Today, I want to reflect briefly about guilt in the circles I walk in.

As part of the way my life is structured, I have the blessed opportunity to relate to both believers and non-believers in Jesus Christ.  It has been my goal for many years to try and actually understand the people around me (believer and unbeliever alike) and why they do what they do.  The primary way I’ve attempted this is by asking good questions and then (trying) to listen while people tell me what they think.  (This is an area of continued growth in my life, as I sometimes like to talk more than I listen.)  At the same time, like all of us, I watch the American culture in the way that most of us do, trying to make sense of what people in my country do and are doing, and why they are doing it.

Lately, I’ve noticed a profound disconnect along the fracture lines of my life about how people process guilt.    This fracture plays out in a variety of ways:  culturally/personally; believers/non-believers; younger/older; etc.  Guilt is obviously related to responsibility, and so that will also figure prominently in my thoughts. I want to throw this out today, and then ask for your feedback.  Have I hit this or am I missing something?  I’ve become convinced that seeing ourselves by our focus on our guilt is a telling reflection of our core issue(s) as a culture.

The first fracture that appears to be present is the way we process guilt on an individual, personal level, and the way that we process it as a culture or society.  To put it bluntly: as a culture we are comfortable taking on extreme guilt where we are not comfortable taking on any guilt personally.  When someone in our culture is confronted with a failure to achieve a responsibility, the prevailing impulse seems to be to avoid taking personal responsibility in favor of pointing to a larger societal responsibility which negates that responsibility.  The net effect of this transaction is to make the sins of every individual the responsibility of the larger culture.  A few examples…

…we blame video games and a “culture of violence” for the violent behaviors exhibited by some of our youth (not parents who allow such a culture to proliferate in their home or the kids who participate in aspects of it.)

…we blame “the church” for the sins committed by individuals.

…we blame “consumerist culture” or “unchecked population growth” for the supposed changes to our environment and climate.  (I’m not talking about the veracity of this claim, I’m talking about the nature of the claim).

…we blame “being born this way” (in essence placing blame on our parents and the genes we inherit–a function of larger cultural setting), for the evil predispositions we have (from alcoholism to serial murder).

…we blame our politicians for failings of our society, though our politicians take their cues almost exclusively from us–politicians make a life from responding to trends in their constituents.

The short version here is that when our culture is given the opportunity to choose between personal responsibility and cultural responsibility, our culture elects to place blame on the latter.  We distance ourselves personally from guilt as far as we can.  If we are right to blame the culture for our individual guilt, it seems like a curious tactic to trust in the power of culture to achieve our individual responsibilities–we have already demonized it and claimed it is evil!

The second dynamic is based on age.  I don’t have as many examples here, but if you compare my generation (people in their late 20’s and early 30’s) to my parents (now in their late 50s) and my grandparents (my last remaining grandparent is near 80), it seems to me that there is a significant difference between the way those groups handle responsibility and guilt.  In general, it seems to me that older people take more responsibility and still somehow, amazingly, feel less guilt (at least publicly).  The generation which fought World War II took enormous responsibility for the future of the world when they were my age (or younger), and stewarded it through that period before handing it to their children, who seem to have shirked that responsibility in at least some ways, though without feeling guilt for those decisions at the time.  The generation which brought us “free love,” the drug culture, hippies, protest culture, and so on made it virtuous to skirt responsibility while warring against guilt.  As I consider my generation, it seems to me that we feel tremendous guilt, even as we cannot connect our guilt to our failure to accept responsibility for our actions (or lack thereof).  Nothing is our fault.  And yet we feel profoundly guilty.   Along this fracture line, the  young blame the older and the older blame the younger for our current state of affairs.  Everyone may be on to something.

The third dynamic is based on faith in Jesus.  Ironically, the result between these two groups is the same, but the paths and reasons for the why guilt is processed in these ways are vastly different.  It seems to me that there are two ways for people to process their guilt if you don’t want to own it–attack or avoidance.  Those who do not own their guilt (they do not acknowledge they have done anything to merit guilt) tend to attack anyone or anything which they feel makes them feel guilty.  Someone disagrees with you?  They become the locus of rage and derision, the source of guilt, and they are demonized.  The guilt of the guilty is placed on the one who is supposed to have made them feel that way, and the responsibility passes (in theory) from a person.  Those who own their guilt (those who acknowledge they have done something to merit guilt) tend to distract themselves from their guilt–to avoid it.  When these people feel guilty, they look for engaging things which can overwhelm their senses and make them forget.  Unfortunately, neither of these approaches–attack or avoidance–ultimately solves the problem of guilt, and can often make the guilty feelings worse, and so the problem spirals.  The great irony of these two approaches is that they often create even more guilt.  Those who attack often find that the person who they farmed their guilt out to was themselves not culpable for their guilt.  Those who avoid their guilt by indulgence often find that the contrivances they use to ignore it cause more guilt.

Among unbelievers, attack looks like activism.  Entire schools of philosophical thought have coalesced around the idea that you can study history and thought and establish where the blame ultimately belongs for the way things are.  As an example, I suggest liberal feminism.  Feminists argue that men have misused their power to further their own privilege and therefore mess up the world.  There are a variety of ways in which this is described, but ultimately, men are responsible for the current status of women and the larger world, which is uniformly assumed to be very low.  (Hear any echoes of guilt in that transaction?)  Leaving aside for a moment the extent to which the feminists are right to do this (they may have some points), the point I am making is that the impetus for this move is inherently about guilt and responsibility.

Among unbelievers, avoidance looks like self-satisfaction.  People find as much fulfillment or pleasure as they can, under the assumption that reaching the imaginary “paradise” point where they have everything they desire will finally exterminate the emotion of guilt under a flood of pleasure and self-gratification.  People who are doing this use words like, “relief” or “escape” to describe what they are doing.  The prevalent drinking and drug culture, the culture of impulsive video gaming, and pervasive sexual promiscuity are all, in their own ways, attempts to bury guilt.  In the same vein, the effort “to be a good person” can achieve this same goal.

Among believers, attack also looks like activism,  but usually here leads to people demonizing either those in the church or those outside it.  One group thinks the church has failed and wants to achieve the prophetic role and call it to repentance (again, they may be on to something there).  The other group thinks the problem is the culture created by unbelievers, and therefore wants to subdue them by force.  The so-called “moral majority” of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would be an example of this second group.   Of course, either way this is a violation of the Christian’s convictions about who unbelievers are (people God loves and wants to reach) or what the church is (the bride of Jesus Christ).

Among believers, avoidance often looks like legalism.  Rather than ignoring guilt, this group so identifies with their guilt that their entire life becomes an attempt to separate themselves from it.  This group will either talk often about their sin and the extravagant efforts they are undertaking to overcome it.  For some of these people, they will attend prayer meetings or healing sessions in desperate hopes that they will be delivered in a moment from the guilt and shame of what they have done.  (Again, it seems to me that some people actually experience this, though that does not seem to be the usual way for people to achieve final victory over sin and guilt.)  Some of these people become near-Stoics, trying to be ascetic to keep themselves from temptation.  Again, avoidance of the stimulus is the ultimate goal.  Another possibility for guilt-avoidant believers is for them to do whatever they want in an attempt to demonstrate God’s forgiveness.  This still constitutes avoidance, in that you avoid God’s judgment in favor of his love so that you don’t have to feel guilty for not being perfect.

I have more to say about what I think this means, but before I go further, I’d love to hear some feedback.  Have I described this correctly?  What do you think?  How does our culture process guilt?  How do you process it?