guilt

• detected by ordeals of poison, fire, and pain

70:10.5It was very early be­lieved that ghosts ad­min­is­tered jus­tice through the med­i­cine men and priests; this con­sti­tuted these or­ders the first crime de­tec­tors and of­fi­cers of the law. Their early meth­ods of de­tect­ing crime con­sisted in con­duct­ing or­deals of poi­son, fire, and pain. These sav­age or­deals were noth­ing more than crude tech­niques of ar­bi­tra­tion; they did not nec­es­sar­ily set­tle a dis­pute justly. For ex­am­ple: When poi­son was ad­min­is­tered, if the ac­cused vom­ited, he was in­no­cent.

70:10.6The Old Tes­ta­ment re­cords one of these or­deals, a mar­i­tal guilt test: If a man sus­pected his wife of be­ing un­true to him, he took her to the priest and stated his sus­pi­cions, af­ter which the priest would pre­pare a con­coc­tion con­sist­ing of holy wa­ter and sweep­ings from the tem­ple floor. Af­ter due cer­e­mony, in­clud­ing threat­en­ing curses, the ac­cused wife was made to drink the nasty po­tion. If she was guilty, “the wa­ter that causes the curse shall en­ter into her and be­come bit­ter, and her belly shall swell, and her thighs shall rot, and the woman shall be ac­cursed among her peo­ple.” If, by any chance, any woman could quaff this filthy draught and not show symp­toms of phys­i­cal ill­ness, she was ac­quit­ted of the charges made by her jeal­ous hus­band.

70:10.7These atro­cious meth­ods of crime de­tec­tion were prac­ticed by al­most all the evolv­ing tribes at one time or an­other. Du­el­ing is a mod­ern sur­vival of the trial by or­deal.

• arises from › violating mores, which is not necessarily sin

89:10.3The sense or feel­ing of guilt is the con­scious­ness of the vi­o­la­tion of the mores; it is not nec­es­sar­ily sin. There is no real sin in the ab­sence of con­scious dis­loy­alty to De­ity.

89:10.4The pos­si­bil­ity of the rec­og­ni­tion of the sense of guilt is a badge of tran­scen­dent dis­tinc­tion for man­kind. It does not mark man as mean but rather sets him apart as a crea­ture of po­ten­tial great­ness and ever-as­cend­ing glory. Such a sense of un­wor­thi­ness is the ini­tial stim­u­lus that should lead quickly and surely to those faith con­quests which trans­late the mor­tal mind to the su­perb lev­els of moral no­bil­ity, cos­mic in­sight, and spir­i­tual liv­ing; thus are all the mean­ings of hu­man ex­is­tence changed from the tem­po­ral to the eter­nal, and all val­ues are el­e­vated from the hu­man to the di­vine.

• arises from › interrupted spiritual communion, lowering moral ideals

103:4.3The sense of guilt (not the con­scious­ness of sin) comes ei­ther from in­ter­rupted spir­i­tual com­mu­nion or from the low­er­ing of one’s moral ide­als. De­liv­er­ance from such a predica­ment can only come through the re­al­iza­tion that one’s high­est moral ide­als are not nec­es­sar­ily syn­ony­mous with the will of God. Man can­not hope to live up to his high­est ide­als, but he can be true to his pur­pose of find­ing God and be­com­ing more and more like him.

• dealing with guilt › Jesus destroyed basis of all fictitious g.

103:4.4Je­sus swept away all of the cer­e­mo­ni­als of sac­ri­fice and atone­ment. He de­stroyed the ba­sis of all this fic­ti­tious guilt and sense of iso­la­tion in the uni­verse by declar­ing that man is a child of God; the crea­ture-Cre­ator re­la­tion­ship was placed on a child-par­ent ba­sis. God be­comes a lov­ing Fa­ther to his mor­tal sons and daugh­ters. All cer­e­mo­ni­als not a le­git­i­mate part of such an in­ti­mate fam­ily re­la­tion­ship are for­ever ab­ro­gated.

