You’ve wronged someone. You’re guilty. Now what?
Someone has wronged you. They owe you. You want payback. They refuse to admit it. They don’t own it. What can you do?
You said too much or you did wrong. You meant no harm. Your heart was in the right place. But you still caused pain. You feel guilty. Others say that you are innocent. Still, you can’t seem to shake it off, that burden of guilt. How do you deal with it?
Feelings of guilt can be debilitating. Feelings of guilt can be a source of great unhappiness, a source of persistent stress and anxiety or even depression. Guilt can be self-destructive, resulting in low-esteem or self-hatred, making us irritable, defensive, and unpleasant to be around.
Guilt can be real or imagined. Sometimes we feel guilty when we shouldn’t. Other times we feel no guilt when we most certainly are. We can be guilty over many things. And we can be guilty over nothing. Guilty or not, it is always about relationships.
Read the Ten Commandments carefully and you will discover that they all have to do with relationship: Our relationship with God or our relationship with our fellow humans. We either wrong God or we wrong one another. Furthermore, you’ll notice that when we wrong others, we also wrong God. Yes, to wrong a fellow human being is to wrong God.
That being said, every one of us has someone to forgive; for there is always someone who has done, who is doing, or who will do us wrong. By the same token, we ourselves inevitably do wrong to someone else. So, we too need forgiveness.
When we are out of touch with our own need to be forgiven, it is easy for us to impatiently and often somewhat arrogantly condemn those who trespass against us. In righteous indignation we readily demand that they pay in full the debt that they owe us, for the wrong they have done to us. In other words, we want justice!
How easily we forget that we too are guilty. We too have caused harm. We too have done wrong against our neighbor. And, even if we do admit this, we minimize our guilt while maximizing the guilt of someone else. We weigh-in, compare and measure. We say things like, “Yes, I know I’ve done wrong and have hurt others, but I’ve never done anything as bad as that!” They deserve what they get!
Most of us have the idea that we’re “really not all that bad”; certainly not as bad as anyone doing time in prison, for example. Believing that we’re more good than bad, on the scale of Perfectly Good, 10 being perfect, we’re apt to say that we’re about a 7 or 8, a few might even dare say, 9. In short, believing that we are basically good, we ignore the fact that to God, “almost Perfectly Good” is unacceptable. Or we’re simply calling God a liar by refusing to accept the Word that we are all sinners and fall short of God’s standard of righteousness.
There is a story of a medical doctor, a family practitioner, whose patient records were examined after he died. It was found that a number of his patients did not pay their medical bills to him. The reason why is that the doctor himself crossed out the patient’s debt writing over the account the following words: “Debt forgiven, too poor to pay.”
However, the doctor’s wife believed that many of these patients actually could pay, so she took them to court to collect their debt. When the judge saw the records, the judge asked the doctor’s wife, “Is this your husband’s handwriting?” The wife said, yes it is. The judge then replied, “Then there is no tribunal in the land that can obtain this money, when he has written the word forgiven.” Their debt was forgiven by the doctor himself. Therefore there was no longer any debt on record to be paid. The case was thrown out of court.
Take what Isaiah 1:18 says: “Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be white as snow.” This is wonderful news to someone who is all too aware of his or her guilt. But to one who feels no guilt, believes he or she has done no wrong or little wrong to speak of, it is a non-message. It has no real impact. Certainly it has no sense of urgency to it. The thing is; if we think that we are basically good people and experience no guilt for wrong doing, we have no need of forgiveness. And so the Good News of the Gospel not only fails to be Good News to us, it actually becomes offensively accusatory; because the Gospel assumes our guilt.
So, in terms of guilt and forgiveness I leave you with Four Principles and Three Actions:
Four Principles
A. There is a debt to be paid. If we are guilty, we owe and we shall pay. This is why Christians repeatedly speak of Jesus paying for our sins.
B. The ultimate debt that is to be paid is not to us, but to God—even for wrongs done to us. This is why the debt that was to be paid had to be paid by Jesus, the Righteous and Holy one. He is the only one that was capable of paying our debt to God.
C. This is not the place or time of ultimate and final justice. There is no perfect justice here on earth. This is why Christians speak of a “Final Reckoning,” an ultimate Judgment Day.
D. We will all have justice in the final end, whether we like it or not or want it or not. We all think that we want real justice. In the end we will get what we want. Yet, some may regret that they ever asked for it. For then they too will have to pay.
Three Actions
1. We need to come to grips with our own guilt. Own up, confess and repent and then experience God’s forgiveness for the wrong we’ve done to God and others.
2. We need to forgive ourselves. There is nothing like a relieved and clear conscience.
3. We need to learn to forgive others as we have been forgiven. What goes around comes around.
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