Guilt is an explosive word. In a recent conversation with my friend and fellow theologian, Scott Stephens, I found myself agreeing with him that public conversation is impoverished if we cannot speak of guilt. But I also argued that because of two cultural barriers it is almost impossible to be heard when you speak of guilt.
The first barrier is that many people identify bearing guilt with feeling guilty. They further identify feeling guilty with beating up on yourself and having a poor self image. So to ask people to reflect on their guilt is to send them on a guilt trip whose destination is worthlessness. Unsurprisingly, they resist such travel advice.
The concept of guilt is resisted also at a deeper level. Guilt implies continuity. The great classical tragedies that centred on guilt emphasised that the older man bears the guilt of what the younger man did. The son, too, carries the guilt of his father's wrongdoing. Our identity is anchored in our history.
In contemporary western culture our sense of personal and communal continuity is less strongly marked. We regard the self and its history as more pliable. We are told that we can make ourselves over and that we can walk away from our past. Because I am substantially a different person from the one who acted badly, I am no longer responsible for what I did nor for its consequences. So it is impertinent to suggest we should acknowledge guilt.
I shall ask in a later article whether we can still speak of bearing guilt for past actions. Here I would like simply to explore whether it is appropriate to feel guilty. At one level, of course, it makes little sense whether particular feelings are appropriate or not. Feelings arise in us whether they are appropriate or not, and we need to deal with them. Still, we instinctively judge that it is natural and helpful to feel in this way, but not in that.
Feeling guilty includes many different kinds of feelings. So I shall outline those we may have after we recognise that we have acted wrongly — driven negligently and wrapped a cyclist around our bullbar, for example. Then we can ask whether these feelings are appropriate or out of place.
When we know we have done wrong we often feel remorse. We regret what we have done and its consequences. Remorse can be