Overcoming Shame: A 9-Day Video SeriesSample

The Bible has a lot to say about guilt.

Mostly guilt feels bad, but it exists to help us. Paul talks about a “godly sorrow” that leads people to repentance and produces good things in their lives (2 Corinthians 7:10-11). So guilt is a useful anti-psychopathic tool for normal folks.

What I call healthy guilt is the capacity to feel bad when you have hurt someone else, God, or even yourself. Healthy guilt is motivated by love. You want to be a good person, and if you hurt someone, your healthy guilt stimulates you to do the loving thing. In most cases, you take action to make amends for what you did wrong. Guilt comes from doing something wrong, so it is corrected by you doing something right.

Healthy guilt motivates you to do the right thing to restore damaged relationships. It comes from having a conscience, and that in itself is a good thing. God created guilt to guide us toward restoring our relationships with him, but it works as a guide for restoring relationships with one another as well.

Not all guilt is productive. I call this kind neurotic guilt. It is not motivated by love and is rooted in underlying shame. Neurotic guilt is not about making amends or figuring out the loving thing to do to make things right in your relationships. Neurotic guilt is about self-preservation and the fear of getting caught. If your guilt is focused on you taking care of yourself, it rarely produces anything good. Sure, you feel bad because of something you did, but you are not really motivated by your love of God or others to make things right with them. You are more concerned about being exposed and getting in trouble.

Neurotic guilt is better than being a psychopath, but it’s not really about making things right with others because its real motivation is to cover over painful feelings of shame that you don’t want anyone to see. In other words, neurotic guilt is about saving your own skin.

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This Bible reading plan is adapted from Overcoming Shame by Dr. Mark W. Baker. For a deeper look at the difference between guilt and shame go to: