| Whatsoever
Things Are True
by Dan Coburn Pastor, Emmanuel Baptist Church pastordan@mtida.net Last week we opened up a can of worms common to all of us called Guilt. There are four basic ways to deal with guilt. 1st, we can do away with the standard that makes us feel guilty. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, when you render it all down, that standard is God. Oh I know, God, religion, and churches are all lumped into that box, but it’s ultimately God. Usually Christians take the brunt of the attack if for no other reason than our accessibility. We are called “haters, narrow minded, dogmatic, intolerant”, and many other things, but it’s really God and more specifically His principals. A man I respect deeply who has a very large Church in Tennessee, says he is convinced that the overwhelming majority of people who profess to be atheists or agnostics are simply trying to do away with the one they perceive to be the one making them feel guilty. “They don’t have an intellectual problem with God-they have a moral problem with God”. A problem with guilt. A variation of this would be to beat down the standard of God. If I can do that, dilute the word of God, hide the word of God, cast doubt on the word of God, or even pervert the word of God, then perhaps I can begin to feel better about myself and more importantly, cause others to feel better about me because remember, God fixed us so that we cannot go on with life as usual while carrying guilt. Let’s get it out of our schools, off our money, out of our pledge, away from our holiday celebrations out of our public buildings, rob it of it’s authority, and maybe----we’ll feel better about ourselves. The second approach people try is to “Ignore the Guilt”. We try, to no avail, to suppress it, hide it, bury it, and ignore it, but it always manifests itself in unpleasant ways and everything in our lives is viewed through the clouded lens of guilt, and it effects every relationship we have until it is dealt with. The third approach (and the most common) is to Blame. We seem to have this down from an early age too. In an adulterous affair, the guilty party will far more often than not say something like this. “Yea, I know it was wrong, but---- she didn’t meet my needs”; or “He didn’t understand me”. I stole from my employer, but he wasn’t paying me enough. A child rebels and blames it on their parents. This is the natural way, but God calls us to be supernatural-Romans 12: 2. There is then a fourth option in dealing with guilt. We can deal with it Gods way, and experience his healing forgiveness. If you think God is sitting on a marble throne with a lightning bolt in each hand just anxiously waiting for you to mess up so he can punish you, then you have a wrong understanding of who God is. “My little children, these things write I unto you that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;”. 1st John 2: 1. Are you burdened by guilt of any kind? There is more than hope available through Jesus Christ. We need to learn that there is healthy guilt from God, unhealthy guilt from Satan, and how to tell the difference. |
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