Help Me Develope A Message To Promote My Book (part 2 – guilt)
Posted By Aaron Marcelli on April 7, 2010
As I mentioned in my last post, I am giving away a free copy of my book to a random selection from all those who leave comments on any post from this two week series about the contents of my book. I hope to hear your comments today regarding the subject of guilt.
If you’ve been in church for long, I’m sure you’ve either heard or experienced a lot to do with guilt. The traditional church has mastered making others feel guilty for listening to secular music, drinking too many beers, not witnessing to enough strangers, and a series of other non-eternal issues. The contemporary church tries to rescue those who have been damaged by that type of church and so they bend the opposite direction in emphasizing that we should not focus on guilt or be a hostage to it.
So with two opposing views about guilt coming from people who truly love Jesus, where are we to stand. Could it not be that a little guilt could be healthy and perhaps could even be used by God? I personally believe that guilt shows us the condition of our soul. God intended for us to live holy and whole, but we don’t always do that. And when we mess up, guilt becomes present. I don’t think we should let it overtake us, but just like pain to our outer body, guilt may serve as an alarm that something is wrong with our inner person.
When discussing with a friend that I was putting a lot of guilt on myself over what I had done that caused me to be released from a previous ministry experience, I was told to not put more of it on myself than I should but not less than God would.
So, what has been your experience with guilt? Does church leave you feeling with more or less guilt than you think is healthy? How has that affected your view of church and perhaps even God? As I look to develop a message that I can present in correlation with my upcoming book, I would greatly appreciate your input on this and the other issues we will be discussing on here in the following days.
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The church I grew up in, which you are plenty familiar with of course, seems to put more guilt on me than it should for things that it shouldn’t, and less for things that it should. I have been made to feel guilty for not dressing churchy enough, for my hairstyle when I put pink streaks in it, for not passing out tracts on wednesday nights, and a slew of other things I never saw as that important. And while I have personally felt convicted for the following, the church has never seemed to care– in fact, has seemed to encourage– things I feel God puts much more importance on: accepting without judging every sin, not considering yourself better than others, not focusing too much on material possessions and appearances (which sounds cliche but I think is actually extremely important), treating others with respect and kindness, putting the needs of others before ourselves, etc. It’s the primary reason I don’t go to church these days. I don’t need to be in an environment where I have to listen to criticisms of how the church is decorated that day or complaints about the shortage of cheap free give-outs at a festival. I don’t want to be surrounded by Christians who don’t practice compassion and love in everyday life, who focus on the convenient sins (homosexuality, promiscuity, etc, anything they don’t practice themselves) and ignore the fact that lying to a friend or getting angry with your child or boss is just as big of a sin in God’s eyes. I now leave it up to God and my conscience to provide me with any guilt required to take corrective action.
There presently exists in American Evangelicalism (especially among younger believers) the desire to bash on the church. Most criticisms leveled at it are fair and some are even intuitive. Dosages of guilt can be used (as a shortcut to careful exegesis and the Holy Spirit’s conviction) to produce a response in a congregation. Few who have sat under such teaching would argue the effectiveness nor the potential destructiveness that can result from such a style.
Yet the problem lies not with guilt. Guilt is a natural reaction with sinful man comes to grips with a holy God. In that regard, guilt is healthy and necessary. When man realizes the extent of his own sinfulness (Ephesians 2:8-9) and the enduring and all-encompassing holiness of God (Psalm 145:17) then there can be no better reaction than that of Isaiah (6:5) than to say “woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips.” When faced with God’s holiness the ONLY appropriate response is guilt and even fear.
Yet God has made provision for guilt, both in salvation and in the Christian life, through His Son, Christ. In Christ, guilt is done away with. 2 Corinthians 5:21 beautifully exclaims that Christ was made to be sin, though He was sinless, that we might be given the righteousness of God. That means the guilt of our sin and God’s wrath (a holy and just wrath) against our sin have been satisfied in Christ. God did not withhold His wrath but poured the entirety of it on His Son. So, those who are drawn by God to Himself and respond in faith are partakers of the marvelous love of God. There is a double imputation here. The guilt of the sinner is imputed to Christ, though it is not His. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believing sinner, though it is not his.
