Shame & Guilt Podcast Episodes

God’s purpose in guilt is to say, Matt, Ted, you’ve stumbled off the path. You’ve missed the mark. You’re outside of the goal here. Come closer to me, guilt and true guilt. The purpose of it is to be drawn back into a relationship. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread. The podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. 

I have Ted on the line here. Hello. Hi, Matt. Good to be with you. Ted, the topic today that we want to get right into is going to attempt to tease out the differences between guilt and shame. Yes, it’s important to tease those out. Why don’t you just maybe set it up from your experience? 

You’ve got thousands of hours working with individuals. And this concept of guilt and shame tends to be a common talking point. Am I right about that? It sure is. It’s something we deal with a lot in the counseling world, but we also deal with it in churches and our individual lives. And so, it’s important to understand what it is and what it isn’t and what’s healthy and what’s not. 

And so, I’ll just start with the fact that guilt by its nature, occurs when we do something wrong, when we violate a standard. Okay. And specifically, we talk about true guilt being when somebody sins, when somebody violates something God says, don’t do. Okay. And it’s important to understand that God has a very specific purpose for guilt. 

Sometimes people think that all guilt is bad. Sometimes people think all guilt is good. But really, what we want to do is understand that it has a purpose with God. Well, even by setting it up like that, Ted, which one of us wants to feel guilty right now? Nobody likes to feel guilty. Nobody does. So that feeling very much is something that we really want to get out from under when we are experiencing it here. 

So, to even cage the term with this concept that it has power. Purpose. That’s right. I think is worth consideration. Yes. So go deeper with that. So, I want to just start by reading Proverbs chapter three, and this is verses 11 and 12. It says, my son, despise not the chastening of the Lord. When it’s talking about chastening there, it’s talking about that feeling of guilt that we have. 

Despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction for whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth. So let’s kind of back that out a little bit and say it this way. He says, my son, don’t despise the correction of the Lord when you’re corrected by it. Now, none of us like to be corrected. What’s the why? The why is because he is trying to bring you closer to him. And this is a really big key. God’s purpose in guilt is to say, Matt, Ted, you’ve stumbled off the path. You’ve missed the mark. You’re outside of the goal here. Come closer to me. Guilt, true guilt, the purpose of it is to be drawn back into relationship. And that is a very, very important thing to understand because when we’re able to conceptualize it that way, we realize that it’s not because God wants to have a heavy finger or hand over us and pushing us down and pushing our face in the mud with it. 

In fact, I want to go as far as saying that that is not his purpose. What he wants to do is bring us back into relationships so that we deal with the sin and we take steps to correct that sin. So, you’ve really suggested then that guilt is this connector between a wayward past and a reunion with God or a direction towards him. 

You mentioned corrective. So, it comes with God wanting to correct, but ultimately to draw. That’s right. And I think what’s important about it is that God isn’t just willy nilly about putting guilt feelings out there. It is an emotion. The feeling of guilt is an emotion. The feeling of shame we’re going to talk about is an emotion. 

And so sometimes it can be triggered by things that aren’t related. Two things we need to make right. And so, we need to know the difference between the two. And God is just not indiscriminate in this. He’s not just going, hey, I think it’d be fun to make Matt feel guilty today. That’s not how he uses guilt. 

It is a very specific thing that when I do something, if I take something of yours, for example, or if I call you a name and I hurt you, I am designed by God to feel the sense that it’s not right, that how I handled that, what I did was wrong. And then God asked me to seek to repair the breach. 

And we do that by number one, going to him and confessing that to him saying, Lord, I did it. The first step in dealing with guilt is being able to recognize that we were outside of what was correct. But the other part to that is after we acknowledge that and we seek to come back into relationship with God and with others, we seek to make right what we can of that. 

Sometimes, if you had a candy bar and I ate your candy bar, I can’t give you that candy bar, or if I broke something of yours and I can’t necessarily replace it, but there’s a restitution. But there is trying to fix that. Yeah, it’s an important part of it. So you mentioned that it’s different than shame. 

