We Don’t Have The Answer For Guilt!
We have no cure for guilt. The ever-growing list of treatments man keeps inventing to cope with guilt’s horrific effects should be our first clue that we don’t have a clue. Starting with the barbarism of shock treatment therapy that has evolved into the more humane manipulation of body chemistry through pharmaceuticals, honesty compels facing the fact that at best we attack symptoms only and not the actual removal of guilt itself.
Rubber Bullets
Guilt remains a fugitive at large alluring the most exquisite reasonings, rationalizations, compensations, and redefinition spin-doctors to address its challenge. “Pro-choice,” “crimes are just mistakes,” “nobody’s perfect,” “victim mentality” and “blame therapy” should get an honorable mention for the cunning that’s concocted them. Vilifying guilt as mere “social mores,” or leftover puritanical snobbery, or neutralizing it as vestigial leftovers of evolution, and pretending there are no moral absolutes might have more impact if not for the dilution of additional spins and constantly changing new attempts to defeat the problem of guilt. Guilt has more pseudo-solutions than weight loss. Face it, we don’t have the answer for guilt.
Today you can take your pick of approaches to guilt from a menu of choices. The number of institutions, counseling offices, remedies, books, authors, quack therapies, and the legitimate ones has made the business of guilt almost as profitable as the exercise device industry.
What all of this means is, we don’t have the answer for guilt.
Without that answer, we grope for any mind elixir that might at least make us feel a little better. Rationalizations, however, only distract from guilt, they don’t solve it. Saying “times have changed,” “everybody’s doing it,” or “there’s nothing wrong with it,” still leaves the haunting inner argument of the prosecution, “if there’s nothing wrong with it, why do I feel guilty?”
What Is Guilt?
Guilt operates involuntarily because it’s an intuitive function. No one has to “try” to feel guilty. It’s not intellectual or an act of the will, it comes inborn. The Bible says “which shows the work of the law written in their hearts,” Rom.2:15.
You could say that guilt is; the subconscious fear of consequence. More simply, it’s the still small voice of a thing called your conscience speaking within you. Blaming everything on the outside or society is just a denial of this internal organ. Unfortunately, and ironically, most certified counseling subscribes to that standard of denial. This is ironic because all other uses of denial get called out and decried. But for the malady of guilt, denial is the only answer today’s world has so it is tolerated And not only tolerated, it is masterfully facilitated.
Desensitization
Coupled with denial is desensitization. This is the most dishonest approach to guilt. The inborn knowledge of God and His law can be extinguished by a repeated violation of the conscience. “And even as They did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate (void of judgment) mind ” (KJV) Rom.1:28. Eventually, one’s conscience departs like an unwelcome guest, leaving the room it once occupied completely empty of judgment. This is why some feel no remorse for heinous crimes. Pathological liars can even fool a polygraph since the function of conscience and its physiological impact have become deleted through constant denial. Guilt can be ignored into submission by destroying its facilitator, your blessed conscience.
It’s the vacated conscience, “void of judgment” (KJV), that challenges moral absolutes with the “so what’s wrong with it?” question. Pretending that morality is a matter of debate, and a matter of opinion and not instinct This only reveals that the natural instincts that were once acute, have been dulled, suspended, or even evicted.
We Can’t Handle It!
We were not made to handle guilt. It torments, distorts, and drives some to complete madness. Guilt is an intrusion upon God’s creation. The original creation had no guilt. It was not equipped to handle it. The classic characteristics in mishandling this intrusion upon paradise have remained the same since the Garden of Eden. Hiding, covering up, and blaming.
– Hiding from God in fear,
– Covering up Designing coverups for shame (fig leaf skirts), and
– Blaming others, as Adam blamed Eve, and as Eve, in turn, blamed the Serpent.
These are the typical natural reactions that have been passed down to all mankind like genetic traits in our DNA. They are obviously present today worldwide They occur spontaneously in every human being and every single one of us has experienced their involuntary presence.
No Help From Religion
Religion has followed suit in these mishandlings of guilt through the ages. Some would even say that religion has made it worse, inventing floggings and vigils, penance and indulgences, pilgrimages, rituals, absolutions, and the concept of “salvation by good works.” These are compensations for guilt, they don’t answer it, they serve it. No wonder the world has been misled to comprehend God as angry and fearful when His representatives are primarily commissioned with appeasing his dreadful wrath.
The Answer
Trying to pay for our own sins to remove guilt is as futile as Adam’s fig leaves. In the Garden, it was God alone who provided the skins of clothing that covered Adam. Christ’s sacrifice was demonstrated in type from the beginning by this substitutionary death as the answer for sin and its consequence; guilt. The answer comes from God. It can only come from God. God graciously made it clear for us from the beginning. All human attempts are fig leaf futile misdirections.
Today’s Fig Leaf
The current religious “fig leaf” is “Therapy Gospel.” Sins are now only “mistakes.” The New Birth is replaced with “self-discovery.” Instead of “reckon the old man dead, “ self-improvement and self-actualization are the prescribed remedies. We are defined as only needing analysis, not spiritual rebirth.
The truth is, rehabilitating the flesh is foolish. We are told there is nothing wrong with feeling the works of the flesh. It’s only what you do with them that counts. But redefining the flesh and its works such as anger, hatred, and envy as morally neutral in order to neutralize the guilt they carry doesn’t diminish the erosion the works themselves create. Their obsessive preoccupation of the mind and their toxic levels of stress hormones and overdoses of adrenalin eat away mental and physical health while we justify not feeling guilty about them. These are caustic acids in the soul. No matter how you define them, they can kill you.
Replacing repentance with rehabilitation establishes the occupancy of the immoral intruder’s. How can you repent of morally neutral feelings? Iniquities get characterized as just flaws in character, imperfections awaiting “healing.” We must remind ourselves that our iniquities murdered God’s beloved Son. The word “healing” has become so utilitarian that It gets used in any imagined context except the only one that Jesus ever used it for which was physical healing.
Freudian Psychology and other Psycho-therapies now substitute for the genuine counsel of God. Man’s wisdom can only go as far as man. We are defined by our maker as dead in sin. We must be born again.
All of these human efforts “fig leaves,” have one objective, to make us feel better. Why? Because guilt makes us feel bad and we don’t have the answer for guilt.
It’s Unbearable!
Guilt will eventually kill you. Judas hanged himself in his guilt. I know of a former Nazi concentration camp Commandant who would drink his own urine to punish himself after the war for his atrocities. Today men in Milan literally have themselves nailed to a cross for a few hours to somehow pay for sins. We even invented purgatory to numb the guilt of today with what has to be the greatest procrastination in all time. We’ll deal with guilt later, after death. That only postpones facing the horrifying realization that we don’t have the answer for guilt. We don’t have it now, and we certainly won’t have it then. The truth is, then it’s too late. That’s hell.
Christ is the answer to guilt. It’s promised. “Behold the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.” He said “it’s finished,” present tense.
Continued in Guilt Part 2, “The Answer”
https://hedoesallthings.com/truth-be-told/guilt-2
Rom.1:28
Gen.3:7-13
Pro.1:5