One of my friends on myspace has a good post on dealing with guilt. She gives us four ways people deal with guilt in her entry, “yuck, i’m so dirty…..i could stand a shower”:

1. Smother the guilt and make the same mistake again (and most likely continue to make it over and over) because they flat out don’t care that it was wrong

2. Feel overwhelming guilt, but try to conjure up ways to rationalize what happened so that they don’t feel bad about it anymore (or so that they can do it again without feeling the oppressive weight that comes with guilt)

3. Ask for forgiveness because they know what they did was wrong, and ask God for healing and strength to keep from making the same mistake again (and succeed by his grace)

4. Ask God for “forgiveness” as another way to get rid of the guilt, but not as a vow to make any changes in their life

Hmm, let’s look at each of these options.

Option 1 doesn’t help. Even if we ignore our guilt, God has given us a moral compass called our conscience. Now, the conscience is not the best guide to morality. We should look to the Bible to see what is truly right and wrong. Many times, though, because we’re made in the image of God, our conscience can point us the right moral direction. We see our parents fighting with each other and our conscience tells us something is not right. We curse at a friend in anger or we ignore a friend in silent hostility, and our conscience makes us feel guilty. Ignoring our guilt is pretty much impossible because of our conscience.

What about option 2, rationalizing our sins? This is very dangerous. Whenever we rationalize our wrong actions, we can gradually lose our ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Our conscience will be weakened with every rationalization. See, if we tell ourselves a lie long enough and often enough, we begin to believe it. Soon, what we knew as immoral is now moral in our eyes. However, there’s a big problem. Even though we may not experience guilt, we still feel the consequences of sin. Sin brings us lack of joy, love, and peace.

Option 4 is interesting. We can ask God for forgiveness, but then we don’t think about changing our lives. We don’t ask Him for help in overcoming our sin. The problem with this option is that we’re really not sorry for our sin. We just want to escape the punishment. We just want to stop feeling guilty. However, the Bible says that repentance is part of forgiveness for our sins. Acts 2:38 says:

Repent… in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.

What does repentance mean? It means to turn away from our sin. I picture myself walking the wrong direction towards sin, but when I repent, I do a complete 180 and begin to walk in the opposite direction. My focus is now on God instead of sin.

Well, that leaves us with option 3. This option is the best. Our request to God for forgiveness should be accompanied by a request for help in living a more Christ-like life. My friend ends her entry with this:

i think we all know that saying you’re sorry is more than just an apology; it’s saying you don’t wanna hurt that person again. same goes for God: if you don’t want to hurt God again, then you won’t wanna repeat your mistakes, and he’ll help you be strong so that you feel fresh a clean — just like steppin outta the shower..

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