Yes. But yet they play on some similarities. Why don’t we go there then? What does shame look like? And what is shame, fundamentally? Yes. So shame oftentimes feels at least initially, very similar to guilt. It’s a feeling that something’s not right. But here’s the key, shame can be produced by many, many things. 

It can be produced by emotions. It can be produced in hurtful relationships. Satan loves to heap on shame. And essentially the message of shame is this, you are outside. You’ve gone too far, and it’s about flawed or unworthiness and it’s a statement not about what we’ve done that needs to be corrected. 

It’s actually a relational statement that says you are flawed and outside of love. You are outside of worth. You are outside of value and forgiveness. And that’s why so many times we see this in the counseling room, because people experience shame as an emotion in relationships after abuse and addiction of things of that nature. 

And our adversary, Satan, loves to use shame as a way to isolate and really trap people in self-isolation and an internal trap and torture. Even with that short explanation, Ted, you’ve really drawn some distinctions between guilt and shame. Let me pull out a few of them. One is that you said guilt draws us into connection with God. 

That’s correct. And you’ve just painted a picture where shame drives us into isolation or perhaps in apartness. That is correct. Which is a markedly different end, isn’t it? For sure. And that is where we see many people even when they’ve done something wrong. So, there are times when somebody’s done something wrong, where instead of being able to go and work with that sin, and find forgiveness from it, they actually go from the true guilt, and they accidentally roll into shame and they feel like they’re beyond forgiveness and beyond grace and beyond help. 

And that’s exactly where the adversary Satan loves for us to be because it’s essentially trying to say, you are beyond what Christ can do for you and your emotions, in fact, tell you what’s true, which is you’re condemned. Where God’s designed for what guilt is not to leave somebody in a condemned state. 

So we need to be on guard and understand that shame will likely want to attach itself to guilt. They tend to play in the same arena. Is that true? That is true. And sometimes individuals are not able to tell the difference in terms of the feeling of them. And I think that’s one of the things that we want to say. 

I think it’s fine too, and I don’t want to demonize feelings here, but I think it’s very important also that we understand that our emotions are not necessarily the indicator of whether true guilt is true, or whether forgiveness has occurred, etc. Yeah, I want to go to true guilt, because you’ve mentioned that. 

But before we go to true guilt, as opposed to false guilt, it’s still teasing out the difference here between shame and guilt. You read the verse that said, I am important, God sees value in me, therefore guilt. That’s right. But the way that you talked about shame, Ted, is we have no value. That’s right. 

There’s no value in me. Therefore shame. Those are two different starting points. Very different. And God in terms of this actually expresses it in both the Old Testament and the New that correction is evidence that God loves. Now, none of us as children wanted to be corrected by our parents either, but that is actually a symbol that a parent loves a child is that when they do something wrong, they’re going to correct them. 

And the thing that is different about God as a heavenly parent versus human appearances, his correction is always in the right proportions, in the right ways, and for the right things. As human beings, you and I can sometimes, if we’re already pretty tense and then a small thing happens, we can sometimes let go of a very large correction to a very small infraction. But I think one of the things that the world has tried to do is say guilt is painful. Shame is painful. So what we should do is we should get rid of all guilt and shame. And so their approach has been to say there isn’t anything wrong. 

There isn’t anything that is shameful. Go and do and feel free of guilt and shame. But that’s a very problematic thing because at the same time, the world says there should be no guilt and shame. They also think that there should be justice, that if you steal my stereo, that you should have to give it back to me, that you’re wrong for doing that. 

So it’s important to have clarity on what we’re trying to get rid of here. That makes a great deal of sense. And so now that we’ve got a good view of what shame looks like and what shame plays on, I can understand why it’s destructive. You know, can I make even this assertion, too? 

It sounds to me that shame plays to lies. At the root of shame, there is a lie that is believed. At the root of guilt, there is a true account of what has happened. Is that a fair distinction? That’s wonderful, Matt. And I think that what God wants with his correction, part of confession, because that’s a first response when we’ve done something wrong, is it’s actually agreeing with God. 

It’s actually going, I did it. I’m the man. I am the one that was responsible for this particular thing. And agreeing with the person that perhaps you’ve sinned against. That’s correct. As well, right? There’s agreement on lots of different places. That’s right. That’s right. And so for example, it is being able to say, I handled this wrong. 

