By Joy Le Page Smith, MA

Board certified, clinical chaplain

Unfortunately, many of us don’t “feel” loved by God. Why? Because our lifestyles, our wishes or our thoughts go adrift. Our soul has a hard time thinking God could love it. Yes, we live in our skin and we know there are times we failed to behave in the way we really should.  Hence, there are ample reasons for us to have a hard time loving ourselves. Lots of self-doubt is present.

The reason people rarely feel they have done enough is because we easily succumb to false guilt. Dr. Wiesner, a psychologist friend, spoke to audiences often about “poor potty training.” None of us remembers that time in our lives, but our parents were like gods to us. It was most likely the same for all: we had a hard time ever getting it right! And parents held the power to correct us. So, even with the best of parents, we were set up in life to believe “we had better do it right!” Dr. Wiesner taught that our early parental experiences can definitely hold sway influencing current beliefs about ourselves.

Understanding brings hope. We eventually grew up. We don’t have to keep trying hard to “do it right,” hoping not to disappoint our parents. Now, as adults, we know when we are truly guilty. A built in conscience tells us that. But—for a fact, there is “false guilt” and it is false guilt that causes so many of us to occasionally wrestle with a feeling of  being “not good enough.”

We learn how to defeat false guilt by recognizing and then releasing it. Recognizing false guilt is the key to being free of it. Below is a list that includes a few of the tendencies undergirding false guilt. Recognizing even one of the following tendencies can help overcome false guilt that may hold sway in your life. It is possible to weed out messages within your thought life that support an unhealthy pattern.

1. I worry daily about my actions, and my choices.
2. I feel responsible when things go wrong.
3. I’m always blaming myself.
4. I’m often apologizing; saying, “I’m sorry,” often.
5. I care a lot about what others think of me.
6. I find it hard to say “no” to others.

Paul Tournier wrote in Guilt and Grace, “. . . . The only true guilt comes from saying no to God.”

Our first encounter with  false guilt came with “potty training.” Praying for God to heal those early memories can empower your soul. As adults, most of us know there is a power higher than what our parents weaved over us. After all, God is able to scrutinize our every move. This, too, can be scary unless we read God’s Word and come to understand what is meant in Scripture’s message to “fear” God. Many do not read far enough in the Bible, God’s book of truth, but instead give up on it, not wanting to deal with a God who is to be feared.

Yet, it takes reading the whole book while pondering and getting to the truth of God’s intentions and of His great love for us. In this way the Scriptures make things clear and can guide our lives. We can have a loving relationship with God, having gained a “reverent awe” of  Him–who is the passionate lover of our souls. Yes, He has expectations of us. To have a good life, we will pay attention to God’s intentions for us.  For He is the Creator and we are the created ones.

The Bible is full of the truth that God loves us. He only asks that we come to Him through Jesus who died to save us from our sins. Although innocent of any sin Himself, Jesus chose the cross, a place of torture and death, to be our Savior. When we trust in Christ and believe He died for us, we gain knowledge through reading His Word, which shows clearly it is not fear that He wants from us.

Scripture tells us, “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool,” (Isa 1:18).

For sure, God is a healing God and does not want us to live with guilt of any kind. He asks that we come to Him through Jesus and seek to know Him. This puts us on a path of learning, which brings us to what lies ahead: Eternal life where we will be freed from this mortal body and our sinful nature will end. In heaven, our eternal life will hold no more pain. There will be no sorrows with which to deal. Forevermore, God has great things ahead for us!

Author info.:

Joy Le Page Smith is a board certified clinical chaplain. View — FREE — her children’s video, The Little Mountain Goat Who Was Afraid of High Places, at Healing-with-Joy. com.  The book has questions in the back for family interactions. Multiple helps are also on her website for people struggling with varied problems.  Articles free  to copy.

By Chaplain Joy Le Page Smith, MA

Have you experienced thinking you had forgiven someone only to feel uncomfortable the next time you saw them or heard their voice on the phone? Or, struggled with no longer being able to see him or her as the loving person you once enjoyed?

There is a tenet in psychology called the “angel/devil principle,” which describes the common experience of thinking highly of a person, admiring him or her until such time as you are rejected or deeply hurt by them. Then, that person can hardly do anything right. All their future seesaw actions are seen through smudged glass. Where once there was trust, suspicion has set up housekeeping. This occurrence is subtle, often hard to recognize for the devilish thing that it is, and no doubt falls into the category of what the writer of Hebrews warned against: a “root of bitterness allowed to spring up and defile.” But what about those of us who are trying to keep our hearts disentangled as we continue to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us?”

What is going on when we find ourselves wanting to avoid certain people? Maybe it stems from that old self-preservation instinct that promotes the attitude, “Why let myself in for more pain?” Distance is safety, or so we think. Yet, Jesus told us to pray for our enemies. How much more so for those who were once friends?

More often than not, we have fallen into the “debts” and “oughts.” One party feels the other ought to apologize, while the other feels indebted, having to live with the knowledge of pain caused. Jesus’ parable of the merciless official (Matthew 18:21-35) vividly portrays the results when forgiveness is withheld. Author David Seamands describes in Healing for Damaged Emotions, “. . . this whole debt system has been built into the human personality in a most incredible fashion. There is a sense of oughtness, of owing a debt, an automatic mechanism by which the built-in debt collectors (in the parable called ‘torturers’) go to work. We seek to atone for those wrongs, to pay the debt we owe or to collect the debt that someone else owes us. If we feel anger at ourselves, we say, ‘I must pay in full.’ Or, if we feel anger at someone else, that person must pay [or so we think.] In this way the whole inexorable process is set in motion as we/they are turned over to those inner tormentors: the jailers who work as debt collectors in this awful prison.

Jesus died to set us free. It is clear that forgiveness is given, when we ask, yet with expectations for us to in turn forgive others. The “prison” of all that inner torture is therefore avoided. But, when difficult feelings persist, does this mean forgiveness has not taken place?

Perhaps no one can speak on this more aptly than Corrie ten Boom, who was imprisoned in Auschwitz, a Nazi extermination camp. There, her father and sister died as this Dutch family suffered punishment for their efforts to help Jews during World War II. In her book, The Hiding Place, she wrote of the difficulties in trying to forgive one of the guards who had been extremely cruel. Later, in Tramp for God, she wrote these helpful words: “Up in the church tower is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. But you know what? After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First “ding,” then “dong.” Slower and slower until there’s a final “dong” and it stops. The same is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we must take our hand off the rope. But, if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised when the old angry thoughts keep coming up for a while. They’re just the “ding-dongs” of the old bell slowing down.”

How strengthening it is to know those old feelings are only echoes. Ones which in time will die out. “Peace, be still. It is forgiven,” can serve as a gentle reminder to keep our hands off the “rope” when old angers surface.

Herein lies the element of patience with ourselves for being human and with the process, giving it time. Meanwhile, if the heart pounds and feelings soar in the presence of that “certain person,” we are not alone. Christ stands there between us watching the struggle, waiting for us to call for His help.

Author info. Chaplain Joy Le Page Smith is a Board certified clinical chaplain. She is reaching readers with her books and websites in up to 32 countries. View her children’s book as a FREE video at healingwithjoy.blogspot.com as well as they many helpful articles on this site addressing life’s difficulties.