The Unholy Trinity: Guilt
If you’ve attended a church for any length of time and have gotten to know the leaders of the church, then you start to see that there is a vision (sometimes multiple visions) for the organization. Attend a church business meeting and you will get a quick lesson in the politics of church and realize they are run much like a business with goals, missions and a budget. However, unlike a business that can hold the consequence of unemployment for employees who do not perform up to par; the church has developed a different way of ensuring it’s members participate in a way that can help it obtain its outreach goals and fundraising goal for a new building.
This powerful tactic is……guilt, the first aspect of the Unholy Trinity.
I’m not even going to touch on the idea of sin and asking forgiveness (for now). Instead, I want to point out how every Sunday, pastors are stepping into their pulpits and preaching guilt-inducing sermons. The hope is that these sermons will control the congregation’s actions, specifically, how they live, how they vote, how active they are in the church, how they spend money, where their kids go to school, etc.
Not only is guilt a tool used by leaders in the church to affect members, it is a easily taught lesson to start having church members give each other guilt trips. Guilt is one of the most prominent emotions expressed in the church. I’ve heard the phrase, “I feel bad” more often in church than anywhere else. Church-goers are not only expressing guilt over their sins, but also over missing church functions or not measuring up to the church’s expectations.
For many of us the guilt can start at a young age, and maybe even came from our parents who told us that we should go to church. It seems innocent enough – a parent wanting their child to learn about life and spirituality, but this evolves into guilt being the prime motivation for an individual’s church activity.
Maybe we attend long enough to start participating in the special programs. Fellow church members say, “You really should go to this new Bible study”, or “You should help us with vacation bible school.” And the unfortunate few of us who get to attend a church that is raising money for a new building get an extra load of guilt as it seems they can’t contribute enough money to the fund.
But, how do any of these “should” help us discover truth and spiritual growth? The answer is that they can’t, because they are designed to meet the goals of the church, not of the spirit/higher power.
Guilt is a burdensome, negative emotion and in the church it is coming from an external pressure to manipulate people into certain actions. This type of “guidance” is the opposite of what many of us seekers desire, and prevents us from - a spiritual transformation that would result in more finely attuned internal conviction.
After experiencing so much guilt it is common for individuals to become ashamed of who they are, which brings us to the next part of The Unholy Trinity – Shame.
July 01 2009 12:40 pm | Christianity and Jesus and spirituality