So if I come home, let’s say I walked in the door and I came home and I was already kind of frustrated. And let’s say Donna asked me to help her. And let’s say that I was pretty snarky back to her. And I said some things that I shouldn’t have said to her. And I walked into the bedroom to change my clothes. 

The Holy Spirit then convicts me, and he taps on my heart and says, hey, Ted, wait a minute. Why are you talking to my daughter that way? And why does the Holy Spirit do that? Because he’s holy and because he chastens those that he loves. And he says, Ted, you are out of line with that. And what he wants me to do is to come closer to him. 

And by coming closer to him, he wants me to see it accurately. He doesn’t want me to make this the worst that it’s ever been, and he doesn’t want me to minimize it for what it is. What he wants me to do is agree with him that how I handled the situation was incorrect. I didn’t respect my wife. So what I do is I repent to him. 

I say, Lord, I’m sorry, and I will make this right. Forgive me. So I walk back out into the kitchen, and I say, Donna, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. Please forgive me. What can I do to help you? And what I’ve done, when I seek to correct that, because I’ve seen it in an accurate way, I will seek to try to make it right, and it restores the relationship. 

It brings that reconnectedness. It closes that loop, which then allows us to feel like we’ve come to a resolution. I really like that, Ted, and that was very welcome news, because as we mentioned, while guilt has good purposes, nobody likes it. And you just painted a little bit of a route to deal with guilt and the way that you did that is you mentioned confession to God. And then a restitution to the one that you sinned against. Yeah, is there something more to say? I just know this from practice that I’m not sure I’m sorry sums up all that’s required at times, and I know there’s a whole gamut of issues that we’re not trying to speak to here, but can you coach us a little bit on what that restitution looks like? 

Yeah, I think one of the things is that it just, first and foremost, owns it. It says, this is what I did, and I acknowledge it. Second, it acknowledges that it caused harm or hurt in some way. Number three, it acknowledges that it is worthy of some kind of correction or consequences. And number four, it seeks forgiveness without demanding forgiveness. And I think one of the things is that oftentimes you’ll see this in kids when we say, hey, you hurt your sister, tell her you’re sorry. It’s like, sorry. It’s kind of like is there an owning of that? No, that wasn’t owning it. Was that acknowledging that there was hurt? 

Was that seeking to repair? Was it seeking to say that I realized that I am seeking forgiveness, but I realized that, that I don’t have any right to demand it of you. And that’s really an important thing. I love that. Those four points, I think really bring a really nice summary, really paint in the, with the detail that we need painted. 

It’s sometimes when we talk about this. So guilt plays on truth. It owns truth. Can you give us a few ways to think about shame and how that plays to lies? Yes, because I think it’s helpful when we can put one against the other. I’m more apt now to spot shame when it’s there What are some of the lies that shame plays on? 

Yes So one of the biggest lies that shame plays on is that it wants us to actually look to emotion for confirmation as opposed to the truth of God’s Word. So for example, I’ll give you this example in my own life. There was a time when I felt like God forgave and accepted 99 percent of me, but there was 1 percent that he couldn’t. 

Okay, what I realize now and looking at that is that was my own shame speaking to that. It wasn’t a matter of that I hadn’t confessed it or I hadn’t agreed with God. What it was was I just couldn’t quite get to a place where I could see that God would be that gracious towards me. And what I needed to do was because I was struggling with this, I needed to talk to somebody about it. 

And I talked to somebody who had more experience in the Word and in godly living. And one of the things he pointed out to me was that 1 John 1:9 says something. It says, if we confess our sins. He, God, is faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. What had happened was, I had confessed my sins, I had taken them to God, I knew that it was wrong. 

But here’s what had happened. The shame said, well yeah, you confessed it, yeah, you want to forsake it, but it’s still on you. You’re still carrying the shame. And what I had to do was come to the place where I owned that promise. Where I had to say, Satan, you can say, as the accuser of the brethren all day long that my sin is still on my shoulders, but no, based on the truth of the Word of God, that has been transferred to the shed blood of Christ on the cross of Calvary, and I no longer bear it. 

