Guilt and its Grievances

It was 1994, as I recall, and I was sitting on the sofa watching television and working on some project when the news broke in and gave report of a white bronco on the highways of Los Angeles being chased by police. Inside was OJ Simpson. At the time we weren't really sure what was going on with him. In the weeks and months that would follow we would watch a trial and an often divisive trial play out before our eyes. Whether you believe that he was or is guilty of the crime of which he was accused, I think of that trial and many others and am reminded of the media role in it all.

We depend on the media for everything and often our opinions are swayed by the opinions of those that travel over the airwaves or through our papers such that I have to wondered how often someone's guilt is determined less by the true evidence and more by the "court of public opinion" as they call it. We like to think that people get fair trials but if our culture is driven by guilt itself, then likely, fair trials aren't really available to any of us.

Last week we talked about the lowest level of human consciousness being shame. Just above that level is the level of force known as guilt. We have all known guilt at one time or other. Some times we feel it when we know we've done some thing bad--yelled at a neighbor, taken something that didn't belong to us. Sometimes we get it indirectly through others. Mothers most often get the rap for this with comments to their children like "you are always so busy and I never see you." Somehow the fact that you visited the day before and worked like a maniac around her house for her escapes her memory!

Sometimes people live out of this level and those that do are those who prove themselves as manipulators and power players. They like to turn your words around to make them serve themselves and often you wind up looking like the fool. At its extreme, David Hawkins says that "guilt provokes rage and killing is frequently its expression." He notes how cultures seem to find satisfaction in things like capital punishment and that very fact denotes a guilt driven culture.

When we live out of guilt it leads us to deliver on all sorts of grievances or to harbor them in such a way that a life of peace or even a moment of peace is just never possible for us. What a terrible way to live! Yet, throughout our culture people have arrested in their development at this level.

I hope for you that you don't have people in your life who live with such guilt and that you aren't one either and if you do have such persons in your life, I hope that you will understand that they simply cannot help living out of such a low level of life. I encourage you to pray for them to be transformed. In their transformation comes a societal transformation. Maybe through such transformation, our world can truly work toward peace.