How Do You Deal With Your Guilt?

People deal with their bad consciences in many ingenious ways (from Charles Drew's book “The Ancient Love Song”):

• Practicing denial by keeping themselves busy working or entertaining themselves (cable TV and video movies can easily fill every leisure hour with nonreflective stimulation).
• Balancing off the bad stuff with religious or philanthropic activity.
• Purging (subconsciously) their guilt by vigorously condemning similar failures in other people.
• Developing a philosophy or a psychology that denies the existence of true guilt.
  

How do you deal with your guilt?

No matter how you deal with your guilt, the good news is that Jesus (not having any guilt of his own) died to clear you of a guilty conscience. So now, if you are trusting in Him and His work on the cross for you, you no longer have to work ingeniously to suppress your guilt. You are free and can live without the weight of condemnation on your shoulders.

If you are a Christian and still doing any of the following (above), perhaps you need to reflect on how well you understand the gospel.

If you are walking around trying to rid yourself of guilt, chances are you struggle with pride - since you are not letting Jesus take the guilt from you.

Perhaps you have been holding onto your guilt out of a desire to fix, clean, and redeem yourself.

Self-Boasting and Self-Loathing

We are all somewhere on the spectrum of loving ourselves or hating ourselves. Perhaps we swing back and forth from day to day.

Matt Chandler, pastor of The Village, makes the case that both of these things take value away from the cross.

If I’m always thinking about how great I am, I’m not going to have any need for God’s grace and mercy.

On the other end, if I’m always hating myself and feeling guilty for the sins I’ve committed, then what I’m really saying is that my wrongs are too big for even God to make right. I’m minimizing the cross and have a low view of God’s ability to forgive.

Whether I’m self-boasting or self-loathing, the problem is that I’m thinking of myself and not God.

Are we proud of our accomplishments? Have we forgotten that all of our successes are like filthy rags next to God’s accomplishments? In making ourselves high, are we making God low?

Are we sick and tired of dwelling on our failures? Have we forgotten that God’s grace (extended to us through Jesus’ death on the cross) is much bigger than we could ever imagine? In doubting God’s ability and desire to forgive us, have we ignored the punishment that Jesus endured on our behalf and are now trying to punish ourselves through guilt and condemnation?

May we stop our boasting and our loathing and realize that we have been fixing our eyes on ourselves, not God.

Confessions of a Campus Minister

I desire others’ approval more than God’s approval most of the time.

I want people to think that I am more insightful than the majority.

I want people to think that I have it all together when I don’t.

I want people to think that I’m a few feet higher on the leadership totem pole than they are.

When I lose, I feel ashamed because the game is really all about me and not about enjoying time with my friends.

When people are talking to me, it’s hard to listen well because I’m thinking about the important thing that I’m going to say next.

When listening to sermons, I think about how I’m going to influence others with the content more than letting the content influence me.

With each community that I enter into, I look for the things that people clap for, and then I go and do those things.

Attacking or Withdrawing

I have been happily married now for over a year and I am proud to say that me and Lindsey have never had a fight yet. Things have just been so perfect. And if you keep reading, you’ll know that I am a big liar!

Conflict is all around us, at work, at school, at home, and everywhere else in the cosmos. We all handle conflict differently. Most of us either attack the conflict or withdraw from conflict. I tend to be an attacker. I hate not having peace between Lindsey and me. Instead of thinking through the situation patiently, I try to solve the problem as fast as possible. I try to control the situation, which just brings more conflict. Lindsey, on the other hand, likes to withdraw from conflict. Instead of fighting for peace, she withdraws and isolates herself, giving her a temporary kind of peace. Both methods don’t work.

I was thinking the other day: Does the way we handle conflict in our everyday normal life play into the way we handle the cosmic conflict (the conflict that exists between God and the world)?

Since we have drifted and separated ourselves from God, there is this tension now that exists throughout the whole universe. That is why we as Christians share our faith. We want there to be peace between God and the world again.

The Scripture says, “God… reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” One of the ways the original Greek word for reconciliation (Katallage) is described is “the restoration to favor with God”. We have been called to be peacemakers, to create peace between God and others so that he will have favor on them.

This comes through the person and work of Jesus. But, I think in the telling of the good news about Jesus, a lot of Christians have failed miserably, myself included.

We can’t ignore the fact that our sinful tendencies (in resolving conflict) bleed into our methods of evangelism or sharing the gospel or sharing our faith – or better, bringing peace.

If you are an ATTACKER when conflict arises, then you might struggle with the following when trying to share your faith:

Self Righteousness: I picked the right team and so everyone else should do the same. They are wrong and I am right.

Pride: Since I know the truth, I can persuade others to follow God without God’s help.

Arguing or Subduing: If I put fear into people, I will be able to control them to do what I want. If I can’t inspire them to change, I will manipulate them.

The final result: At best, people will avoid you. At worst, they will not want to follow Jesus if it means going to church with people just like you.

If you are a WITHDRAWER when conflict arises, then you might struggle with the following when trying to share your faith:

Insecurity: I don’t know how to share my faith very well so I better stay away. I don’t want them to think less of me.

Fear: Better to be safe than to take a risk and lose the argument. Plus, I wouldn’t want to put the relationship/friendship in danger.

Denial: I’d like to think that there really isn’t conflict between them and God. And if there was, that’s between them and God.

The final result: At best, people will like you but you’ll experience a lot of bitterness because the people around you will not be experiencing the peace of God. At worst, the people in your life will not get the opportunity to be reconciled to God and spend eternity with him.

So, what does it look like to be a great peacemaker? Sorry, there is no formula. But I do know one thing. A lack of godliness will not contribute to good conflict resolution.