Excerpts from my 23 October sermon, “Guilt As False Witness”
John Dominic Crossan, religious scholar and former Catholic priest, challenges us:
“Guilt is totally inoperative for me,” he writes in his book A Long Way from Tipperary, “and I suggest it should be for all of us. Think of it as you think of gas. Get rid of it. It is the flatulence of conscience. It is a spiritual waste product, and more important, it distracts us or excuses us from such absolutely necessary attitudes as honesty and integrity, clarity and accuracy, accountability and responsibility.”[1]
What I like about that statement is that he turns the whole assumption about guilt around. People assume that guilt helps us be good, that it compels us toward humility, which keeps us from being arrogant. Guilt reminds us that we are not perfect and that we are dependent on forgiveness to be ok. This way, so the reasoning goes, we behave, stay humble, and ever stride to be in “God’s good favor” – whatever that means… for it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people….”
I say guilt does not bring out the best in us, it actually encourages self-sabotage. Guilt sets up the false notion of a stain on our character, something that we cannot remove. When guilt invades our psyche it invites self-contempt which feeds on our natural imperfection, giving us reason after reason after reason as to why we are not worthy. Guilt is not a gift from God. It is a barrier to the sense of god within...
The logic of guilt keeps people down because it is a logic that says we must fight human nature. It is an idea system that says we must shun parts of ourselves and battle between the “good impulses” and the “bad impulses”. Guilt divides and conquers: taking energy away from our strength of being by judging part of ourselves as unworthy….
In other words, because we are not perfect, we are flawed, and being flawed we are doomed to inferiority and corruption…
I would argue that perfectionism is a flawed idea and that chasing after it out of fear of damnation is not only a tragic waste of time and life, it is bearing false witness to the glory of Creation. Furthermore, our rejection of human nature contributes to much of the melancholy, violence, hopelessness and sense of alienation in our society, which then leads to damaging, soul-sick choices.
If we are taught from a young age that our guilt makes us acceptable, then we can get into a habit of constantly feeling badly about ourselves. We can think we are doing something constructive by disapproving of ourselves. It can become a habit that is hard to break, a habit that makes us depend on others or some authority to tell us we are ok. That kind of dependence – the need for approval – blocks our own self claiming – our own signature of being -- that no one else fully understands. If we rely on the approval of others, either rattling around as voices in our heads or actually in our relationships, the beauty and strength and joy that is us will not emerge...
Our being is a “yes!”, not an “OH NO….!” Why on earth would we engage with one another if it is simply to find ourselves lacking? What kind of futile exercise would that be?
And if we find ourselves lacking, we then underestimate our power of being. If we choose to judge ourselves unworthy, we then undermine our ability to love. If we expect little from our being, then we will bear false witness to its miracle and we will not treat ourselves or others as precious gestures of creation...
We don’t need guilt to be good. We need our sense of connection to this vast and precious enterprise of being. Then we will know how to cherish it, honor it and be grateful for it.
