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Today, the topic is guilt. And I
have a feeling that everybody in this room has struggled with guilt- probably
today-
today maybe? The crazy thing about me
is that I have weird guilt issues about food. Notice y'all are free to eat
from your plates- I can't do it. And last night I came home,
and David was in the bedroom, and he was sitting in his boxers
in front of the TV watching something, and he had a big bowl a pumpkin ice cream
that my son didn't eat when he was there. And I felt guilty for him-
being caught eating ice cream in his underwear. I felt guilty for him,
because I just remember,
I don't remember this, but my mother told me, when I was
under three- so before my sister was born, I was under three-
Mom was working as a commercial artist- and I went in the
kitchen, got the wrapped sandwich out of the refrigerator- it was wrapped in
wax paper, because they had invented saran wrap,
and I took a bite out of her sandwich
and wrapped it back up and put it in the refrigerator. So that when she went to
work that day,
she found this little bite taken out of her sandwich. She made a big deal about it.
I don't remember it, but I remember the story.
And I also remember staying at my grandmother's house, and I still dream
about this,
being in my grandmother's kitchen, and whenever we get together,
either she was going off to a fat farm to lose weight or she was coming back and
we're making fudge and pralines and cakes and things. And I remember going in
there and sneaking food
and her getting on me, and I was probably five, you know, at the time. So it's
funny the reasons we have guilt. We feel guilty about things maybe because
we've been caught or we been berated,
but the psychologist would say- and I read several psychologists views on this-
they say that it's a valuable emotion, and they call it "a passport for
being accepted
into cultures." So in other words, if you feel guilty about things, it will make
you conform to the culture in which you live.
And I don't necessarily buy that. I remember
my little children when they were trying to be potty trained,
when they would need to poop- Amy Katherine did this, I know,
and I think Ashley did too- they would get in the draperies of
my living room and wrap up like a cocoon
and poop. You'd know they were doing it, because they didn't use the potty
and they knew they weren't supposed to poop in their pants, and so they would
wrap themselves
and then I'd say, "Where are you?" Nothing, but you'd see the shaking inside there, you
know, and then you start smelling,
"Are you pooping?" No answer. It was kind of like they felt guilty about what they were
doing at
two, you know? And it wasn't a means of conforming necessarily, I don't know,
but I do see it as an emotion, and I do think that it's a feeling that we've
done something wrong.
Wouldn't you say that? So, for me, you know, eating and hiding it- eating things that are
fattening-
I felt like I'd done something wrong, and I still do,
to the point where I can't even enjoy it. So, what's a person to do?
What does guilt come from? I would say that
we're all created with a sense of it. Psychologists would say it's a beneficial
thing for the survival of the
species, but the reasons for guilt,
psychologists would say, could be unreasonably high expectations of
yourself.
Okay, so if that's the reason for your guilt,
what would be the answer? Lower your expectations.
Okay, so a child who is feeling guilty about pooping in the draperies
has too high expectations of himself. He should just
feel free to poop in his pants. Is that the answer? I don't know.
I don't know that it is, but that's what some psychologists would say.
And then, they also say that if you are a person who has too many high
expectations, you tend to impute them on others, which is
interesting for marriage. Okay, another thing that they say is that you could
have
guilt issues if you're an obsessional thinker.
So, what is the most important,
influential voice that you hear?
Whose voice is the most influential
and life-changing in your life? You know who it is?
It's you. It's the voice in your head, telling you all day long,
"You should do this, you should not do this, what about that, that person just looked
at you funny"-
those voices are going all day long.
And obsessional thinking, they would say,
can be remedied through group therapy. And in group therapy, they say
that there's an outside voice that comes in to speak to you
and help you get through your issues. And I like that idea.
I like that idea, because if we're alone all day,
we're listening to our self all day, and I know that I am insecure
and selfish. So, I'm hearing selfish thoughts
and insecure thoughts all day long. I need group therapy.
I need somebody outside to tell me what's true- to help me shore up whether
or not this is
real are not real. Because there is a kind of guilt
that leads to death. And then there's also a kind of guilt
that leads to repentance and life.
And so, what are we supposed to do and how do we know which is right or which
is wrong?
Before I get to the answer, I wanted to say this-
guilt feelings often hide themselves
in bad behavior or even good behavior.
So, before you think about yourself, I want you to think about your spouse or your
mother
or your mother-in-law or your children. How do you know
they're feeling guilty? What are some behaviors you might see if somebody's
feeling guilty?
Surprisingly, maybe not surprisingly, obsessive
religious behavior is on the top of the list.
Because people who feel guilty feel bad,
and they want to be good. And religion is the means by which people try to do things
to get rid of the bad record to be good. And so,
religious people can be some of the most obnoxious people,
because they're trying so hard to compete with that
sense of guilt. So religion
is not a good thing. What about this- the impulse
to put down others- to
put them down, devalue everything about them-
you know people like this- they're critical, every time they're around you
they put you down or they compare themselves to you in a better way-
deep inside they feel guilty about something. And they feel so guilty that
they're trying to step on you
so that they can feel better about themselves. Blame shifting- I
know you've seen that in marriage; being controlling- if I can control everything in
my environment than that nagging sense
of ineptness is going to go away; being a people-pleaser;
or also hiding. All of those things, including the religion,
isolate us and leave us alone. So what are we going to do about our guilt?
Let's go back to the group therapy idea. The psychologists say, in a purely
secular way,
that there are three things that you need in group therapy to help people
with this obsessive thinking of guilt feelings that goes round and round and
round- am I good, am I bad, am I good, am I bad-
and the voices are three things that you need to hear in group therapy- one is you
need an outside voice
that identifies with you. I know what you're going through.
I've been there, I know what you're going through. You need a voice that
identifies with you. I know in AA,
the first time I met a young mother who was an alcoholic,
it made me feel so much better, because I thought I was the only one-
I thought I was a freak. And the guilt just compounded that sense of feeling. So being in AA,
around people who are like me, they identified with me- it was helpful.
The next thing is that you have got to be able to dig deep and find out
what the reasons for your guilt are, and usually they mask themselves.
So you may say, "I feel guilty because I'm not a good cook."
You know, "I feel guilty because I get caught with Kit-Kats in my mouth."
But what's the real problem there? You have got to be able to
dig deeper in group therapy to find out the source of that, and what I would say to
that is,
you generally find out that your problem is not less than, but it's probably more
than you thought.
So, you start growing and understanding that "I'm really more messed up than I
thought." And at the same time, in group therapy,
you're hearing somebody say that you are valuable-
your life is valuable- you're not on a scale
of good to bad and if you're good your life has value and if you're bad
you're like doesn't have value- you have inborn value,
which really no psychiatrist or group therapist can say,
but this translates beautifully to what the Bible says about guilt.
All of us have it, and God knows us so much that He sent His own son who could
identify with us-
He sent His spirit to open our hearts to the Gospel,
which on the one side helps us to see that we're worse than we think,
and on the other side we're more loved than we ever dreamed, because it cost God
everything
so our life has value. That's the answer,
and we're going to talk about it today.