That’s an example of where truth and lies want to cross over there. Satan wants me to feel like God couldn’t forgive that. God wants me to attribute that to the cross. Based on the shed blood of Christ. That’s how truth deals with sin versus how shame wants to deal with it. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. 

It makes a lot of sense. But I do think sometimes, in our attempt to acknowledge that we are fallen beings, which we are, with all manner of brokenness and depravity, to use that term, is sometimes we can not have an altogether healthy view of how God views us. That’s correct. Does that make sense? Yes, it really is important to have a healthy view of God through this and one of the things that will help us is to be able to see God as more holy than we could ever imagine but also more gracious than we could ever imagine. That he says be holy for I am holy, and he says I am love and here’s what happens when we get that out of balance. 

We will either be left with license or condemnation when it’s out of balance. Okay. If I’ve got the holiness without the mercy or the graciousness, if I’ve got the graciousness without the holiness, oh yeah, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Our goal in understanding true guilt and false guilt is not to minimize sin for what it is. 

And at the same time, another thing we have to do related to shame is understand that many times people feel shame about things for which are not sins. Okay. Like for example, I hear this over and over. I’m not a good enough, whatever. I’m not a good enough mom. I’m not a good enough dad. I’m not a good enough whatever. 

Now, let’s say I can remember a distinct time that I had overcorrected my daughters. Okay? I was really upset. My correction was times more than needed to be. I needed to walk back in their room and say that I handled myself incorrectly. Okay. And that was what I needed to own. It wasn’t what they did was acceptable all of a sudden, but I still needed to own that. 

I handled it incorrectly. If I would have then said, I am a terrible father. I’ll never be able to amount to anything as a father, etcetera, etcetera. Now we’re going beyond I did this wrong, I handled this wrong, which I need to own to. I’m a failure as a father, and I’ll never amount to anything as a father. 

How do you fix that? There isn’t anything to fix. I’m a bad X. I’m a bad Y. I’m a bad Z. These are things that are not fixable. They’re dead ends. And it’s like then being attached to a ball and chain because there isn’t a way to unlock it. Okay. Yeah. I think that beautifully sets up guilt plays on truth, shame plays on lies, the truth about ourselves, lies about ourselves, the truth about God and lies or disproportionate thinking about God. I think in my mind, that’s crystallized those two words. I think we’ve had enough to think about for today’s episode as we’ve looked at shame and guilt, but when we return, we’re going to add false guilt to the mix, an important concept to consider. Thanks everyone for being with us. We hope to have you back. 

So, one of the biggest lives that shame plays on is that it wants us to actually look to emotion for confirmation as opposed to the truth of God’s Word. Welcome back, friends, to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. I’m glad to get right back into the conversation I had with Ted Witzig, Jr. on the topic of faith. Guilt and shame. In the last episode, we unpacked guilt and shame, saw it for its differences, its vast differences. We’re going to continue that conversation. We’re going to add false guilt to the mix here. So glad to have you along. We see true guilt and false guilt struggles a lot of times in individuals dealing with depression, anxiety, dealing with inferiority, dealing with obsessive compulsive concerns, those kinds of things. 

And almost without fail in each of those situations, what you will find is a couple of these distortions. And one is that they will not be holding a balanced view of God as holy and gracious. They’ll see him more as the condemner. And we have to remember that God’s desire isn’t to hold that over our head. 

He loves to free people from bondage. Okay. The other thing is that they will oftentimes be looking to their emotions to confirm their forgiveness. So, I can’t feel forgiven for that. Okay, as long as I feel this feeling, well, guess what, when somebody’s feeling depressed, they oftentimes feel distant from God, or they feel old things that have been behind them for years will sometimes reemerge like they were never forgiven. 

And we have to say, wait a minute here. Just because your emotions are bringing this up, we don’t want to pick it up again. I want to help place my finger on this unique situation that you’re speaking of. I’ve got an old vehicle with many, many thousands of miles on it. And it has got a dashboard and lights come on and off on that dashboard and I hardly take it seriously anymore. 

