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THE LIBERATED CHRISTIAN
THE PROBLEM ---- GUILT
It requires no great flash of insight to realize that for many of
us life is nothing more than a treadmill.... it's like a giant wheel.
You walk on the wheel ... the wheel goes around ... but you don't
get any-where. Who knows how many miles a day you walk? Yet, you're
no farther along when the day's over than when it began.
You wake up in the morning. What are you going to do? Just about
what you did yesterday and the day before and the day before that....
another boring day to live through! ... another day filled with
problems and frustration ....another day to worry about how I'm
going to pay the bills ... another day to run around trying to please
my boss or my family or my teachers. When it's all over what will
I have accomplished? Same as yesterday ... nothing.
Strangely enough some of the greatest sufferers from this treadmill
existence are folks who are trying to be Christians. How many duties
we perform in the name of Christianity that are done, not with joy,
not with liberty, not with enthusiasm, but with heaviness of heart...
obligation. "Here it is Sunday again. Guess I'll have to go
to church." "Another letter from Aunt Susie...guess I'll
have to go and visit her." "My neighbor's sick again ...
I suppose I'll have to make him another pot of soup." "They
need youth workers, Sunday School teachers, and choir members down
at the church, but I'm so tied down already." You're on the
treadmill ... you're not free and joyful and able to see where you
are needed and where you aren't ... you're weary and pressed.
But really now, where is this treadmill? Is it really that you have
so much work piled upon you? Is it because you have too many obliga-tions?
Is it because you're getting old? ... No ... the treadmill, friend,
is in your head. Nobody put you on that big wheel and ordered you
to keep turning it but you yourself. Who said you have to always
be doing something? Who said you may not sit down and rest? Who
told you to take on all those obligations?...You did ... you did
it to yourself. The master of the treadmill lives in your heart.
And it's not God ... God never put anyone on a treadmill. The master
of the treadmill is guilt.
Observe how many things you do in your life, not because you want
to ... not even because you think they need to be done ... but only
because you know that if you don't do it you're going to feel guilty.
Somebody comes to the door collecting for the Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Sparrows. You're not worried about the sparrows ...
yet
you feel that you have to put something in his little plastic jar.
It's cheaper to give him a quarter than to feel guilty.
The more you yield to the demands of this old tyrant, guilt, the
more demanding he becomes. Gradually you become wearier and wearier.
Your mind gets dull and your step becomes slow. Guilt stands over
you with a whip and says, "Get going ... move ... pray ...
work... sacrifice!" You stumble on but you know in your heart
that you're not getting any-where. You are merely turning the wheel
of the old treadmill.
You will never get off the treadmill until you get rid of the guilt
that drives you from within. But how? ... How do I stop feeling
guilty all the time? How do I stop feeling guilty about all the
things I've done or left undone?
First we try to ignore the guilty feeling. "Enough of this
... I'm going to live a little. I'm going to do what I want to for
a change. I'm going to slack off and take it easy. I'm going to
run away from the whole mess." But the strange thing is that
no matter where you go or what you do, your guilt goes right with
you. Here is a man who has spent years trying to ignore his guilt.
He divorced his wife and left his children and tried to swing clear
of his obligations.
He began to travel with a happy-go-lucky crowd. He
concentrated on simply having fun. But every time he stopped running,
who was standing by his side?... guilt. That man isn't having fun
... he's still on the treadmill.
When we find how futile it is to run away, we may then try to es-cape
this guilt by paying it off with work or good deeds. We join a church
... or we become a volunteer, we help with the Boy Scouts or collect
for the March of Dimes. There are men and women who hardly spend
a night with their families they're so busy "doing good."
They're not really doing good ... they are attempting to bribe their
guilt feelings by working themselves to death.
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