It seems to me that a staple of Christian life–even if we aren’t willing to admit it!–is the phenomenon of “feeling guilty”. Even though we know our sins have been forgiven, we still feel guilty, sometimes even more guilty than we might otherwise feel. This applies to any number of things, from wasting far too much time obsessing about (and sometimes coveting) new gadgets (i.e., pretty much everything in the Apple store), to spending money on a new dress that you didn’t really need, to not having gone on the run you said you’d go on (last week), to secretly disliking someone who is a friend, to not having done the laundry, to forgetting the birthday of someone important, the list goes on. Sometimes we even feel guilty about feeling guilty! Since it’s such a “live” phenomenon in Christian life, I thought I’d throw out a few excerpts on a Frank Lake’s masterful, must-read/-have book Clinical Theology, a Theological And Psychiatric Basis to Clinical Pastoral Care:
“What is recommended in clinical theology is not an indiscriminate relief of guilt feelings. It proclaims true guilt and the forgiveness of guilt.”
(p. 224)
“The Christian is not interested in condemning persons for unrighteousness, whether it be law-breaking or raging at real or imaginary injustice. He does not condemn this coming short of the law’s demand, because the inference would be that he was prepared to approve of its opposite, that is, the ability to justify oneself by having performed the works of the law, or by having ceased to rage, either by displacing it or repressing it.” (p. 224)
“There is no danger whatever that any man exposed to the clinical theological approach is going to go away with the feeling that, since his neurotic guilt has been lifted, he is thereby freed of guilt, of all guilt. His actual guilt, as over against the goodness of God, is established, in order that by the further goodness of God in Christ it too may be dissolved.” (p. 225)
“Morality created an impasse, for it laid the onus of maintaining the good relationship between ourselves and God on our own moral effort. It laid the onus of restoring the relationship, broken by our evil, on our own reparative toil. The more seriously we took this task in hand, the more self-directed activity resulted. The goal that motivated our good works was our own good, rather than the good of others. The very success of this moralistic way of ‘keeping in’ with God and conscience tended to self-sufficiency, self-congratulation, and pride in some subtle form. At every stage of this law-centered way of working out our own merited relationship with God, we were faced either with the impasse of failure or the paradoxical impasses of ‘success’.” (p. 227)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylwJJfCUFJk&w=600]
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11 responses to “Frank Lake on Clinical Theology, True Guilt and the Pardoxical Impasse of Success”
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bonnie-
these are amazing! i want to hear more…
dz
I am simply blown away by these quotes!
Thank you Bonnie!
Yes, especially the last one about Morality and the “anus”, I mean, “onus”! 🙂 JAZ
Dear Bonnie,
Thank you for these passages – they describe me perfectly! The third passage for sure,(“this law-centred way of working out our own merited relationship with God”), and the first also, for I was so good at explaining, excusing, or denying the facts behind the guilt I carried – I was trying to deal on my own with the consequences of how I hurt people and denied my faith. In other words I totally believed in “the ability to justify oneself by having performed the works of the law,”, or, when that was unsatisfactory, (“having ceased to rage”), then on to “displacing and repressing”! I know this place only too well. I speak of it in the past but the temptation is ever present.
I am thinking now about the second passage, and the establishment of actual guilt, with this reflection:
I was looking at old family pictures this weekend, pictures I’d never seen from family vacations when I was a young mother, and in seeing them I remembered what a self righteous so and so I was – I could hear in my mind what I was thinking and saying at the time and it wasn’t pleasant. How could I be so rude? I had spent years justifying that rudeness, or calling it “wit”. But this time I was able to look at those pictures and say to myself that I was wrong, period, and to not be devastated but relieved, and that is a moment of the good of guilt. It is like having been in hiding, on the run, for years and years, finally caught, and then feeling incredible relief of not having to hide anymore. That should be enough, but then comes the even greater relief of acceptance and love. No explaining ever brings this about, but a lot of soul searching takes one to the point of realizing what a sham one is, and then to look around and realize that what I was trying to do has been done once for all, for me, is the greatest thing.
Lake says it better: “Christian introversion is properly the Holy Spirit’s conducted tour of each man’s nether world. The sufferer goes down into his own private hell in order to find that Christ, crucified and risen, comes into view again as Lord when all human help and light is gone”. P. 170, Clinical Theology, abridged version.
