GUILT
by Forrest Church
September 28, 2003
I have just finished a book entitled Freedom from Fear that will come out early next Summer. In it I divide fear into five categories: Fright, Worry, Guilt, Insecurity, and Dread. Over the next month, in a mini-sermon series of sorts, I shall explore these various fears with you from the pulpit, beginning this morning, with a consideration of guilt.
Guilt and fear may strike you as being different things, but the two are intimately related. Whenever guilt takes possession of the conscience, it arrives hand in hand with fear–the fear of getting caught.
Guilt is the most even-handed of fears. On the one hand, it can force us to change our lives for the better. When we have done something truly bad, guilt works on behalf of our better self. Not only do we deserve conscience’s pangs and the fear that accompanies them, but such fear can also awaken us to moral opportunity. Guilt can prompt us to undertake a thorough moral inventory and housecleaning.
Many of us are more familiar with guilt’s dysfunctional twin. When our conscience becomes hyper-active (as a kind of moral lint collector), guilt commandeers our entire existence. Such fear is as crippling as it is unnecessary. We examine and cross-examine our every little act so mercilessly that we can finally do no right.
Being human, we err. Some call this original sin; it certainly suggests original guilt and demands the rites of self-acceptance and forgiveness. A moral perfectionist lives in constant fear, because moral perfection lies beyond our grasp. Perfectionism is a form of self-abuse. When we impose on others the same impossible set of standards that we inflict on ourselves, we jeopardize everyone’s happiness. It is therefore important to discriminate between good and bad guilt. We need to lighten up, but not take ourselves off the moral hook. As long as we continue to tolerate our bad behavior–if our conscience is in any kind of working order–guilt will rightly haunt us.
In Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, guilt finds its quintessential expression in "The Fear of God." Deeming God to be all knowing and all-powerful, the ultimate authority and final judge, the believer understandably fears being brought up on charges before the divine tribunal. Not every action prompted by this fear is justified. Overly sensitive souls may cower under the bedcovers, when they could just as innocently be playing outdoors. When called for, however, guilt nags at our conscience until we finally fess up, make reparations, go and sin no longer. Confucius put it simply: "When you have moral faults do not fear to abandon them."
A full quarter of my counseling sessions pivot on guilt. If it takes you twenty minutes before you can confess what you’ve come in to speak to me about, I can almost count on guilt being the culprit. You may have a perfectly good reason to feel guilty, but often your mind has turned a misdemeanor into a felony. "You will be shocked when I tell you this," you say, hoping perhaps to soften the coming blow. When I assure you—after drawing out the particulars of your story–that I am not the least bit shocked, I often sense that you think I am being kind, not truthful. This is because guilt condemns and sentences us without a fair trial. When we finally work up the courage to present our case to a jury of our peers–which, in a way, is what we are doing when we go to a counselor–we may be amazed at how quickly (and justifiably) we win forgiveness. Until that moment comes, however, guilt’s shadow is so long that we must live in darkness to keep it hidden.
Whatever its occasion, one sure way to recognize guilt is that it always keeps company with shame and secrets. Secrecy, in turn, abets guilt by excluding us from the circle of forgiveness, where guilt is absolved.
Secrets and lies go together. One way guilt strengthens its grip is by begging us to lie to protect our secrets. This isolates and estranges us from the very people who could help absolve our guilt by forgiving us (if we are appropriately contrite). It also makes us guiltier and, therefore, more fearful. In addition to the crime, we now have to worry about the cover-up. Once we turn ourselves in, however, no one can capture us–the fear of being caught is over.
This explains why guilt thrives only in darkness. When tested in the light of day, the shadows that haunt us may disappear. Even when they don’t–when we have done something bad for which we should be ashamed or punished–nine times out of ten the best way to neutralize guilt is to own up to it. Whenever the simple truth will prove less destructive than a web of lies—that is to say, almost always—to trust the truth is better than to cower from it. Should our honesty have consequences, fear is still diminished. No punishment is harder on a bad conscience than getting away scott free.
Among those who knew how powerful secrets can be were the ancient Gnostics. These Jewish and Christian sects in the centuries immediately preceding and following the life of Jesus placed their faith in knowledge (hence their name, from gnosis, the Greek word for knowledge). Soon going the way of most religious splinter groups, they broke into smaller and smaller pieces until they disappeared from history. But one of their insights abides. The Gnostics’ secret to getting into heaven can help us address fear on earth.
One sect of Gnostics held that there are seven heavens, each more glorious than the last, whose gates are guarded by supernatural bouncers called "archons." These archons are forbidding characters, determined to keep mere mortals from entering the celestial realm. You can’t fight them. And you can’t fool them. The only way to crack the code of an otherwise divine security system, is to look each archon directly in the eye and call him by his true name. The Gnostics realized that to name something correctly is to possess power over it. So they taught one another the archons’ names.
Though the Gnostics were seeking knowledge of heaven’s secrets, their insight holds true for earthly knowledge as well. Naming is power. By naming our fears, we can break their control over our lives. The process is one of self-discovery, not only to "know thyself" but also, by Aristotle’s definition, to "reveal thyself." The very things we are most hesitant to reveal, both to ourselves and to others, lie at the root of our guilt. They also compound it. When we fear getting caught for having done something bad, we become more defensive. Accused of the tiniest infraction, we leap to justify ourselves. It is as if we had a magnet in our brain that guilt makes stronger. The only way to weaken this magnet is to remove its power source, by naming and eliminating causes for shame.
