Whenever I feel guilt, is it because of sin?

Or, is feeling guilty, always, to some degree, a measure of guilt from sin?

The words to a hymn written by Eliza R. Snow's (How Great the Wisdom and the Love,” Hymns of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, no. 195) has me thinking about this question:

His precious blood he freely spilt;
His life he freely gave,
A sinless sacrifice for guilt,
A dying world to save.

In the second verse (quoted above) we read the line, "A sinless sacrifice for guilt," talking about Jesus Christ's atonement and one purpose that He gave His life: to spare us guilt or make it possible that we need not feel guilt because of any sin we have committed.

We have all experienced guilt.  "Do you feel guilty?" We might be asked if, for example, we have stollen a candy bar from the local supermarket.  My question, however, is: do we always feel guilt, only, because we have sinned?  We all know that it is wrong to steel.  We all know that intentionally making a choice that we know is wrong and that we should not do, is sin (we can talk about the legality of things some other time, but to do so now would only confuse the issue...  Regardless, the fact remains that being against the law does not necessarily factor into one's morality...  We can address that at some other time--now stop confusing the issue; I told you that would happen...).

Let's think of times that you might feel "guilt" but you didn't sin.  Let's say that you embarrassed your friend and she started crying...you feel guilty about it, but did you sin?  I am afraid that this may sound judgmental because all that we have to look at is my description of the facts at hand, but, yes, the reason you feel guilt about making your friend feel embarrassed and cry is because you have sinned.  If you start to justify yourself when we're only talking about the scenario that I've written, then I suggest that maybe you (you that are feeling guilty!) need to revisit something in your own past and ask forgiveness of someone...

Let's say that you feel guilt over stubbing your toe on the sidewalk some morning.  Well...stop it!  There is no reason to feel guilty over stubbing your own toe.  In fact, I am going to tell you something else: you aren't feeling "guilt."  You maybe feel embarrassed.  Maybe feel like you shouldn't have done that, but don't say you feel guilt.  You feel something and you know that feeling guilt makes you, at least, feel uncomfortable, but that's not what you feel when you simply stub your toe.  Let's reserve that word, "guilt," for times that one (possibly you or possibly someone else...) has sinned and not for silly acts of embarrassment.  The answer that I've just given to my own question is: No, you don't feel guilt for a reason other that for sin (but, didn't you just give an answer to your own question by just restating the original question in a statement form where the question is ruled out and one is left with just the answer to the question itself?  Well, that is what one does when it's a single-person-dialogue, otherwise known as a monologue, and the actor asks himself a question: he or she simply answers her/himself.  Not satisfying enough?  Take the question and start your own dialogue with somebody that you trust enough to help you discover the answer to your own question--be warned though, my answer simply came about by changing the question (I could just reword the question to make it not even need to be answered: If I only ever feel actual guilt because of sin, what is it called when I act in such a way that I think I am experiencing built, but, in fact am not?).

Now we can get at the meat of the issue: Why do we feel guilt because of sin?

I was told last Sunday what one person believed and it coincided with my thoughts and feelings as to the reason we feel guilt...  It is because...

Why do you think?

Let your answers come flooding in.  Take down that blogspot server because of too many people trying to post at the same time!

JPS

Self-Analysis II

Remember what I first wrote about here, in Self-Analysis; where I talked about self analysis and I wondered if we shouldn't take time, weekly at least, to analyze ourselves and see what there is, if anything, to change.  Actually, I didn't wonder, but emphatically said that we should take time weekly to see if we're doing the things that we've decided to do in the past.




You see, all of us, every single one of us, lives our life from moment to moment and the moment we're living currently was decided by the moment we've just lived.  In other words, we are a synthesis of our past, where we have been acting/deciding, our present--where our future dreams, hopes, worries, fears, knowledge, and beliefs, are in the present moment and where our decisions take place and our actions turn into doing and not just thinking/sitting/laying/falling/wondering, and our future--what our actions will be, what our beliefs will be, and what our knowledge and beliefs will be after our present choice is made.

Almost all of us live our lives on autopilot and are making decisions only based on what would feel good to us, or sometimes based on what we've already chosen in the past, and this is good and necessary.  We can't be making brand new choices every second of every day or we would become exhausted at the very thought of acting.  Make decisions based on the past decisions that have gone well.  Only by doing that can we have the energy to move forward.  Only when we know what is the best way to move, and we move that direction, can we know that we are going in the right direction.

As I said before in Self-Analysis I, as a counselor, I have learned that in order to counsel with someone we should be in a state of relative congruence. That means that I shouldn't be acting in a way that's contrary to the things that I know to be right and good. Shouldn't all of us be living in such a state? Shouldn't all of us be living according to that which we know and believe to be right and good and true?

JPS

School Counseling memoirs

There are just so many fun stories, that I feel obligated to record a few of them for you (of course, though, the names and the places where these stories originated have been kept confidential...).  And, of course I will need to be hired and working with students first...  Until then I'll leave you with a little self-contradiction or enigma:

When it gets to be the end of the school year and we are about to leave for summer-break, we feel excited to have three months (Ok, two, maybe two and one half months...) away from our job and away from working with students.  Yet, we also, simultaneously feel bad about leaving--just never so bad that we end-up forgoing our vacation and stay at school.  Why is that?  One, it's the student's vacation too and we would never want to deprive them of their precious vacation, and two, part of our job includes a summer break, just like it includes all of the holidays throughout the year...  It's as much our vacation as it is the students!  But really, Marco, it isn't ours as much as the students because we wouldn't even have a job without them...  We wouldn't work in a school, where the whole school takes a vacation, without the students.  So get over yourself!

And what about year-round-schoool?  If that's your answer or your question, then write your own blog!  Go ahead, start it and write that as one of your first posts, because that's just silly!

JPS