Unhealthy Guilt

I think God has been trying to get something through to me.

It's in books I'm reading, sermons I'm hearing, video ads I'm viewing, conversations I'm having, counsel I am receiving.  I am beginning to get the message, I think, although it has a ways to go to sink down from head to heart.  I'm not even certain of all the implications.  But I think God is telling me I'm looking at myself the wrong way.

I'm not a sinner, in need of God's mercy and grace.  I'm a sinner, already saved by grace.

The distinction is subtle, but critical.  The first perspective puts the burden on me, the sinner, to come to God, to repent, to ask for what I need.  The second viewpoint puts the emphasis on God, on what He has already done, and not just for me, but for all sinners who have put their trust in Him.  It's not even something that "I just need to embrace," as I wanted to write just now.  It's already embracing me.  If there is anything I need to do, it's just to be thankful.

As Brennan Manning says in The Ragamuffin Gospel:

The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise.  He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness.  Thus the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace.

Growing up in a tradition that didn't emphasize regular repentance, there was something about weekly confession in the liturgical service that appealed to me, that felt right and good. I'd like to say that it was an expression of gratitude, as Manning says, but in hindsight, I'm thinking it appealed more to the "good girl" in me, looking for ways to please God and earn his approval...and my own.

I'm not sure what it is in me that thinks I must earn what I could just have...or thinks I need to judge whether I deserve it or not.  But it's been a revelation to discover that in fact, that's what I've been doing...when I could just delight in what is already mine.

For those who feel their lives are a grave disappointment to God, it requires enormous trust and reckless, raging confidence to accept that the love of Christ knows no shadow of alteration or change.  (Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel)


More pleasing to Me than all your prayers, works and penances is that you would believe I love you.  ~Jesus' words to Marjory Kempe in 1667 (quoted by Manning, TRG)


Preoccupation with self is always a major component of unhealthy guilt and recrimination.  It stirs our emotions, churning in self-destructive ways, closes us in upon the mighty citadel of self, leads to depression and despair, and preempts the presence of a compassionate God.  The language of unhealthy guilt is harsh.  It is demanding, abusing, criticizing, rejecting, accusing, blaming, condemning, reproaching, and scolding.  It is one of impatience and chastisement.  Christians are shocked and horrified because they have failed.  (Manning, TRG)

That's me...so upset with myself because I fail on a daily basis. I fail to be the wife, the mother, the daughter, the neighbor, the pastor's wife, the parent, the teacher I feel I could and should be.  And how else am I going to be any better, I think, if I don't reproach and scold myself about the ways I fall short?

Turns out there is a way of grace and freedom that I'm only beginning to glimpse.

The moment the focus of your life shifts from your badness to his goodness and the question becomes not "What have I done?" but "What can he do?" release from remorse can happen; miracle of miracles, you can forgive yourself because you have been forgiven, accept yourself because you are accepted, and begin to start building up the very places you once tore down.  There is grace to help in every time of trouble.  That grace is the secret to being able to forgive ourselves.  Trust it.  ~John R Claypool (quoted by Manning, TRG)

I think that's where I'll leave it.  I'm not very far down this road yet.  I'm only just beginning to heal, to build up a layer or two in those places I've been tearing down for so long.  And I'm grateful, in a way I haven't quite experienced before.

Thank you, Lord.

Thoughts on Failure, Perfection and the Attempt

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
~Michael Jordan

The composer Stravinsky had written a new piece with a difficult violin passage. After it had been in rehearsal for several weeks, the solo violinist came to Stravinsky and said he was sorry, he had tried his best, the passage was too difficult, no violinist could play it. Stravinsky said, "I understand that. What I am after is the sound of someone trying to play it."
~Thomas Powers, quoted in the book Sunbeams

I wouldn't have even known they were mistakes if my mom hadn't told me. But she did. And then she said those mistakes didn't matter because it was Horowitz [a famous pianist]. And Horowitz was not about perfection. He was about joy and art and music and life. And those things have mistakes in them.
~A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban

Striving for perfection is a good thing. Just don't be about perfection. Be about joy and art and music and life. Be the sound of someone trying.
~Miss Erin, Backstage Musings

Therefore...let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus...who for the joy set before him endured the cross...so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
~from Hebrews 12

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
~2 Corinthians 12:9