Feeling guilty?

Then you probably are, and Christ is the remedy | Vern S. Poythress

Illustration by Krieg Barrie

A young woman student came into a campus pastor's office to ask why she had guilt feelings about living with her boyfriend. The pastor gave the biblical answer: You feel guilty because you ARE guilty. The guilt feelings are a warning that you have to attend to your relationship with God and stop doing what rebels against His will.

Of course we can find cases where people feel guilty for something for which they were not responsible, or for something that was not actually wrong. But such cases are exceptional. The main reason for guilt feelings is guilt.

Yet pop psychology has succeeded in convincing many people that guilt feelings are always a bad thing. Supposedly, guilt feelings are a sign of an unhealthy psyche, and we are supposed to get rid of them at the first opportunity by pumping up our self-esteem. "Feel good about yourself, and then you will lead a happy life"—so the recipe goes. If you try to talk to such people about being guilty before God, and about God's absolute holiness, they may react by asking you to absent yourself, lest you ruin their self-esteem. They don't want to hear it.