Guilt Free?

Commercials have a great way of making you feel guilty. I don’t know if  you have seen this commercial, but as  I was a watching a movie marathon over the holiday break, this particular commercial came on every time there was a break in the movie. It was the  SPCA  commercial called,  “Some Where in America.” (click here to watch 1 min video)
Every time this commercial came on I wanted to mute it. But then I felt guilty about muting it.  I wanted to change the channel but I felt guilty about changing the channel. I wanted to walk out of the room because it sickened me but I even felt guilty about walking out of the room.

Then there were other commercials that said I should feel guilty about having cable vs. direct tv and vice versa. There were also commercials that made me feel bad for the color of my hair and for not having much of it. There were still more commercials that made me  feel guilty for not buying my wife diamonds for Christmas.

On the flip side there were commercials that told me  I should NOT feel guilty for buying a new car and going into irresponsible debt because if it feels right. It is also okay for me to overeat by eating a deep dish pizza with the works with no one else around. Another commercial told me that overdrinking by drinking mass quantities of beer was okay. Still, another commercial tried to convince me that living together outside of marriage was good for you.

Marketers use guilt as a selling tool to get you to buy something. They make you feel bad about the way you are, the ring tone you don’t have, the kind of phone you own or ringtone you do have , and for not helping poor helpless animals. They make you feel guilty for not keeping up with Kardashians or for trying to keep up with the Kardashians. Some reality shows make you feel guilty about how you raised your family. The reality TV show called, “19 and Counting” made me feel guilty at times of the things I didn’t do with my kids or teach my kids.  I remember thinking that there is no way this family could be that perfect. Then, all the stuff about their oldest son Josh came and I felt guilty again for having those thoughts.

Feeling guilty can become a vicious cycle. You start by saying to yourself, “Not only have I done a bad thing, but I am making a mess of my life. I can’t do anything right. And I don’t deserve any better.” Which leads to withdrawing from people – people you feel you have disappointed, or let down, or embarrassed. Which leads to the final stage where you move from guilt to depression to self-punishment – you begin saying and thinking, “Not only have I done bad things, but I am bad.” This leads to feeling that you don’t deserve to live or having nothing to live for.

If we don’t address the guilt we feel …. well …. it could literally destroy you. Guilt becomes a non-stop accusation, a screaming voice that tears you down, attacking you for our past mistakes, failures and sins, leading to a downward spiral of self-destruction if it’s not handle appropriately.

What is guilt?

Becca Johnson, a Christian Psychologist gives us a great definition of guilt, she writes this:

“Guilt is an emotional response to the perception that we have broken a rule, or fallen short of a standard.”

We learn two things from this definition:

1. Guilt is an emotional response.
2. Guilt is based on perception.

What this means is you can FEEL guilty and not BE guilty. And you can BE guilty and not FEEL guilty. This translates into the fact that there is good guilt and bad guilt.

You might be thinking, “well if I’m feeling guilty – then I must be guilty.” Our conscience is supposed to be our trusted moral guide. Guilt can be good if produces a life change or a change in the way think. Guilt, which comes from your conscience (infiltrated by the Holy Spirit) , is supposed to work that way and if something is wrong in your life, the guilt you feel tells you to pay attention to that area.

But the problem is your conscience isn’t always reliable.

God knows and understands this and he tells us a group of people about their lives in Christ. They were feeling guilty and insecure about their relationship with God in ways they shouldn’t.  This is what God inspired John to say to them in I John 3:19-20:

19 Our actions will show that we belong to the truth, so we will be confident when we stand before God. 20 Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything.

Think about this for a moment – there are times when our conscience can make us feel guilty when it shouldn’t. God never intended to use guilt as a weapon against us. God knit our conscience into us in our mother’s womb. God intended guilt to create life change and cause us to change the way we think about others, ourselves, and our life experiences. If you remember guilt is an emotional response to a perception. That perception may or may not be right.

Our conscience is affected by some many others things and has the ability to produce bad guilt. A guilt that leads to personal destruction, or a walking away from God, or causes us to feel guilty when we really shouldn’t (bad guilt).

Our conscience has been affected by the way we were raised. Some of us grew up in strict, religious homes and some of us grew up in homes where there were not a bunch of rules or boundaries. Everyone else falls in between.

Our conscience has been affected by our religious background. Some of us were raised to see God’s character as that which is loving, merciful, and forgiving. And some of us were raised in a religious tradition that was very legalistic, based on rules and regulations.

