Guilt

"Then when Judas, who had betrayed (Jesus), saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse..."
-Matthew 27:3a
      Recently I've been thinking a lot about what guilt is. Guilt is a very interesting and revealing of human nature. What is guilt? The dictionary definition is "a feeling of responsibility, regret or remorse for some offense". If you have experienced guilt before, which I am sure you have, then you know that feeling guilty is not pleasant at all. Guilt eats away at you and sometimes even causes you to act out of the ordinary. Feeling guilty is a terrible feeling, but I think it reveals many important things.
      I want to pose a question as I often do, why do we feel guilt? Usually we will feel guilty when we do something we know hurts someone else. A feeling of guilt is especially strong when the person we hurt is someone we know. It's even stronger when the blame is placed on someone other that yourself. If I hurt a good friend by revealing a secret or something, I will feel that I betrayed his trust. If he comes to believe that someone else shared his secret and now continually blames the other person for this offense, I will feel even more guilty. Why would I feel guilty? Why should I care if I hurt someone else?
      I want to talk about an example of guilt in the bible. Judas followed Jesus for a very long time, and Judas must have known and believed that Jesus was an innocent and kind man. Despite this, Judas gives Jesus over to the chief priests. Later Judas realizes that Jesus is falsely condemned, Judas felt strong guilt in his heart. He handed Jesus, an innocent man, his friend, to be punished as a criminal. This leads Judas to try to free Jesus, and when he fails, Judas ultimately ends his life. Guilt was so strong in Judas that it caused him to take his own life.
      Why would Judas feel guilty for betraying Jesus? Looking from a completely objective and practical viewpoint, Judas traded someone who constantly took attention away from Judas for money. Money is very practical and necessary for life. Judas seemed to get a pretty good deal. So why would he care what happened to Jesus? In the bible it says that people are made in God's image, and I believe that because of this we all have some attributes of God. God does not sin, He does not hurt people, He is perfect. When we sin, we go against what we were made to be, and this throws off our spirit, and we feel guilt. God is love, and when we love others, we feel good. When we hurt others, we don't feel good.
      When Judas betrayed Jesus, he sinned against in innocent man, and literally against God. This sin weighed in his heart, and he began to feel deep regret. I know that when I sin, I sometimes feel guilt. Since I am made in God's image I need God in my life and I desire Him. When I sin, I break a relationship that my whole being both wants and needs, and it causes distress in my heart. Sin hurts us just as it hurts God. I realized something though; the more I continue to involve myself in sin, the less I feel guilty. Why is this? I've heard that our conscience is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and it is possible to push it out of our lives if we ignore it. When we go against our conscience, we go against the Holy Spirit, who is God, and it creates guilt.
     Make every effort to keep the Holy Spirit strong in your life. The good news is that God wants to be with you. He desires to be with us, just as we desire to be with Him (I'll probably write more about this later). Even if we ignore God to an extreme point, He still chases after us and wants to be with us. Pray that God will give you more of His Spirit and that you can be guided by it.
-Smart