A love affair with guilt

By Steven L. Shields

Christians, and perhaps other faith traditions, seem to have a love affair with guilt. Years ago, someone in my church posted a list of the members and how much each had donated. His rationale? People will see where they stand in the "ranking" and be persuaded to give more. Motivation by guilt is powerful. When guilt is weaponized, it can be lethal.

Guilt has become a way of life for many Christians and their pastors. Pastors often preach hellfire and damnation to their congregations. They believe this will help people overcome their shortcomings. Most churches have long lists of "shortcomings." They claim or believe these come from the Bible. Indeed, many do. They call these shortcomings "sins."

I grew up in a Christian denomination that had the guilt trips well-defined. Not only were pastors and elders always on the lookout to tell someone they were wrong but parishioners were also encouraged to keep one another in line and report failings to the leaders. Pastors brought everyone in for "worthiness" interviews to make sure you were donating a full 10 percent of your income, or if a teenager, that you were not touching yourself or another inappropriately. The burden of guilt was constant and horrendous.

We get into a considerable problem when other religious traditions say the same thing about their beliefs. Over the past 2,000 years, Romans killed Christians because the Christians refused to worship the Roman gods. Christians killed Jews because they refused to recognize Jesus as the prophesied Messiah. Christians did the same to Muslims.

Then Muslims did the same to Christians and Jews. Buddhists are not exempt. In Sri Lanka a few years ago, Buddhist monks led a campaign against Christians, burning Christian churches and sometimes killing Christians. In Korea, some Christian groups defaced and destroyed Buddhist temples. In India, Hindus have attacked Christians, killing them, burning their villages and driving them into the forests. They've also attacked Muslims. Everyone but me is a pagan, a heathen. The list goes on, and on and on. All in the name of "god" (or whatever the common metaphor is for a particular religion).

This condemnation and pursuit of "others" is a problem among Christians. The atrocities committed in the name of God in Europe alone can fill many volumes of history books. I grew up in a denomination that believed itself to be the only true Christian denomination, that all others (Catholics, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and so forth) were in error and were condemned by God. We proudly sang the old hymn, "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war …" Our war was with Catholics and Protestants, and though it was not a war of arms, it was a war of words. I think this happens the other way around, too. Christians are a highly judgmental group of people.

Some Christians are good at condemning the LGBT community but ignore premarital sex among their parishioners or a big-business donor or politician who keeps a mistress. I've never heard any preach against divorce, even though Jesus condemned it in the New Testament (while saying nothing about homosexuality).

Obsession with homosexuality says more about some Christians' repressed sexual frustration than anything else. It's getting old ― ignoring the obvious, strange and deranged sexual frustrations that underpin the conservative Christian fixation on LGBT people.

My friend Rob expressed this eloquently, "When any single book … is regarded as the final authority on all matters of faith, the focus of religion becomes centered on defending (that book) and twisting or denying reality so as not to challenge (that book). Such a religion becomes defensive and backward-looking. It ceases to engage with the world as we know and experience it, failing to address our real concerns and struggles.

Instead, it demands that we deny the importance of those concerns and struggles and then use blame to instill guilt when we fail to do that. Unable to deal honestly with present realities, such a religion cannot possibly be genuinely prophetic because, so often, the future it envisions is a return to a "more simple and moral" past that never really was ― a past in harmony with its narrow understanding of scripture.

Who is the rightful controller of the "sin list"? There's a severe problem with religious groups when each one believes itself to be the only rightful judge of society; by condemning all others according to their interpretations of the Bible (why do you think there are thousands of Christian denominations?).

How does a nation, a group of people, an organization decide morals in each society? How does one frame an ethical foundation for behavior? Cultures worldwide have developed ethics and other standards that apply to that culture. It is acceptable for Christians, or the tea club, to have their rules and require members to observe them. But it's not okay for that group to declare their way is the only way, and everybody else must obey them.

When someone says, "God told me …" or "The Bible says …" get away as fast as you can. Such people don't need my attention or yours. For my Christian readers, seeing God as all-powerful and all-mighty rather than all-loving and all-merciful is the difference between a world falling apart and a world coming together. The gospel is less about how to get into the kingdom of Heaven after you die and more about how to live in the kingdom of Heaven before you die. Your job is not to judge. Your job is not to figure out if someone deserves something. Your job is to lift the fallen, restore the broken and heal the hurting.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian because God is not a Christian. All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

Rev. Steven L. Shields (slshields@gmail.com) has lived in Korea for many years, beginning in the 1970s. He is president of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea. He served as copy editor of The Korea Times in 1977.