Does God use guilt?
The Guilt of Janet Ames (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) When we talk about God 's using guilt, it sounds strange to many people in our society because there's a widespread notion that guilt is something that is intrinsically destructive to human beings and that to impose guilt on anybody is wrong. The idea then emerges that God certainly would never use such a thing as guilt to bring about his will with human beings. If he did, that would be beneath the level of purity we would prefer in our deity. In biblical terms, guilt is something that is real and is objective, and I think it's very important that we distinguish between guilt and guilt feelings. Guilt feelings are emotions that I experience subjectively. Guilt is an objective state of affairs . We see that in our law courts. When a person goes on trial for having broken the law, the question before the jury and before the judge is not, Does the accused feel guilty? but, Is there a real state of affairs that we call ...