Guilt – Good, Bad, or Ugly?

There are two kinds of guilt. One is imposed by others when they believe you have committed an offense: “You are guilty.” The other is a feeling that occurs within us when we have committed an offense. It is this second kind of guilt we’ll be addressing.

According to a blog on Psychology Today called ‘What Does Guilt Do?’: “If you do something wrong that hurts someone else, you feel guilty.  Guilt is a valuable emotion, because it helps to maintain your ties to the people in your community.  It provides a painful consequence for actions that would weaken the groups that you belong to.

Because guilt is painful, people often find ways to soothe their feelings by making up for their actions in some way.  These repairs are also useful, because they help to re-strengthen people’s ties to the community that they have damaged.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-motives/201205/what-does-guilt-do

Guilt is healthy or more accurately can be healthy. Like pain sensors in our skin that tell us not to touch a hot stove, guilt is like the pain sensor for our conscience. It lets us know we have done something wrong and it should never be repeated.

The referenced article above goes on to explain with controlled experiments that guilt causes us to try and make amends. Here is where the waters get murky.

If I take something from you I can give it back or pay you back or make it “right” in some fashion. If the offense is small the issue is usually quickly forgotten by both parties and life goes on. When I was a kid I wanted a Nintendo. My parents said I could have one on two conditions. First I had to buy it myself which was no small feat, and secondly I could not have any games that involved violence.  Both conditions were eventually met and I got my game system.

A few months later we came home to find the house had been broken into and my Nintendo was gone. We had never been robbed before. The fact someone came into our home and took our stuff left a far worse feeling than the loss of the actual items. Replacing the things did not negate the feeling of being violated.

Here’s the issue. Some of the actions (or inactions) we do that hurt others and cause us guilt can’t be made right. Murderers can’t ‘unkill’ their victims. Sexual predators can’t ‘unviolate’ their victims. Hurtful, abusive words or actions can’t be unsaid or undone. This poses a very real problem. What can a person do to escape guilt from a situation they can’t correct?

Perhaps you heard or read of Corporal Withers who was recently awarded a medal by the queen of England for his military service yet he is suicidal. He feels guilty for simply being alive after all the buddies he has seen die around him. It is a scenario he can’t fix. Nothing he can do will bring them back, not even his own death.

This is one example of how guilt which is generally healthy can become toxic. What do we do when guilt consumes us? The Bible is full of stories of individuals consumed by guilt over things that can’t be made right. One mother loses her son to an illness and interprets it as punishment from God for things she has done in the past. A group of brothers sell their younger brother as a slave to a foreign country after nearly leaving him for dead in an abandoned well. The guilt consumes them. Every misfortune that happens to them afterwards is seen as divine retribution for their guilt.

I’ve been there. I still have flashbacks. When you do something that violates everything you want to be and hurts people in a way that can’t be corrected the guilt is crushing. You want to rewind the tape. You want to undo the damage but it isn’t possible. In July of 2001 I was driving to pick up my wife from work. I hit a pothole and my cell phone fell from the console to the floor between my feet. I instinctively reached down to pick it up and the next thing I experienced was a violent crash. The truck in front of me stopped. It was a stupid decision to look away from the road to grab the phone. Regret didn’t rewind the crash.

Here’s the bottom line. Trying to right what can’t be righted is insanity or will eventually lead to insanity. What then? If wrongs can’t be righted what can be done?

As a pastor I would say (without any data to back it up other than experience) that unresolved guilt is the leading burden carried by people. Whether it be guilt from poor parenting, or affairs, or divorce, or whatever the case may be, the source of the guilt might be four or more decades in the past but the weight of it is heavier than it was at the beginning. Have you ever tried to hold something heavy for a long amount of time? The weight of the object never changes but it sure gets heavier doesn’t it?

God has a solution. It’s called forgiveness. It doesn’t erase the event(s) but it does erase the burden of guilt caused by the event(s). For the woman thinking God killed her son to pay her back, He restored her son’s life. For the brothers, God brought the sold brother back into their lives and he showed them mercy instead of revenge. For us God sent His Son to die before we even said we were sorry, to demonstrate He values us far more than he values revenge for anything wrong we have done. You can’t love anyone including yourself until you are loved. We can never give what we don’t have. That is why God pours His love into us in the form of grace, mercy, and forgiveness before He ever expects us to be able to forgive ourselves or those who hurt us. If guilt is crushing you, it’s time to go to the cross and lay it down.