Irony Becomes Her

Not guilty

Natural human life is guilt management.

Most (cynically speaking, all) of our righteousnesses are the filthy rags of appeasement for that voice inside which continually tells us what we already know: We're here for a greater purpose than what we can or want to concoct for ourselves. We hate that purpose, we reverence it, we fight against it or twist it beyond recognition, but we know it's there.

We have more stuff than others who are every bit as deserving. We repeatedly fail to meet our goals of good, generous, admirable behavior. So what do we do? Why, we do stuff. "I'll do this and this, oh yes, and this, and then beyond doubt I've fulfilled my obligations to the world and needn't feel guilty any longer."

In a way, it doesn't matter how true or false the ostensible cause for guilt is; we all have it. Some of us have been trained to feel it more strongly by parents who knew no other way to manage their children; some of us have been given far better instruction in what that guilt means, what it is good for and not good for.

The government has certainly picked up on the "guilt button" inside its citizens. It's right there next to the "entitlement button," and skillful politicians know that they can even press them in sequence for maximum power extraction. When we get tired of carrying guilt, we feel entitled to certain benefits/rewards. If we get them, we must find a way to manage the attending guilt of receiving them when others didn't, until we get sick of feeling guilty and feel entitled to some relief -- and on and on the cycle goes.

The opposite of guilt may be entitlement, but the cure of each is reconciliation. When we feel guilty, we feel that we owe someone something -- when we feel entitled, that someone owes us. Considered in contrast to this miserable cycle, imagine the freedom in nobody owing anyone anything! Not indifference, but reconciliation -- where obligation is swallowed up by an overflow of mutual appreciation, if not of each other then of a greater good or a shared benefactor.

As a follower of Christ, I believe God has given absolution from guilt to anyone who will humble queemself enough to take it undeserved -- but that reconciliation itself is not without its purpose. When we are reconciled with God (the source of that sense of external obligation) and with each other (the object of many of those obligations), we are free to act without fear of what He or they will think of us and can enjoy the intrinsic rewards of human and divine commendation without needing them to assuage the discomfort of obligation. Virtue isn't always its own reward, but I don't think it has to be a currency on the guilt exchange.

"So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (II Corinthians 5:16-21)

posted by Lynn @ 4:51 AM