In other words, after conversion, the believer is clothed in the righteousness of Christ and God, in a judicial sense, no longer sees the sinner but His Son. It is on the basis of Christ’s imputed righteousness that Paul exclaims in Romans 8:1 that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. It is on the basis of Christ’s imputed righteousness that Hebrews 4 tells us we can boldly approach God’s throne and commune with Him.
So for the unbeliever, there should be guilt. The full weight of their sin rests on their shoulders. But for those who are in Christ, all guilt has been imputed to Christ and totally paid for. The reality is that believers still sin. And when they do they should feel badly about their sin. But they should feel no guilt. Guilt has been paid for. Rather, Christians feel badly because they have turned their back on the Gospel and traded something of infinite worth for something temporal.
What is needed, then, as a remedy to ungodly guilt is Godly guilt. Guilt which focuses on the holiness of God and the sinfulness of man–yet finds its solution in the Gospel. And some believers can conclude, with Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:30, that Christ has been made their righteousness–and there is great rest in that. Only the Gospel can produce this peace, all else fails.
I believe that Jesus never ever felt guilt on anything he did – ever! I think that that would be true if He lived today too no matter which church He went to, or what messages He listened to. The reason He did not feel guilt is because He did nothing wrong. We are supposed to be Christ-like and I believe if we truly were we would never feel guilt.
Others mentioned how people are quick to attack “the church” or how “the church” gives opposing views as to what we should feel guilt over. I think that it should have nothing to do with “the church.” We remember the WWJD bracelets that were so popular years ago; I think that is the key to whether or not we should feel guilt. According to the Bible, how much beer would Jesus drink? According to the Bible what kind of music would Jesus listen to? According to the Bible who would Jesus NOT witness to?
For me, I know that if I drank no alcohol there is no way I would have to worry about getting to Heaven and getting rebuked for not drinking a couple bottles. I do not know that would be the case if I did drink a bottle.
Examples could go on and on, but you get the point.
As a Christian we are to follow the Bible. if we feel guilty about an issue that is because our conscience is letting us know we are not following what we know is right.
Guilt. Now there’s a subject that all but the most sever sociopath can relate to. For all have sinned… So, what then is the standard? There has only been one example to point the non-believer to; however, the unbeliever watches the believer oh so closely awaiting the inevitable slip. Then, once we slip and show we are not perfect – guilt.
What can we as believers show if it is not the world’s expected “christian perfection” lived out? My opinion is that we cannot escape guilt, but we must show true forgivness. Jesus – that only true example of Christianity – taught that we should. Love your nieghbor as yourself. Do we have trouble forgiving ourselves? If so, we will have trouble forgiving others.
So, not to condemn the whole of the church, but that is where most “church experiences” go awry. We fail to forgive. We are quick to cast the first stone and not offer the first olive branch. I ask now that you all forgive my hypocracy, but I have trouble with unforgiveness from the organization of the church. I understand the teachings of some of the new testament “letters”, and that the organization has to be held to a higher standard, but where does that leave Jesus? It seems to me that the organization can hold people, staff, lay people, teachers etc. to a higher standard without making a spectacle of those actions. We are so amused with the sins of others that we miss the blessing of forgiveness. I do not want to know your sins as I have enough of my own to contend with. If God himself can forgive you as you have confessed and asked him to do, then it is as far as East is from the West.
So, Like Aaron said, we all struggle with our own guilt. The past is frozen in our memories and we cannot rewind our lives to correct and undo our wrongs, we can only learn from those mistakes – hopefully. Personally, most of the guilt I carry is regret for the way I treated people. All of those instances came from my trying to live life for myself, not while I was trying to live in His will. I have tried to teach my kids to look at the end results of actions at the begining of those actions. Sounds simple… Anyway, if one can live their life without regret, it is likely they have lived as nearly perfect as a person can hope. I am far from perfect.
Personally, I have enough of my own guilt to worry about. I pray that you can all forgive what I have done, said, let you down, whatever is between us. I also pray that I am quick to forgive too.
I personally feel that guilt comes from within, not from someone making me feel guilty. I know in my heart (and God knows my sin) the things that I should feel guilty about. I feel that the Holy Spirit convicts me of my sin and if you have a close relationship with Jesus you should feel guilty when you sin against Him.