One of
the problems with the spiritual condition of the modern world is that so many
people are seeking guilt-free forms of spirituality, both within and outside of
Christian churches. Those who have abandoned traditional denominations often
talk of how happy they are to have left their feelings of guilt behind – and in
response, some people try to defend Christianity by burying the role of guilt
in the Lord’s gospel. But such a quest is futile: Christianity, when practiced
correctly, is a religion of guilt.
The scripture says that “all have
sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” It is natural for someone who discovers
that he has harmed his fellow man, or neglected his duties, or defiled something
pure, to feel an awful sense of guilt when he realizes what he has done.
We all do such things from time to time, and only a blockheaded
fool can fail to see the ill effects that his shortcomings have in his own life
and the lives of others.
In light of this, no Christian can claim to be truly
righteous. We can at best claim to be Godfearing – that is, when we realize we
have made a mistake, we repent and change course. But we do not see our errors
as soon as we ought, and we don’t change course as fully as we ought, so we aren’t
really righteous.
Christians are not unique among religions for believing
in the concepts of sin and repentance. Muslims, too, believe that men have been
called to repentance, beginning with Adam, who obtained forgiveness for eating
the forbidden fruit. The process is fairly straightforward: a man regrets his
wrongdoing, repents, and changes his ways, and God forgives him.
But that paradigm is too straightforward for
Christians, who insist on adding another step, in which God must send his only
Son to suffer and die for their sins. In other words, a Christian
feels his guilt so intensely that it isn’t enough for God merely to say
that the sin has been forgiven. No, the only way that sin is going away is for God
himself to come to Earth and SUFFER.
The concept of the atonement is difficult to understand
for unbelievers, who are often baffled at the idea of a God who is willing to
forgive sins if and only if an innocent man is punished in the sinner’s
place. But I do not think that is quite how it works – rather, I believe that
Jesus had to suffer in order to gain the power to forgive sins. A being
who has never suffered cannot grant meaningful forgiveness, and it is only by
suffering the consequences of human viciousness in the way he did that the
Saviour is able to forgive our acts of viciousness.
Just as Christians, in general, are united by an acute
feeling of guilt for their shortcomings and a desire for forgiveness, progress
in the Christian faith often consists of a man becoming increasingly aware of
his guilt.
When I was young, I hadn’t quite internalized the
concept that I was a sinner, and thought of myself as a righteous person
because I didn’t commit the kinds of sins that the Bishop wanted to hear about –
drinking, fornication, etc. But as I got older, I realized the severity of the
sins I had committed, such as idleness, pride, and neglect of friends
and family, to the degree that I more and more often found myself wallowing in
guilt.
I was beginning to understand Christ’s rebuke to the Laodiciean
Church: “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have
need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and
poor, and blind, and naked.”
Obviously, it isn’t right to spend all, or even most
of our time wallowing in guilt. The Protestant Work Ethic requires us to be up
and doing. Alma the Younger worked very hard to preach repentance and build up
the Church after coming to terms with his guilt as a young man. On the other
hand, Nephi, one of the workingest men in the scriptures, penned the following:
Nevertheless, notwithstanding
the great goodness of the Lord
In showing me
his great and marvelous works
My heart
exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am!
Yea, my heart sorroweth
because of my flesh;
My soul
grieveth because of mine iniquities.
I am encompassed about, because of the temptations
And the sins
which do so easily beset me.
And when I desire to rejoice
My heart
groaneth because of my sins…
To the outside observer, it seems that whatever sins
Nephi committed were trivial compared to what Laman and Lemuel had done. But
they weren’t trivial to Nephi. Both Nephi and his brothers had reason to feel
guilt, but only Nephi felt the need to sing about it – because Nephi was
a better Christian than his brothers.
Guilt is also
responsible for building Christian civilization.
Most of the societies
that have ever existed on earth are what sociologists call “shame societies.”
People do what they’re supposed to because to be seen doing otherwise will
bring shame on themselves and their families. This isn’t necessarily a bad
thing, and most reformers who say they want to do away with shame are in
reality only interested in destigmatizing sex sins; for example, very few
people would argue that stealing should have no negative social consequences.
But a guilt society is
better than a shame society, because even though shame and fear are still
necessary to control the amoral segment of the population that doesn’t feel guilt,
most people, having a functioning conscience, will do the right thing even when
no one is looking.
One effect of this is in
sexual equality. In a shame society, women are expected to be chaste, but men
generally aren’t; this is because men have always had a much easier time hiding
their infidelities, and they aren’t at risk of getting pregnant. But in a guilt
society, chastity is valued in both men and women.
Nowadays, as American civilization has dechristianized
itself and abandoned both guilt and shame, we can expect its future to hold only
a brutal collapse.
In the meantime, those
of us who can still feel guilt will have to make a choice. Either suppress
those feelings, become an amoral being, and join the enemy – or else acknowledge
our guilt and, in consequence, commit to living the rest of our lives in a
radically different way, as Saint Paul did.
When Paul saw Jesus in
a vision on the road to Damascus, and realized how wrong he had been to
persecute the Christians and consent to the martyrdom of Saint Steven, he didn’t
fight the feeling of guilt and seek refuge in cheap grace – instead, he repented,
and spent the rest of his life bringing forth fruits meet for repentance, in
the hope that Christ would one day say to him, “Son, be of good cheer, thy sins
be forgiven thee.”
All of Paul’s travels,
and preaching, and his writings, and his sufferings for the faith, and his
eventual martyrdom would not bring Saint Steven back from the dead. But they could
make it so that, after Paul’s own death, he and Steven could embrace in the
Celestial City with no ill will between them – only gratitude that Paul had done
so much to keep and spread the faith for which Steven had lost his life.
And that is the joy that springs
from the Gospel of Guilt.
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