Okay. There is an alert that something is horribly wrong. Yes. When I know in the back of my mind that nope, there’s nothing wrong with that. But that can happen in our feelings as it regards guilt. And so, what you just said is there are individuals who bear guilt when they shouldn’t be guilty. 

That’s correct. Is that a true statement? That is a true statement. There are some people, by their natures, it just seems like that feeling of guilt proneness is very, very high. And that may have been by their personality. It may have been by their behavior. because of prior training in their life, whatever. 

But one of the things we want to do is we have to figure out then if this signal, this guilty feeling, if it’s not necessarily accurate, or if we’re not sure it’s accurate, how do we sort that out? And so, it’s like you looking at the dashboard and going, wait a minute, that light’s on. Is it accurate or not? 

So, the first thing that I would like to say is that’s where the opportunity to receive counsel is so helpful. To ask someone who can give us a perspective. Now, I’m not meaning ask 50 someones or a hundred someones. That someone who knows you, knows your background, knows enough about you to be able to give you good guidance for you. 

Who doesn’t have a need to sugarcoat things for you, nor to be hard on you. Who just really can give it to you in that way. You’re really suggesting that sometimes when everything is just on in our own head, it’s hard to get the right sums when we add, but when we share with another person, we get more perspective and allow them to speak into our situation that can help. 

Yes. Another way to think of this is from the perspective of how would another person handle this? Yes. Okay, or if somebody is really guilt prone, for example, people can feel shame for things like this. Let’s say somebody you know, somebody at church just had a baby and so and so loves taking meals to mothers that have new babies. 

And then, but this particular person goes, oh, I just don’t, I’m just not very good at that. And you know what? And I just feel like such a bad Christian person because I just don’t have that and all this stuff. And it’s like, wait a minute, and I’ll sometimes say to them, now wait a minute, if so and so over here would decide that instead of taking a meal that they just like to send a card or they might do it this thing or that thing or another thing, what would you think? 

And they’d be like, oh, that’s fine. They can do that. But what about you? Oh, I’m bad. Now, wait a minute. How is it that you let somebody else off the hook for that, but you are somehow condemned as a failure? Another one is when people turn things into moral issues like they were Scriptures, like the 11th commandment when they’re not there. 

And thou shalt deliver a full five course meal to the mother with a new baby within, you know, one week of the baby being born. Is that there? No, it’s not there. Now, I’m picking that particular thing, but it could be a million things. And we just have to understand that when that condemning voice that says, you are beyond, you are outside, you are not good enough in that regard, just kind of pushing you out. 

That’s where we got to go. Wait a minute. That sounds like the voice of shame again. What conviction will do is when we haven’t handled ourselves well, we will feel convicted. The other thing is it will agree with Scripture. And I think that’s the thing we need to keep coming back to, that shame is making up the rules as it goes. 

You know, you mentioned already how it plays on feelings and how the way we feel starts to write the script of reality. Yes. And so, the phrase that came to me as you gave those examples is, we have to allow the Word of God’s peace to be our peace. Yes, or our brother’s peace to be our peace if that makes sense. There is a resignation that I have to say, you know what, I’m struggling with this. I’m going to let so and so in on it, I’m going to let his peace be my peace. 

And that’s a wonderful, relieving, but challenging proposition. Yes. So, I’m going to go back to that example when I was feeling like I wasn’t forgiven for that 1%. That older, wiser person looked at me and said, Ted, you need to walk in the truth and the promise that’s here in 1 John 1:9. 

What I needed to start doing was living like I was forgiven, and I needed to trust that and keep moving forward. One of the things that God wants us to do is deal with sin for what it is, but he also wants us to keep going forward. I use this example a lot, Matt. It’s like riding a bike. 

You have to keep pedaling, keep moving in that forward direction. What shame wants us to do is stop peddling and it constantly wants us to look over our shoulder and it wants us to be living in the rear view mirror and living like there are no forward possibilities here. And that’s just not what God does. 

Even in those situations, Matt, where people are struggling with ongoing battles, addiction is a great example of this. Oftentimes overcoming addiction is a cycle. People desire to get better, and they keep falling back in and back and forth. And the goal isn’t to just say it’s just okay to go and do whatever that particular thing is. 

