Unearned Guilt Part II

I am going to digress from the polished form of my usual posts for a moment, because this subject of unearned guilt is extremely personal to me and I feel like I should give it the attention that I feel it is due. I say this because I know that for many, many years I struggled with unearned guilt - up until three or four years ago when I got rid of most, if not all, of it.

Most of the problem comes from my upbringing - my childhood demanded guilt on a daily basis, a guilt that continued in many forms into my adult life. I got rid of this guilt fairly recently, but this isn't the guilt that I want to spend my time here addressing. I just feel that it is an important thing to include to give some background into where I am coming from.

A lot of my guilt also came from my religion. I was raised a Christian and went to church very regularly until I was 18 or 19 years old. I remember questioning my faith and Christianity even when I was a child, and those questions never stopped. I constantly felt like I was never good enough; I always had to do more and more to prove myself to God or Jesus or the preacher or the people around me. I suppose that I understood that Jesus saved simply because I asked him to, but I couldn't get past the biblical mandates to do more and be more. So I did. I worked hard. I ran a Sunday School program with fervor until I was so burnt out on it that I couldn't see straight. I sang, I prayed, I read my bible, and it still was never enough.

At this time, I remarried my ex-husband, which was another area of unearned guilt for me. Christians aren't supposed to get divorced. They are supposed to stay together and provide the best future they can for their kids. When we got remarried we switched churches because he didn't like the one I was at. Of course there was guilt  from that. I was leaving a church where I ran the Sunday school program - just leaving it hanging. But I wanted to do what I thought was best for my marriage. People at the new church didn't stop talking about how great it was that we had remarried.

Almost a year later he and I split up. The new church wouldn't understand this; everyone I tried to talk to about it recommended that I do what I could to make things better. But it was hard for me to do that when another woman and several lies were involved. I left the new church because of the lack of understanding from them and I didn't go back to the old church because I had burned bridges there. I was shocked at what I felt was the hypocrisy of the people around me, including my husband who read a bible daily but talked to a woman who wasn't his wife and lied to her about me and our children.  I even felt my own hypocrisy because I had left a church that I hadn't wanted to leave in order to make someone else happy. I had left a Sunday school program in the lurch. I was a hypocrite.

On top of this there were my friends. I have to bring this up, because I feel that there may be other people out there going through this situation and not being able to get out of it. Through my process of getting rid of the unearned guilt that I was carrying around,  I lost a lot of the things that I had in common with my friends that I always hung out with. Not that this was the total cause for my sudden lack of interest in my friends. Hanging out with my friends was always a stressful experience for me; I always felt like I was doing something wrong and was always made to feel not good enough. The same types of guilt that applied in my church experience were living themselves out every day in front of my friends. Through my journey to rid myself of all of this guilt, I decided that I didn't have to feel like that all the time. I began limiting my time with my friends and not calling them as much. My life has been much less stressful because of the decision I made to cut the drama and the negative feelings out of my life. Of course, through the process of getting all of that out of my life, I have had to hear a lot of, "How could you do this after everything we have done for you? You are so selfish!"

And to this I reply: Yes, I am selfish. My personal well-being is important to me, and I HATE feeling guilty all of the time for absolutely nothing at all! I do not owe you my life and my sanity; I do not owe you my time or my being. This goes for my "friends" as well as any god that may or may not be out there. This goes for anyone in my life that may be a catalyst for any unearned guilt that I may feel. I refuse to subject myself to the stress of such guilt any more, and I am glad that through my soul searching and self-discovery I became a strong enough person to be able to do everything that I can to rid myself of this stress.

Jesus A Cult Leader?

It is very well possible. Let us go through the definition of "cult":

1. a particular system of religious worship, esp. with reference to its rites and ceremonies.   (This, of course, applies to Christianity, especially to Jesus. Christians meet on Sundays to worship their Savior, and communion and baptism are rites and ceremonies. Communion, in particular, is disturbing in that Christians are symbolically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus, all to "remember" what he did for them. Can anyone say cannibalism?)  
2. an instance of great veneration of a person, ideal, or thing, esp. as manifested by a body of admirers.    (The person here mentioned, is of course, Jesus. Veneration is a feeling of awe, respect, or reverence, which followers of Jesus not only feel, but are commanded to feel.                                                                                                                        
3. the object of such devotion.     (Who is the object? Jesus.)
4. a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person, ideal, etc.   (Anyone who has ever been to church knows that it is one big community. People band together to help each other, guide each other in their walk with Jesus, and pray. There are study groups, prayer groups, and other types of activities. Through all of this, the church builds itself into a strong community where people go seeking help and guidance with their problems. All of this in the name of Jesus.)

There are other forms of the definition, too, mostly referring to cults involving members living outside of social norms. But even in that particular definition, there was one word that stood out to me: Charismatic. No one can say that Jesus wasn't charismatic. His own people chose him over a hardened criminal to be crucified; that shows a lot about how charismatic he was. And his words have held people for thousands of years, once again showing the power of those words.

For more discussion about Jesus as a cult leader, I recommend this essay:
Cult Leader Jesus

This essay gives a lot more proof positive that Jesus was a cult leader than I have, and even includes Bible passages to make the point. It should be an interesting read for anyone willing to take up the question.

