Feeling Guilty? Let Me Count the Ways

Why do I always feel so guilty?  Why do I always feel that I don’t mea­sure up?  Why do I feel that God is never really happy with me, except maybe those two hours every Sun­day mor­ning?  Why is my life spent so focu­sed on ME and MY FAILURES?  Does God love me as I am or not?  As a long-time follo­wer of Christ I have strug­gled with this notion that wha­te­ver I am doing…it is not enough.  My life was redu­ced to “God is Good, You are Bad, Try Har­der.”  Talk about a life of hope­LESS­ness.  When I would hear the preacher talk about invi­ting peo­ple to church, or wit­nes­sing, or evan­ge­li­zing, or sha­ring my faith, it was like, “you gotta be kid­ding, my life as a Chris­tian is mise­ra­ble.”  What has hap­pe­ned is that I was living more with GUILT than free­dom or “life to the full”.

As the lights came on a few years ago, I began to exa­mine my faith with a new scru­tiny.  In time, I came to say, “if this is who God is, then I am fin­ding a new god.”  Thank­fully, I am REdis­co­ve­ring God without the fil­ter of reli­gion and it has radi­cally chan­ged my life.

Today’s post by Kevin DeYoung really hits my nail on the head…

I ima­gine there are plenty of Chris­tians who rarely feel the sting of cons­cience or the pangs of regret. But I also know many, many Chris­tians (inc­lu­ding the one I see in the mirror) who easily feel bad for all the things they are not doing or are doing less than per­fectly. In fact, I’m con­vin­ced most serious Chris­tians live their lives with an almost cons­tant low-level sense of guilt.

How do we feel guilty? Let me count the ways.

• We could pray more.
• We aren’t bold enough in evangelism.
• We like sports too much.
• We watch movies and tele­vi­sion too often.
• Our quiet times are too short or too sporadic.
• We don’t give enough.
• We bought a new couch.
• We don’t read to our kids enough.
• Our kids eat Chee­tos and french fries.
• We don’t recycle enough.
• We need to lost 20 pounds.
• We could use our time better.
• We could live some place har­der or in something smaller.

What do we do with all this behind the sce­nes guilt? We don’t feel stop-dead-in-our-tracks kind of remorse for these things.  But these short­co­mings can have a cumu­la­tive effect whe­reby even the mature Chris­tian can feel like he’s rather disap­poin­ting to God, maybe just barely Christian.

Here’s the tricky part: we should feel guilty some­ti­mes, because some­ti­mes we are guilty of sin. Moreo­ver, com­pla­cency as Chris­tians is a real dan­ger, espe­cially in America.

But yet, I don’t believe God redee­med us through the blood of his Son that we might feel like cons­tant fai­lu­res. Do Peter and John post-Pentecost see­med rac­ked with self-loathing and intros­pec­tive fear? Does Paul seem cons­tantly con­cer­ned that he could be doing more? Ama­zingly enough, Paul actually says at one point “I am not aware of anything against myself” (1 Cor. 4:4). He’s quick to add, “I am not the­reby acquit­ted. It is the Lord who jud­ges me.” But it sure seems like Paul put his head on the pillow at night with a clean cons­cience. So why do so many Chris­tian feel guilty all the time?

1. We don’t fully embrace the good news of the gos­pel. We for­get that we have been made alive together with Christ. We have been rai­sed with him. We have been saved through faith alone. And this is the gift of God, not a result of works (Eph. 2:4–8). We can be so sca­red of anti­no­mia­nism, which is a legi­ti­mate dan­ger, that we are afraid to speak too lavishly of God’s grace. But if we’ve never been char­ged with being anti­no­mian, we pro­bably haven’t pre­sen­ted the gos­pel in all it’s scan­da­lous glory (Rom. 6:1).

2. Chris­tians tend to moti­vate each other by guilt rather than grace. Ins­tead of urging our fellow belie­vers to be who they are in Christ, we com­mand them to do morefor Christ (see Rom. 6:5–14 for the pro­per moti­va­tion). So we see Christ­li­ke­ness as something we are royally scre­wing up, when we should it as something we already pos­sess but need to grow into.

3. Most of our low-level guilt falls under the ambi­guous cate­gory of “not doing enough.” Look at the list above. None one of the items are neces­sa­rily sin­ful. They all deal with pos­si­ble infrac­tions, per­cep­tions, and ways in which we’d like to do more. These are the har­dest areas to deal with because no Chris­tian, for exam­ple, will ever con­fess to pra­ying enough. So it is always easy to feel terri­ble about pra­yer (or evan­ge­lism or giving or any num­ber of dis­ci­pli­nes). We must be care­ful that we don’t insist on a cer­tain stan­dard of prac­tice when the Bible merely insists on a gene­ral principle.

Let me give another exam­ple. Every Chris­tian must give gene­rously and con­tri­bute to the needs of the saints (2 Cor. 9:6–11; Rom. 12:13). This we can insist on with abso­lute cer­tainty. But what this gene­ro­sity looks like–how much we give, how much we retain–is not bound by any for­mula, nor can it be exac­ted by com­pul­sion (2 Cor. 9:7). So if we want peo­ple to be more gene­rous we would do well to follow Paul’s exam­ple in 2 Corinthians and empha­size the bles­sings of gene­ro­sity and the gos­pel roo­ted moti­va­tion for gene­ro­sity as oppo­sed to sha­ming those who don’t give us much.

4. When we are truly guilty of sin it is impe­ra­tive we repent and receive God’s mercy. Paul had a clean cons­cience, not because he never sin­ned, but, I ima­gine, because he quickly went to the Lord when he knew he was wrong and res­ted in the “no con­dem­na­tion” of the gos­pel (Rom. 8:1). If we con­fess our sins, John says, God is faith­ful and just to for­give us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrigh­teous­ness (1 John 1:9). We aren’t meant to feel bor­der­line mise­ra­ble all the time. We are meant to live in the joy of our sal­va­tion. So when we sin–and we’ll all sin (1 Kings 8:46; 1 John 1:8)–we con­fess it, get clean­sed, and move on.

This under­li­nes one of the great dan­gers with cons­tant guilt: we learn to ignore our cons­cien­ces. If we are truly sin­ning, we need to repent and implore the Lord to help us change. But if we aren’t sin­ning, if we are perhaps not as mature as we could be, or are not as dis­ci­pli­ned as some belie­vers, or we are making dif­fe­rent choi­ces that may be accep­ta­ble but not extraor­di­nary, then we should not be made to feel guilty. Cha­llen­ged, sti­rred, ins­pi­red, but not guilty.

As a pas­tor this means I don’t expect that ever­yone in my con­gre­ga­tion should feel awful about everything I ever preach on. It is ok, after all, for peo­ple to actually be obe­dient to God’s com­mands. Not per­fectly, not without some mixed moti­ves, not as fully as they could be, but still faith­fully, God-pleasingly obe­dient. Faith­ful preaching does not require that sin­cere Chris­tians feel mise­ra­ble all the time. In fact, the best preaching ought to make sin­cere Chris­tians see more of Christ and expe­rience more of his grace.

Dee­per grace will pro­duce bet­ter gra­ti­tude, which means less guilt. And that’ s a good thing all the way around.

Post by Kevin De Young here.