A man I was counseling introduced me to the guilt magnet. Though I had observed this phenomenon for years, his comments suggested a possible name for it. "It’s like I have this thing in my head that attracts criticism," he said. "All a cop has to do it look at me sideways and I jump to attention and feel like turning myself in."
By cop, I soon discovered, what he really meant was "wife." He told me how he would enter his apartment in the evening, seemingly fine after an acceptably productive day, only to find himself off-balance the moment she would challenge him about something he had forgotten to do. The presenting cause of their ensuing argument rarely mattered. What mattered was how quickly (and to what devastating effect) her accusation, even her tone of voice, would activate his guilt magnet.
I remember the precise illustration he offered to describe how this worked, because it was so magnificently ordinary. One evening he forget to pick up milk on the way home from work as his wife had asked. This is when one is supposed to say, "I’m sorry," and change the subject (or, better yet, go out and get the milk). But he couldn’t leave it there. Opting for capital punishment instead, he somehow found a way to escalate the milk issue into a wholly unnecessary confrontation pivoting on his fundamental worthlessness.
"What’s going on?" she asked. "You are over-reacting."
"I am not over-reacting," he insisted.
"No, something is wrong. What’s really the matter?"
"Nothing is the matter," he snapped.
He told me that, at first, when trapped in such a predicament, he honestly couldn’t explain what was going on or what really was the matter, because he didn’t know the answer to these questions himself. Unable to account for his defensiveness, all he could do was let his guilt take over. Accuse him of forgetting to bring home milk and, if the emotional planets were misaligned, his guilt magnet would attract every shard of shame sequestered in his conscience and leave him feeling like a worm. Almost invariably, this would provoke an unnecessary secondary quarrel for which he knew himself to be almost wholly responsible.
This man had come into my study not to talk about problems he was having with his wife, but about the problem he was having with alcohol. For years, he had poured alcohol down his escape hatch. He recognized that until he stopped drinking, he could do little about the destabilizing fear secretly eating away at his soul. Having named alcohol as the source of his fear, he was now in a position to neutralize its power.
I didn’t tell him what to do, though I shared a success story or two that might give him courage. Even if I had offered him a set of instructions, my words would have held little authority. Even as contrition precedes our right to forgiveness, to free ourselves from guilt we have to spring the lock ourselves, for its door unlocks only from the inside. By the time he called on me, he knew this. It had finally dawned on him that the reason he was so easily thrown, even by the smallest accusation, was how guilty he felt about his drinking. After years of bargaining, half-measures, and procrastination–favored techniques for holding fear’s rapt attention–he at last had the good sense to choose self-respect (and his life) over the bottle. That very week, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, made plans to enter a rehabilitation clinic, and thereby set forth on the road toward recovery.
To free ourselves from fear, often we have to walk though it. This man had to confess to his wife what she already knew despite his recurring angry denials–that she was right, he was powerless over alcohol. He then had to request a month-long leave from work to enter re-hab, which meant revealing his secret to a boss who before had known only that he had become increasingly defensive and undependable. To his surprise, his boss then revealed that she was about to fire him. Now, if rehabilition worked, the man could have a second chance with his job. But it was when he worked up the courage to confess to his friends that the strangest thing happened. They congratulated him! They told him how much they admired his courage. One of them even asked for help; he too might have a problem with alcohol, but he had been afraid to talk to anyone about it and hadn’t known where to turn until now. Courage can be contagious too.
There are two ways to deionize our guilt magnets. The perfectionists among us can do so by lightening up; those of us who are guilty for good reason can change our behavior. This man needed to change before he could lighten up, but both techniques work. Like forgetting to bring home milk, most of our crimes are not even misdemeanors; they are fully included in life’s entry fee. Sometimes, however, guilt can be good for us. In this man’s case, the guilt that was destroying his relationship with his wife was the thing that finally saved him.
One further result of his decision to quit drinking–unexpected by him but completely predictable–is that his guilt magnet slowly lost its power. With this, other aspects of his conscience improved. He told me the story about the milk–now ancient history for him–six months after our first meeting. He was well on his way to recovery and we could laugh together about how gargantuan his guilt had grown, until he named its source and reduced its power. He confessed to me then that he no longer fretted all that much about the many little things he still did wrong. This made perfect sense to me. Having addressed what was in his higher interest to correct, he could now afford to pay less attention to his share of universal human foibles. Without a major sin charging up his guilt magnet, the little sins he committed over the course of any given day no longer disrupted his peace of mind. His conscience wasn’t pure by any means, but it was clear.
These days, he told me, when he "forgets the milk" (his term now for any little mistake he may make), his wife still gets mad. The difference is, he doesn’t go crazy. Should she accuse him, no doubt justly, of taking his responsibilities to the household too lightly, he tries to take her concerns seriously, and should probably take them more seriously than he does. But he doesn’t spin. And soon the world changes subjects, which it always will if we are patient. He and his wife are then free to drift happily onward into another evening of each other’s company.
Amen. I love you. And may God Bless Us All.