Unearned Guilt Part I

What causes unearned guilt? This is a question of philosophy, though many people do not recognize it as such, just as many people do not recognize that they are carrying any unearned guilt. There are many aspects of our society that not only cause unearned guilt, but enhance and nurture it as well.

Before we go any further, let us define the term "unearned guilt" Guilt is defined as "a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined." To feel this feeling without having done anything wrong, such as the word "imagined" suggests, is unearned guilt.

So how does our society nurture unearned guilt? What are the primary sources of this guilt? First and foremost is the attitude of today's society that we are our neighbor's keeper. Altruism. The belief that if we have more than our neighbor we are morally obligated to give them a portion of what we have. The belief that if we sacrifice for those who don't have, everyone is better off. We are made to feel guilty because we have something and someone else doesn't, but if we have earned what we have, why should we feel guilty about having it? There is a huge difference between giving to someone who doesn't have as much as you because you want to, and being made to feel morally obligated to do so. This is the difference between charity and altruism. Charity does not require a sacrifice - you are giving because you can and because you want to. Altruism always requires a sacrifice - a sacrifice of time, money, or your entire being for someone or something else.

One of the greatest proponents of altruism is religion in general, but I want to talk specifically about Christianity, since it is the religion I am most familiar with.  The beginning of the Bible's quest to turn us into altruists is the Garden of Eden - the story of Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. Because Adam and Eve ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, they were banished from the paradise of the Garden and all of mankind was cursed to be born already in sin. Millions of generations of people have been born feeling no integrity and no self-worth simply from this story. But Christians have a way out: Jesus Christ. The weight of guilt, not only from the Garden, but from the inability to follow the incredible amount of laws and commandments God gave his people, should make any serious Christian run straight to the alter and beg Jesus to be his master. But that is exactly what the Christian system is designed to do. When you read page after page of completely impossible regulation on your life, your only choice in this system is to submit to a savior - the one who can save you because you can't follow the law. But this, too, comes with a price. This master expects complete obedience to his word for saving you from your impossible state, and he expects to be worshipped, at that. In this phase, there is continuing perpetual guilt - the feeling of never being good enough or of never doing enough for this master who saved you from your previous guilt. The master tells you to give and you give constantly of your time, your money, and anything else you feel is necessary to give - and this is the sacrifice. This is the slavery to your unearned guilt that is perpetuated by Christianity. Some would say that this isn't a sacrifice, that there is reward at the end of this road of sacrifice. Who says this? The master, the one who has them enslaved in their guilt. No one really knows if this reward is real or not; they rely on faith - a belief in something for which there is no sensory evidence or rational proof - and the threat of eternal pain and suffering in hell. All of the pieces are in place to keep the serious Christian in a constant state of guilt and half-hearted hope.

I am not trying to argue about the specifics of Christianity as much as I am trying to show how the religion keeps people in a constant state of guilt. Christianity pulls people into a master/slave relationship and keeps them there for years and years, unless one is able to recognize the constant guilt and the mechanism behind it, power. Anyone who is the "master of" this type of relationship has power over their "slave" by means of their guilt. There are many such relationships in our society, not just religion, and I will be exploring other such relationships in future posts.

Wheels in our Heads

"The thought is my own only when I have no misgiving about bringing it in danger of death every moment, when I do not have to fear its loss as a loss for me, a loss of me."
-Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own: The Case of the Individual Against Authority

We Americans have wheels in our heads. Some of us suffer from this more than others, but the fact is that most people hold beliefs that they have either inherited from their parents or have been led to believe will make them better people. Most people don't take the time to test these beliefs in the fire of reason because the beliefs are comfortable. To question and test your own beliefs requires a great deal of separation; it requires the knowledge that although your beliefs are a part of you, you are not your beliefs.

I have had the experience of testing the wheels in my own head. Raised in a Christian home, I grew up believing that God was king of my life and Christian conservatism was the political way to go. The problem that I encountered was that I had a hard time trusting in the infallibility of the scriptures; I also had problems justifying the hypocrisy of the people around me, as well as my own hypocrisy. To be a Christian conservative meant that I wanted everyone around me to not only accept the beliefs that I held, but that I wanted to shove these beliefs as far into their lives as I could, whether they believed them or not. I did not feel comfortable with this approach because I know that I would not want someone else's beliefs and way of life imposed upon me.

It took a great deal of strength to examine my beliefs and realize that they did not stand up to reason. I was defined by my Christian beliefs - they were me. To separate myself from them took a great deal of personal honesty and courage; after breaking myself apart and examining the pieces, throwing out the ideas that hindered me and keeping the ones that helped, I came out a much stronger and more secure person.

The purpose of this blog is not to impose my personal beliefs on you, the reader. Rather, I hope that this blog will cause you to look at your own beliefs and figure out which ones are a part of you and which ones you are using to define yourself. Tearing down the wheels in your own head can cause a feeling of liberation because you know that your ideas and beliefs are your own and you know why you hold them. And above all, YOU hold THEM - THEY do not hold YOU.