"Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence." --Alice Walker
What does guilt feel like? Describe it.
I'm a worrier, it's true. When I have hurt someone, or when something is just not right, I feel off-balance. My world shifts and tilts. There is a heaviness in my chest, and my hands flutter--I don't know what to do with them. I laugh when I'm nervous. And when I feel guilty, I feel nervous.
I am a big avoider. I procrastinate everything from washing my car to going to bed to sending birthday cards. And then when I'm late, I feel guilt. And I'm late a lot.
This makes me sound like a crazy person, but that off-balanced, not-quite-rightness of guilt is a small insanity. How good good good it feels to lift off that lead apron of guilty thinking, to lay it down--whether through prayer, forgiveness, or admission. My back feels shallow, my feet move swiftly...and the earth swings into place. All is right again.
Guilt, maybe, is for that easy glide back to rightness. The swiftness of it all.
posted by Mrs. BrownAbles @ 10:30 AM
1 Comments:
Bethanne,
Nice to see some of your thinking on guilt here. Right now I'm feeling guilty for writing in a font called Courier New which, I am sure, was created by students to extend papers to minimum page requirements and remains the bane of all those OCD readers/writers who think too much about typeface. For my sins, this draft is in Courier New...and will be 4 pages long a few paragraphs from now.
The subject of how Christians think about guilt has been on my mind quite a lot these past several weeks. Maybe that comes from trying to reconcile an upbringing in a legalistic, perfectionistic understanding of what it means to be Christian. That I can't forgive myself or move on until guilt has fully overwhelmed me, making me feel horrible and alone (as if checking myself into some kind of guilt-ridden solitary confinement from God would impress him and earn my ticket for redemption). At the same time, I can't embrace the maxim of some of my British brothers and sisters, that 'guilt is not a good word.'
Actually, I'm beginning to think that the Lord may want us to use guilt much differently than we've thought of doing thus far. To save some digression, I'll drop the punchline: the grace of God teaches us how to manipulate guilt for the cause of righteousness. We can never be in a place where we seek the absence of guilt; herein is the reminder that we are capable of committing fraud once again; here we remember the grief of learning that freedom is only in the Law of obedience and love, not in our 'independence.'
Back to guilt and righteousness...essentially I wonder if manipulating guilt looks an awful lot like military tactics in wartime. We learned from Johnson's years that you can't bomb Vietnam ad infinitum and expect a victory. The same goes with London in WWII. The only way victory is sure is when you get a hold of the enemy's guns. When you commandeer the enemy's firepower and use it against them, you're a few battles away from a peace treaty.
Guilt is a powderkeg of the enemy, designated for our destruction. The power of resurrection in the Christian life is learning how guilt becomes our servant. This is what Micah is talking about when he says that our God is one who 'treads our iniquities underfoot.' The image we need to keep is not eradicting guilt; it's learning how God uses guilt as our servant in grace. It is the memory of treason within this kingdom which keeps me from rebelling once again. It is remembering the emptiness of that 'familiar sin' which keeps us pressing on the upward way. The mystery of this Gospel is that God has subverted (not dismissed) guilt so that it hasn't the power to speak condemnation. We simply use it for the very thing it seeks to destroy: the pursuit of righteousness. Only a sovereign God takes a cross and uses it victory. Only that same Christ takes our guilt and transforms it as a means of grace.
That's where my thinking is at this point. Tell me if that's getting too carried away. Romans 8.1 and Micah 7.18-20 must be the centerpiece of all this. At least these are meditations coming from those passages. Let's keep the conversation going!
Jack
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