• arises from › failure to resolve ego contentions

103:5.4But man’s in­ter­pre­ta­tion of these early con­flicts be­tween the ego-will and the other-than-self-will is not al­ways de­pend­able. Only a fairly well uni­fied per­son­al­ity can ar­bi­trate the mul­ti­form con­tentions of the ego crav­ings and the bud­ding so­cial con­scious­ness. The self has rights as well as one’s neigh­bors. Nei­ther has ex­clu­sive claims upon the at­ten­tion and ser­vice of the in­di­vid­ual. Fail­ure to re­solve this prob­lem gives ori­gin to the ear­li­est type of hu­man guilt feel­ings.

• dealing with guilt › refuse to harbor feelings of g.

156:2.7Said Je­sus: “My dis­ci­ples must not only cease to do evil but learn to do well; you must not only be cleansed from all con­scious sin, but you must refuse to har­bor even the feel­ings of guilt. If you con­fess your sins, they are for­given; there­fore must you main­tain a con­science void of of­fense.”

• dealing with guilt › be not downcast by failure to forget regrettable experiences

156:5.8Do not be­come dis­cour­aged by the dis­cov­ery that you are hu­man. Hu­man na­ture may tend to­ward evil, but it is not in­her­ently sin­ful. Be not down­cast by your fail­ure wholly to for­get some of your re­gret­table ex­pe­ri­ences. The mis­takes which you fail to for­get in time will be for­got­ten in eter­nity. Lighten your bur­dens of soul by speed­ily ac­quir­ing a long-dis­tance view of your des­tiny, a uni­verse ex­pan­sion of your ca­reer.

• arises from › sense of separation from Father’s full approval

174:1.4“When a wise man un­der­stands the in­ner im­pulses of his fel­lows, he will love them. And when you love your brother, you have al­ready for­given him. This ca­pac­ity to un­der­stand man’s na­ture and for­give his ap­par­ent wrong­do­ing is God­like. If you are wise par­ents, this is the way you will love and un­der­stand your chil­dren, even for­give them when tran­sient mis­un­der­stand­ing has ap­par­ently sep­a­rated you. The child, be­ing im­ma­ture and lack­ing in the fuller un­der­stand­ing of the depth of the child-fa­ther re­la­tion­ship, must fre­quently feel a sense of guilty sep­a­ra­tion from a fa­ther’s full ap­proval, but the true fa­ther is never con­scious of any such sep­a­ra­tion. Sin is an ex­pe­ri­ence of crea­ture con­scious­ness; it is not a part of God’s con­scious­ness.

• Peter crushed after denying Jesus

184:2.8Pe­ter was so per­turbed that he sought to es­cape con­tact with his ac­cusers by go­ing away from the fire and re­main­ing by him­self on the porch. Af­ter more than an hour of this iso­la­tion, the gate-keeper and her sis­ter chanced to meet him, and both of them again teas­ingly charged him with be­ing a fol­lower of Je­sus. And again he de­nied the ac­cu­sa­tion. Just as he had once more de­nied all con­nec­tion with Je­sus, the cock crowed, and Pe­ter re­mem­bered the words of warn­ing spo­ken to him by his Mas­ter ear­lier that same night. As he stood there, heavy of heart and crushed with the sense of guilt, the palace doors opened, and the guards led Je­sus past on the way to Cai­a­phas. As the Mas­ter passed Pe­ter, he saw, by the light of the torches, the look of de­spair on the face of his for­mer self-con­fi­dent and su­per­fi­cially brave apos­tle, and he turned and looked upon Pe­ter. Pe­ter never for­got that look as long as he lived. It was such a glance of com­min­gled pity and love as mor­tal man had never be­held in the face of the Mas­ter.

184:2.9Af­ter Je­sus and the guards passed out of the palace gates, Pe­ter fol­lowed them, but only for a short dis­tance. He could not go far­ther. He sat down by the side of the road and wept bit­terly. And when he had shed these tears of agony, he turned his steps back to­ward the camp, hop­ing to find his brother, An­drew. On ar­riv­ing at the camp, he found only David Zeb­e­dee, who sent a mes­sen­ger to di­rect him to where his brother had gone to hide in Je­ru­sa­lem.

• Peter crushed after denying Jesus

184:2.13Pe­ter never fully be­lieved that he could be for­given un­til he met his Mas­ter af­ter the res­ur­rec­tion and saw that he was re­ceived just as be­fore the ex­pe­ri­ences of this tragic night of the de­nials.