But the goal also is to keep remembering that God wants us to keep moving forward, that when we do have a setback, when we fall, that he wants us to bring it to the light and agree with him about the truth. Come to our brother or sister and then keep moving forward. It is the righteous man falls seven times and gets back up. 

I think that’s the key there. Ted, I want you to speak to a very specific listenership right now. Sure. Okay? A lot of people don’t process this way. This is not a part of their reality. So, it doesn’t apply to them. But there are some that your proposition of moving forward is like jumping off a cliff because in their mind, they’re saying, Ted, that means I am abandoning my conscience. 

And what hope is there left for me if I do that? Yeah. So, can you speak to that? Yes, and I think this is very good, I’m really glad you brought this up because when people are used to being in this place where they’re feeling condemned and they’re just locked in that place, going forward feels like it’s too good to be true. 

It’s like a get out of jail card and it’s like, wait a minute, you’re saying it’s no big deal or whatever. But here’s what I want you to remember. I’m not talking about going forward just on some whim. I’m talking about going forward in the power and the promises of Jesus Christ. Okay. I’m talking about going forward, looking to Jesus as the author and finisher of our faith. 

And so, if you have to make a decision between, I’m going to just stay stuck in this place, or I’m going to go forward in faith. That’s why I’m going to put that going forward in faith means that I’m going to trust that Jesus wants me to walk forward in his truth and in his promises. It isn’t minimizing, okay? 

But neither is it saying that Satan in our flesh or whatever rules the day. We’re actually saying, I’m going to choose to walk in the truth of who God says that I am. And that’s where I’m going to encourage you to rest, is in the power and the promises of Jesus. Which is exactly where we came from, Ted. Truth. 

And when things are confusing, we go back to those things that are plain. And you mentioned that John 1:9 verse, which is plain. And so, you’re saying we grab a hold of the truth and the promises of the Word of God, and that’s what we tout moving forward. That’s what we’re fixed to. 

Yes. Matt, there’s one other distortion that I want to talk about here. Is that some people feel that they need to have a sense of condemnation to keep them from just going full bore, like not caring if they sin or they’re too afraid. Maybe I’m not explaining this well, but they’re afraid of trusting that they can walk forward. 

But I want to say it this way. I’ve had many of my clients sit down and just think of this for a second. I say, sit down and think about what Jesus has done for you and that he loves you and that he died on the cross for you. And that he wants to keep transforming our life in Christ. 

And I say, now notice that, as you’re thinking about that, and all that he has done for you, does that make you want to sin? And they look at me, they get a big smile on their face, and they go, no, not at all. I said, that’s exactly right. The fact is, when you focus on what God has done for you, when you focus on what Calvary meant, when you focus on what it means that there’s an empty tomb, when it focuses on the fact that the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth and convict you of sin, but he does so as a father loves a child, the more you focus on that the stinkier sin gets in your nostrils, okay, the less you’re going to want those things. It doesn’t mean that the battle is going to be easy, but it means that I’m going to want to pursue the purity that comes in Christ. You know what, Ted, you’ve wonderfully painted that picture of the gospel, which we understand the gospel means good news and the good news of the gospel is that it helps us recover from sin and guilt. 

Yes, but it also keeps us from sin and guilt. It does both of those things doesn’t it? Yeah, and I think one of the things about it that’s beautiful is we’re trying to walk in the truth. That is the truth. That is the promise of it and yet as part of our sanctification process, we still struggle. We still have our setbacks, but the gospel allows us to get back up and it keeps us on that growth and maturity process, and that’s a very beautiful thing. Ted, this has been excellent in exposing and bringing to light these important concepts of guilt and shame and the difference. 

We do have resources. This is a very popular topic. Where might you direct folks who are looking for resources? Yes, Matt. If people go to the ACCFS website, and just search for guilt and shame resources will come up and there’s a number of helpful tools that people can access there. Excellent. Thanks a lot for being here. 

Thank you each one for listening. Guilt and shame, something that we are all familiar with. We know what it’s like and I think and pray and trust that this topic here would help bring clarity to some of the feelings that we feel and help put it in perspective with the Word of God and our larger community also. 

So, thanks for being along. We wish each one a good day.