Guilt has to get worse before it gets better, accepting the despair is the only way through. And, Lake is clear that we need a human being to walk with us, someone to see us and still love us, and through such people we can trust the compelling love of Christ. Then guilt loses its power and is instead the source of humility, and thus freedom. To me the only hope is knowing that I BELONG to Christ – I am His problem, and He speaks through circumstances telling me that He loves me – I used to see these messages as signs of well doing, now I know better, they are signs of belonging, and that is all I ever wanted.
Thank you,
Robin
We knew him, Horatio.
I’ve often wondered…do you think guilt and shame are functionally the same? I mean, we talk about “feeling guilty” a lot but we don’t really frequently say we “feel ashamed”. We talk about guilt and shame in psyc of religion all the time but I haven’t quite decided what I think about the two. Also, I’d love to know more about what you think the theological implications are if the two were the same or distinct.
Hi Bonnie! We do talk about “shame” in the US quite a lot, especially in the recovery world (e.g., AA and 12-step related programs) and the term “toxic shame” has become a bit of a phrase-in-vogue in certain Christian circles. In AA, people often try to draw a distinction between the two, stating that “Shame has to do with your own feelings about yourself”, but that “Guilt has to do with feelings about things you have or have not done to others”. Personally, I think that’s a bit silly and I regard the two as being basically the same thing (i.e., dealing with one, if they are in some way not identical, deals with the other), much in the way that I would say repentance, despair, and being honest are all substantively basically identical. Those are my thoughts. What do you think? -JAZ+
the way i have heard it put at church is that shame goes to the person, while guilt goes to the act. the teaching was that guilt is good in the christian life (because it means we recognize sin), while shame is not (because we have declared righteous once and for all). not sure i buy it; i think i’m more inclined to side with jaz.
Thank you Bonnie for the chance to reflect on this!
I think that John is basically right, these words are used interchangeably, but the word “guilt” and the word “shame” affect me in different ways. So this is an entirely subjective response.
Guilt is an objective fact, which when faced brings us to utter despair, in Luther’s words. Giving up brings relief, and feeling loved in the Lord’s forgiveness, and a renewed awareness that I can do nothing to make things right. Bad guilt is to not want forgiveness but rather desire to have gotten it right in the first place, and that implies self reliance, the quest for a righteousness of my own. My gut sense is that shame describes the bad guilt, because it does not come with the relief of giving up and receiving love, it still carries a powerful desire to look good in my own eyes and the world’s. And shame is pervasive, eats away at one’s personality, whereas guilt when acknowledged and forgiven as only Christ can do sets one free to love and be loved. When one feels shame one is quite unloveable – all tied up with feelings of self pity and resentment; but when one honestly accepts the guilt and the sacrifice that sets us free then one can be real,
the way Edmund Pevensie is after Aslan has taken his place with the witch.
I think the psychology literature is similar – that shame is a global feeling about the self, whereas guilt is related specifically to certain behaviours or actions. In the 80’s E.T. Higgins posited that shame arises out of the discrepancy between the ideal self and the actual self, whereas guilt arises out of the discrepancy between the ought self and the actual self. Later on some other folks (Tangney, Niedenthal, Covert, & Barlow, 1998) tried to test this empirically but found that the two were functionally the same; shame and guilt were not associated with differential forms of self discrepancy.
The relationship between guilt/shame and negative affect (even affective disorders) is not new, but there’s some newer work teasing out the relationship between guilt, shame, and narcissism, which I think is fascinating.
I am terribly late to this fabulous post and discussion but wanted to offer another idea I always had about the difference b/2guilt and shame: shame is guilt made public, or the threat of it being/becoming known by others. For example, you could feel guilty a hundred times a day but no one else knows–it’s your secret hell. As for the different forms of guilt, I simply build on the great descriptions Robin and Bonnie have offered. You would feel ashamed if others knew and judged you for it.
This practical distinction may not be “right” but it is what I’ve developed from eating disorder recovery groups. So and so felt ashamed because someone said something about his weight (its particualarly acute with the problems that break social norms: drinking, eating, adultery etc). Consequently he feels exposed, judged, marginalized. It the effect of personal guilt in the eyes of others. Inside, he yearns for a balm for the razor sharp guilt that perpetuates this behavior–that guilt is probably about other things originally. As John said, an unhappy marriage between guilt and shame work to deepen the wounds so the result is the same. Help!
Who will save me from this body of death?! Thanks be to God that he works through it all and my Savior, Jesus Christ.