Our conscience has been affected by the culture around us and in us. Culture is the world into which we were born , and the world which was born into us. The culture I was raised in had 8-track tapes, cassette tapes with the automatic stop feature, mp3 players, three TV stations, and one (maybe two) NFL games on Sunday. This is entirely different from the culture that my kids have been raised in. They are tech savvy. They have 1000’s of different TV stations to watch and different screens to watch them on. They have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,  Pintrest, and over a billion websites to get information from.

I had instant food (microwave), they have instant news. When the shootings in Paris happened in the fall/winter of 2015, news reports came out within a 1/2 hour. It used to take us a couple of days to get that kind of news.

I had to call or write to communicate with others. Now, you can talk to anyone in the world for free (and even see them). You can Snapchat them, Facebook them, or Instagram them instantly,  or you can use the now archaic form of communication – email.

Each generation lives in a particular time and context with a certain set of values and messages about how life should be lived. You can catch the values of the current culture by watching TV commercials. Commercials reveal a lot about what the current culture wants and desires. Marketers spend billions of dollars a year trying to convince you that you need their product. Over half the cost of something you buy is paying them to sell it to you. The messages we receive from these commercials help shape us in ways we really don’t want to admit to.

A lot of us (a lot of women included) are watching football. They have become a several billion dollar business. Football games themselves don’t shape you but the messages you receive during a game will shape you. You don’t have to watch a football game to do this but the next time you are watching TV sit down with a pencil and paper with the intention of watching the commercials. Write down what the commercials are trying to convince you of what you really need to be happy, or what you need to be feeling guilty about, or try to convince you that you are not good enough the way you are. Those of you that don’t watch TV – get on your other screen and go to youtube.com  and type in commercials. If you take on this challenge, I believe you will discover that you have been duped into buying something you really didn’t need in the first place or they convinced you are not good enough the way you are.

Our conscience has been shaped by your life experiences.

You’ve made bad decision in the past. You’ve had things happen to you that were beyond your control. You’ve have experienced tragedies where you felt you could have probably done something. You’ve done things or said things  in your past you wished we would have never done (by the way, this is true of everyone – not just you).

Our conscience has been shaped by the evil one.

This is Satan’s specialty.

Revelation 12:10 describes him, as “the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them … day and  night.”  John referred him to as, “a liar and the father of lies.” He is the master at making us feel guilty over things and lying to us that we can’t be forgiven. Lying to us that God has stopped loving us. Deceiving us into believing we are no longer worthy to be with God. Deceiving us into believing God doesn’t love us unconditionally. Convincing us his mercy is not real and His compassion is only for those who deserve it.

When we believe those lies and buy into that deception that’s when Satan really wins. His main mission is not to get you into sexual immorality, or drunkenness, or addictions, or gossip, or to get you to sin in some way. His main mission to destroy your relationship with God and keep you feeling guilty, keep you feeling unworthy, keep you feeling self-defeated, and, to keep you from understanding that you are forgiven and you have tremendous value to God.

Here is one of the most important spiritual truths you can remember:

 God never accuses. God only brings conviction.

Whenever you sense a voice of accusation saying: “I can’t believe you did this!”, “You call yourself a Christian?”, “I don’t know anyone who would ever do anything like that!” This is never the voice of God. It’s the voice of the Accuser.

Martin Luther, who is the greatest leader of the protestant reformation, tells us how he felt when the devil approached him one day and accused him of the enormous sins in his life. Satan laid out a long list of sins of which Luther was guilty, and thrust them under his nose in accusation. Luther said to the devil, “think a little harder; you must have forgotten some.” So the devil thought a little harder and added a few hundred to the list. When the devil was finished Luther said, “Okay, now take a pen and some red ink and write across that list ‘The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s son, cleanses us from all sin.’”

God is not surprised by how we were raised, what culture we were raised in, our religious background, our life experiences, or even how the enemy tries to deceive and destroy our relationship with Him.

Knowing that our conscience is not a reliable guide God told John to write to the believers in verse 20:

Even if we feel guilty, God is greater than our feelings, and he knows everything.

God also told Paul:

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

God told Isaiah:

“Come now, let’s settle this,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, I will make them as white as wool.”

God told John again:

But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.

If you are on a guilt trip whether it be good guilt or bad, remember God wants to produce life change in us. He wants to change the way we think. He wants to change the way you think about yourself. He wants to change your history for eternity.

Take a moment to do this excercise:

1. Get a 3×5 card, pencil, and a red ink pen.
2. On the 3×5 card write everything you are feeling guilty about (even the silly things) on one of the card.
3. On the other side or on top of the list you just made write the following with the red ink pen:

“The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s son, cleanses me from all sin.’”

Put this in your purse, your Bible, your wallet, and bring it out every once in a while to remind yourself that you have been cleansed from all sin.