No More
Guilt Trips
Hebrews
9:24-28
by Rev.
Frank Schaefer
A
few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a young man, I will call “Billy” here.
He wanted to talk to me and when we sat down he said: “I believe God has
forgiven me, but I just feel that I must do something to make amends. What can I
do to pay for my mistake? What can I do to undo what I’ve done?”
The first thing that came
to my mind was to tell him to pray ten Hail Marys; but with all due respect to
my Catholic colleagues, I don’t really think that would have helped this young
man.
Billy’s problem really had
to do with our Scripture reading today and I wish I had thought of that passage
when we talked. I believe that Billy’s question is a question we all have at
times. It is difficult for us to fathom that God forgives us just based on a
confession made by faith. Isn’t there really anything else that must be done? We
need to learn to learn to deal with our feelings of guilt, we need to learn to
forgive ourselves.
In our reading from Hebrews
9:26 we read “But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age
to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.”
We are living, according to
this author, at the end of the age. What this verse means in plain English is
that the death of the Son of God on the
cross is sufficient to remove all sin that by any and all humans that lived back
then as well as those that were born since that time. That includes us!
The author is putting this
statement into the context of the annual sacrifice that had to be performed in
ancient Israel by the high priest. Every year the people would travel to the
temple in Jerusalem for the Day of Atonement. They would bring or purchase
animals to be sacrificed. And every year the high priest would enter the holies
of holies in the most inner part of the temple sanctuary to make atonement for
all the people of Israel on account of all of their sins and mistakes. And at
that moment God would forgive all the sins committed and wipe clean the slate of
all his children for another year.
But since Jesus, the son of
God himself, is not only our high priest, but also the lamb that was slain and
sacrificed for our sins, we do not have to make sacrifices any longer. All we
have to do is confess our sins, and repent, and we will be forgiven based on the
sacrifice of Jesus and his high-priestly plea on our behalf.
I’m sure that most of us
have heard this before, this is not news, and yet….we are struggling with guilt
issues even after we asked God for forgiveness for our sins.
Before I can talk about the
spiritual aspect of how to get the upper hand in our struggle with guilt, we
need to look at the root of this struggle. The number one problem is what I
want to call our “guilt-trip” culture. Even from very early on all of us are
induced with guilt by family members, the community, and society in general. It
could be argued that a certain amount of guilt is important in our upbringing.
However, there is way too much guilt-tripping that contributes to our struggles.
This is how Life Magazine’s Family Education publication puts it:
While there is a positive aspect to guilt (learning to feel guilty when you are
doing something wrong is an important aspect of learning self-control), imposing
guilt on your child makes her feel resentful, and too self-judgmental.
You want your child to have enough negative feedback to stop the misbehavior,
you don't want her to wallow, grovel, and feel forever lousy.
Why do
otherwise wonderful parents lay guilt trips on their kids? Sometimes parents do
it because it's what their parents did. It's sometimes an attempt to
arouse empathy. It doesn't work. Guilt is especially destructive when imposed on
kids at the beginning of adolescence, when they're already deeply self-conscious
and self-disparaging. [1]
What are we talking about here? What are these guilt-trips that we’ve all been
subject to?
1. Present tense - You broke your mother’s heart
or…your mother is crying herself to sleep every night….
2. Past – when a loved one brings up your sins
from the past; e.g a spouse may say: “is this another one of your memory
lapses, like when you “forgot” our 25th anniversary?”
3. Future - Guilt also works forward; it is being
used to manipulate people into an action or to prevent an action.
"All of your
brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles will be here. You'll disappoint everyone
if you don't come. Holidays are meant to be spent with family."
And if you think moving 3000 miles away from your parents will stop mom putting
guilt trips on you, good luck! It didn’t work for me. I don’t know how many
times she has pulled the “But you’re a minister Frank, you need to be a good
example, so go call your brother on his birthday!” “Yes mom!”
Note that I have kept the examples of
guilt-trips on the light side; truth is, however, that most guilt trips are
hurtful and keep our weaknesses, our sins and mistakes in the fore-front of our
thinking, keeping us from living out our faith to the fullest.
Perhaps that’s the reason
why the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10: “But [Jesus] said to me,
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s
power may rest on me.”
Whoa, now that’s an interesting perspective
to take with all the guilt-trips that are floating around: boasting about our
weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on us.
Now, here is a person who truly
understands that Christ died for the forgiveness of our sins once and for all!
That’s an attitude we should adopt. We should boast in our weakness, not to make
light of sin and mistakes, but to dismiss all the guilt-trips our society, our
inner demons, and the evil forces in this world want to lay on us.
Here is the thing, because we have been
conditioned to bearing guilt-trips from our early childhood days, the spiritual
powers of this world can easily deceive us.
The bible is full of references to these
forces of evil in the world, some call them “the Enemy” other refer to them as
“Satan,” “Beelzebub,” the “Devil, etc. No matter what you call the evil force,
it seems a reality that the biblical authors describe as crafty and
deceitful, always trying to derail us from our faith.
Now, God’s grace and
forgiveness according to Hebrews 9 has been established once and for all and
according to Paul’s quote we read earlier God’s grace is sufficient for us and
never stops.
So, it is simply NOT true that God’s grace ever stops to flow.
But the Enemy is smart.
Knowing that he cannot cut off the supply of God’s grace to us, he can, however,
trick us into believing that it does. He’ll whisper things into our ears, such
as: You did it again. You failed another time. You’ll never get on top of
this. This time God’s had it with you.“
And often time we believe it.
Because, we’re conditioned to such guilt trips, we easily fall prey to this
tactic. And the reason this tactic works so well, is that when you actually
believe that you’re cut off from the grace of God, you start to believe that you
may as well give up as a Christian.
It’s a slippery slope. Once
you’re convinced that God is done with you, you feel like you don’t have to even
put in an effort to live as a good Christian; once you believe that God has
turned God’s back to you, you don’t even dare to pray or bother to read bible
any longer. You may start thinking: “What’s the use?”
But, the bible is clear that
God’s grace is always enough, because according to Hebrews 9 it is based on our
high priest, Jesus Christ himself, who is carrying the sins of the whole world
on his shoulders and makes atonement for all of us.
Because of our high priest
Jesus, God’s grace is always sufficient. It never runs dry. It is always there
for me and for you. No matter how many times we fail, how many times we sin.
And if God has forgiven our
sins and atoned us, we should no longer wallow in guilt but instead celebrate
our forgiveness. Just picture yourself being in a court of law, and your
attorney, Jesus Christ, succeeds in making a plea bargain with the judge. You
hear the words from the judge, “the court finds you….Not Guilty.” Because your
attorney paid for your sins. Would you not breathe a sigh of relief, would you
not thank your attorney, would you not smile with relief and celebrate?
Well, then, why don’t you?
Amen.
________________________
[1]
http://life.familyeducation.com/parenting/punishment/45305.html
