl chose to
tuck her pants into her socks and another girl ridiculed her for her choice of
wardrobe, her embarrassment would be considered shame. Though she did know that
what she was doing would be “shameful” to someone else, but she would
experience that negative emotion only when she did not meet her peer’s
standards of style. On the other hand, guilt is an internal feeling caused by
the negative emotions of not meeting a higher standard that one believes to be
true. For example, Christians live by a moral code which was not created by
themselves but God. If a Christian were to break a commandment commit a sin,
bad feelings would usually ensue.
Guilt is an ugly feeling. It makes one feel dirty, wrong,
and simply “lesser”. People usually do not like said feeling, especially the
latter. Hence our history of human rights movements and protests, purposed with
bringing justice to the disenfranchised and marginalized. There were nations of
people who were bound by shame and were punished because they did not meet the
standards of appearance or culture of another country. This is shame and the
causation was founded on an ungodly sense of warped principles. However, the “lesser”
feeling of shame is not the same “lesser feeling of guilt, though it may seem
similar.
Shame is usually used by others to coerce and manipulate,
but guilt is something that comes from within. Some may say it is from our
conscious which helps to determine right from wrong, but I believe it is more
than a mistake detection device. Speaking from my worldview as a Christian, I
believe it has a God ordained purpose. It was originally used in the bible to
convey “indebtedness”, which was different from sin itself. “Sin” and “guilt”
were defined differently in the Old Testament and even had different
restitution methods. There were sin offerings and guilt offerings, separated by
the effects of each. Sin refers to the mistake or wrongdoing of a person, but
guilt stems from the relational harm between the people who commit and feel the
effects of the sin.
Say two men who are friends get into an argument. One
punches the other and breaks his nose. The one who threw the punch may be sorry
afterward and even pay for the hospital bill, but that is not the end of the
indebtedness. Their relationship is not the same as before and has been marred
from the actions of the other. It will take time and a lot of work the part of
the attacker to make up and restore the relationship. The same is when a Jew
would sin against God; that guilt would remain until they made the appropriate
guilt offerings and sacrifices to restore their relationship with God. However,
when Jesus came and paid the ultimate sacrifice, his death absolved our guilt
as well. Though we as Christians still feel the negative emotions that
accompany guilt, it is not a mental state in which we live our whole lives.
Christ came so that we could have direct relationship with God and never be “indebted”
again.
I believe that the guilt we feel today is designed like
smoke detectors are in modern houses. When we leave the food burning on the
stove or accidentally cook the popcorn for twenty minutes instead of two,
houses come with alarms that let us know when we are doing something wrong. An
extremely annoying noise is usually emitted informing the house inhabitants
that fast action is required. Sometimes water sprinklers spout from the ceiling
soaking everything and making life very difficult, miserable, wet, and cold.
Guilt is the same way. When people live in a lifestyle of sin that is hindering
their relationship with God, they may feel some negative emotions that are
indicators of required change. However, many simply wallow in their mistakes and
believe they have no choice but to live in a house that always beeps and rains
on them indoors.
When the alarms and sprinklers go off, we must do what we
can to put out the fires or see if there is a malfunction with our detectors.
Either way, it causes us to examine our foundations; it makes us go back to
God, which should be the first response whenever anything goes awry. That is
exactly what guilt should prompt: crying out to God and developing our
relationship with Him. Guilt is kind of like God’s toddler gate for his
children. When we are trying to go up the stairs, in the kitchen, or other “off
limits” areas, he puts up the safety gate. It may feel uncomfortable not to be
able to keep going in the direction we want, but it is for our own good so we do
not accidentally fall down the stairs on our weak undeveloped legs or stick our
hands in a drawer looking for treats and get stabbed by cutlery.
In the end, we as humans have a choice to believe what we
want about guilt. We can believe that it is designed by God for our good, or another
theory. Our free will can reach many extremes, as exemplified by Freud’s psychoanalytic
theories, but the fact is that God’s world does exist. We can choose to adopt
an existentialist mindset and believe we are all alone and that we create our
own meaning, or that there are already meanings created for us to learn and
understand by and God that loves us. We have the choice to believe what we
want, and I choose to believe that guilt is not a crippling monster that I
cannot overcome. At first, it may seem like you must consciously keep “making”
the choice to believe, but once you continue making the choice, it becomes truth
and there is no other way to believe. There is hope and guilt is not as bad as
it seems, if you choose to believe so.
Bibliography
Gilkerson, Luke. "Guilt vs Shame: Why Definitions
Matter." Covenant Eyes. Covenant Eyes, 15 July 2015. Web. 12
June 2017.
Motyer, Stephen. "Guilt Definition and Meaning - Bible
Dictionary." Bible Study Tools. Ed. Walter A. Elwell. Baker
House Book Company, 1996. Web. 12 June 2017.
Whitbourne, Susan Krauss. "The Definitive Guide to
Guilt." Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, 11 Aug. 2012.
Web. 12 June 2017.
Yancey, Philip. "Guilt Good and Bad." ChristianityToday.com.
Christianity Today, 18 Nov. 2002. Web. 12 June 2017
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