When you’re behaving badly, you’re buying tickets for lots of future guilt trips. Guilty pleasures release the g-word in your life Guilt is not the source of your moral pain. Your unethical thoughts and behaviors are.

Guilt is like speed bumps. It’s trying to jolt you into reality so that you change your unethical thoughts, words, and behaviors. Guilt means that there is something faulty in your thinking or behaving that you need to correct. It can’t change your past, but it can help you to redirect your life and avoid pain in your future (if you accept its warning).

When you feel guilt, plead guilty and change your behavior. Don’t keep doing the things that produce guilt and expect it to go away. Freedom from guilt isn’t a right. It’s a lifestyle of obeying your conscience and asking for forgiveness every time you violate it.

Guilt is the natural result of wrongful thoughts, words, and actions. It’s not the result of religion. Guilt can be ignored, denied, or drowned out, but it’s much more effective to heal it by repentance and God’s forgiveness. Guilt is like silt. The more you ignore it, the more it piles up in your heart, blocking peace and joy.