Not all guilt is good guilt.\u00a0 Good guilt is temporary.\u00a0 It alerts us to spiritual danger and provides us with a way back to God.\u00a0 Good guilt is not a way of life.\u00a0 It is a way back to life.\u00a0 That\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n
Bad guilt has nothing to do with God\u2019s desire for us.\u00a0 It hangs around, makes a home, and drives us away from God.<\/p>\n
There are at least two kinds of bad guilt.<\/p>\n
One kind is false or unreasonable guilt<\/em>\u2026a sense of remorse or responsibility for things we have no power to change.\u00a0 People who suffer with chronic illnesses often \u201cfeel guilty\u201d about the work they cannot do, for example.\u00a0 People who are gifted care-givers will often suffer from guilt when they confront circumstances beyond their control.<\/p>\n Another kind of bad guilt is projected or carried guilt<\/em>.\u00a0 In spiritual direction, I often find myself listening to the struggles of people who labor under the burden of false guilt.\u00a0 Women will often confess to a sense of shame; men will admit to a sense of inadequacy.\u00a0 When I begin to ask questions about those feelings, my directees often discover that the origin of those feelings date back to their childhood and to a time when they could not have possibly done anything to deserve reproach for their behavior.<\/p>\n More often than not, that is when they discover that the guilt they experience is actually not about them at all.\u00a0 It is \u2014 more likely \u2014 about the struggles of their parents:<\/p>\n Bad guilt of this kind is almost always about someone else\u2019s struggle \u2014 or need for control.<\/p>\n Both unreasonable and carried guilt are dramatically different from good guilt and they can be recognized:<\/p>\n Name it.<\/p>\n Let God free you from it.<\/p>\n Take refuge and comfort in the knowledge that God has set you free.<\/p>\n And then allow God to help you build the kind of life that bad guilt has kept you from building and enjoying.<\/p>\n Your struggle with bad guilt may come back around.\u00a0 Often the watershed experiences in our lives set up a dynamic that cannot be conquered all at once.\u00a0 But if you name the bad guilt that has been undermining your spiritual growth, it will get easier over time to recognize it and dismiss it.\u00a0 God loves you better than you love yourself and you were meant for glory.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Not all guilt is good guilt.\u00a0 Good guilt is temporary.\u00a0 It alerts us to spiritual danger and provides us with a way back to God.\u00a0 Good guilt is not a way of life.\u00a0 It is a way back to life.\u00a0 That\u2019s a good thing. Bad guilt has nothing to do with God\u2019s desire for us.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-direction"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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