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Often, when a person declares, “I feel guilty over such and such,” what the person really means but rarely acknowledges is, “I am afraid that if mother or father knew about what I had done, I would be condemned.” We frequently find that the person does not actually regard the action as wrong. In these circumstances, the solution to the problem of “

guilt is focused on the specific misdeed,

For years I was completely upside down about guilt. The crazy thing is that while this was going on I could give you a detailed, theologically accurate account of Christ’s atoning work on the cross. I sang songs about the love of God. I wrote songs about the love of God. I even went to seminary and wrote papers on salvation by grace. But when all w

This whole painful irony is especially striking in the case of email, that ingenious twentieth-century invention whereby any random person on the planet can pester you, at any time they like, and at almost no cost to themselves, by means of a digital window that sits inches from your nose, or in your pocket, throughout your working day, and often o

My problem with the shame-guilt dichotomy is that experientially, shame and guilt are identical. Intellectually, I may be able to parse out self-loathing from “being a good person who did something wrong,” but in that moment of feeling shame-guilt, a gut punch of an emotion, the feeling is identical: regret mixed with fear of punishment and the ter