The Problem of Guilt

    The experience of guilt can be one of the most severely uncomfortable of human experiences. Guilt gnaws at the mind, troubles the restless heart. It hurts. And like all things painful, it arouses in people the reaction of seeking relief, much like the nerves in one’s fingertips scream at you to quickly remove your hand from the scorching hot stove top.
    There are, in a broad sense, two main ways in which people seek this relief: either by dealing with the cause of the guilt or by dealing merely with the symptom – again, much like someone would either seek a cure for a debilitating disease or ask his doctor only for pain pills. The latter attempt at escaping guilt itself usually takes one of two forms (often pursued together): one seeks relief of the symptom of guilt through distraction or by trying to convince oneself – which inevitably involves trying to convince others also – that the cause of the guilt is not legitimate.
    The option of distraction, in a culture that offers so many, seems a practical solution… for a while. Like a drug, though, distractions have to be indulged in ever increasing dosages to be effective, whether in the case of drugs and alcohol, or in being absorbed ever more deeply into TV-land, into one’s fast-paced career, into temporary “relationships” or into sex.
    I just finished reading Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. The author examines the effect of television in our modern life and concludes that, apart from the mindlessness of much of the programming, the problem with TV is that it reduces everything it airs – political debates, religious rites and teaching, horrible tragedies at home or in far-off places, the waging of war, etc. – it reduces everything to a form of entertainment, thus destroying healthy debate and a proper human response to occurrences in the world.
    Though of itself a needed part of life, entertainment is, by definition, a kind of distraction. And since television has cheapened almost every area of life to the level of entertainment, distraction has become the world in which so many live. Postman even makes the claim – and writes much to substantiate it – that Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is no longer futuristic but has arrived in full flower through the Tube: a society, not enslaved by a tyrannical government, but controlled through the media of distraction.
    The second method of dealing with guilt – so as to avoid facing the cause of it – is pretending that the cause of guilt is outside of oneself, the fault of others, the fault of the Church, who will not conform her teachings to a now accepted lifestyle in the popular mind. This one I have heard over and over again – someone relating to me, a priest, a short history of his life that is full of bad choices, errant behavior, a callousness toward others and a neglect of God. These the person readily admits, but then, hocus pocus, turns right around and blames the Church, because of her constancy, for the terrible sense of guilt. “The Church makes me feel guilty,” one hears often. No, if there is an authentic experience of guilt, then its cause is not the Church and her teaching; the cause are the things we do, say, and think that are contrary to the will of God and thus to our own nature. It’s like having our fingertips scorched by a hot stove, and the sufferer blames the stove.
    One of Walker Percy’s memorable characters in his novel Love in the Ruins: the Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World, suffers from guilt at not living his Catholic faith. His mistakes, shortcomings, and sins are all his own and, to a large extent, freely chosen. His friend and colleague, an atheist psychiatrist, assures the bad Catholic that he can, with therapy, do away with the guilt imposed upon him by the Catholic’s upbringing and residual faith. No thank you, is his response, and he explains that his guilt is the anchor, the last bit of sanity left him, in a world that has all but gone crazy with its rebellion from any rules of nature – much less of God – and its subsequent flight from the effects of this rebellion, registered in the human heart as guilt.
    No wonder that in our society of distractions, evasions and excuses, public signs are outlawed that speak of God’s law and judgment (the Ten Commandments) or remind us of God’s forgiveness and our need of it (the manger scene at Christmas)! Distractions, yes, but not reminders!
    Reminders of what ought to be, or what you and I ought to be, are not very comfortable. And here is where we see the source of that insistence that the Church change her stance on so many issues because this stance causes people discomfort. Comfort has become the standard, not truth and conformity with reality. Thus, the guilt-sufferer blames, ultimately, reality or avoids reality with a myriad of distractions, anything but deal with the cause.
    The Season of Lent is all about dealing with the cause. There is only one way to properly deal with guilt, and that is to repent. True repentance involves a recognition of and a sorrow for sin, a decision to turn away from sin, a movement, then, toward God – in a phrase: a change of mind. No, it’s not reality that has to change (and the Church’s explication of that reality in her moral teaching); no, the rules for the Christian are well-founded and proven trustworthy and so are not to be amended to “update” and make the Church “where people are today.” People today suffer perhaps more than ever from guilt, to some extent because they thought they could, with the anti-authoritarian revolution of the 1960s, demand that the very structure of human nature change to meet the turbulent desires of the lost human heart; or that with so many alluring attractions of affluent lifestyles, one could just forget what one would, with quiet reflection, regret. Guilt hurts. There’s only one cure. Lent is wonderful, because it reminds of the cause of guilt and the means of getting rid of it.