Excerpt from Max Lucado, Grace: More than we Deserve, Greater than we Imagine, 2012, 85-87.
What would an X-ray [on our souls] reveal? Regrets over a teenage relationship? Remorse over a poor choice? Shame about the marriage that didn't work, the habit your couldn't quit, the temptation you didn't resist, or the courage you couldn't find? Guilt lies hidden beneath the surface, festering, irritating. Sometimes so deeply embedded you don't know the cause.
It is a good thing to have a conscience. Feelings of guilt drive people to work to undo damage they have caused to other people. Yes, they reach out with apologies and offer to help. I want to do more than say I am sorry and then expect you to heal thyself. I want to do something to help you recover. Sometimes there is nothing I can do. I have caused damage that cannot be repaired. Then, all I can do is offer an expression of regret and request forgiveness. It makes me sick that others expect the offended party to suddenly act like he/she has not been wounded after receiving an apology! If you have a healthy conscience, you will at least be motivated to never cause that kind of damage again to anybody else! The real problem is when people have no conscience. They have damaged other people and they don't seem to care. They don't lose sleep over it. They just brush it off. Matthew 3:8.
You become moody, cranky. You're prone to overreact. You're angry, irritable. You can be touchy, you know. Understandable, since you have a [a foreign object] lodged in your soul.
I have not seen feelings of guilt work on people this way. Anxiety? Yes. Embarrassment? Definitely. Being a victim of slander? Absolutely. Guilt? No. Maybe I am unusual that way. If you know you should apologize but you don't want to, that can make a person feel anxious. Lucado may be offering a way you can get rid of your guilt without apologizing.
Interested in an extraction? Confess. Request a spiritual MRI. "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Ps. 139:23-24). As God brings misbehavior to mind, agree with him and apologize. Let him apply grace to the wounds.
Don't make thin inward journey without God. Many voices urge you to look deep within and find an invisible strength or hidden power. A dangerous exercise. Self-assessment without God's guidance leads to denial or shame. We can either justify our misbehavior with a thousand and one excuses or design and indwell a torture chamber. Justification or humiliation? We need neither.
We need a prayer of grace-based confession, like David's. After a year of denial and cover-up, he finally prayed, "God, be merciful to me because you are loving. Because you are always ready to be merciful, wipe out all my wrongs. Wash away all my guilt and make me clean again. I know about my wrongs, and I can't forget my sin. You are the only one I have sinned against; I have done what you say is wrong. You are right when you speak and fair when you judge" (Ps. 51:1-4 NCV).
David waved the white flag. No more combat. No more arguing with heaven. He came clean with God. And you? Your moment might look something like this.
So the confession I make is to God, not to the people damaged by my behavior. Sometimes, that's all you can do. There is only old wreckage in my wake and there is nothing I can do to show my repentance. In the example of the bad encounter with a coworker (below), the wake of damage is pretty fresh; but Lucado suggests retreating into prayer and confession with God, accepting God's grace and exonerating one's self of any feelings of guilt.
Late evening. Bedtime. The pillow beckons. But so does your guilty conscience. An encounter with a coworker turned nasty earlier in the day. Words were exchanged. Accusations made. Lines drawn in the sand. Names called. Tacky, tacky, tacky behavior. You bear some, if not most, of the blame.
The old version of you would have suppressed the argument. Crammed it into an already-crowded cellar of unresolved conflicts. Slapped putty on rotten wood. The quarrel would have festered into bitterness and poisoned another relationship. But you aren't the old version of you. Grace is happening, rising like a morning sun over a wintry meadow, scattering shadows, melting frost. Warmth. God doesn't scowl at the sight of you. You once thought he did. Arms crossed and angry, perpetually ticked off. Now you know better. You've been Boazed and bought [like Ruth], foot washed [like the apostles] and indwelled [sic] by Christ. You can risk honesty with God.
I think this "honesty" prayer is being offered as a substitute for reconciliation with another person.
You tell the pillow to wait, and you step into the presence of Jesus. "Can we talk about today's argument? I am sorry that I reacted in the way I did. I was harsh, judgmental, and impatient. You have given me so much grace. I gave so little. Please forgive me."
There, doesn't that feel better? No special location required. No chant or candle needed. Just prayer. The prayer will likely prompt an apology, and the apology will quite possibly preserve a friendship and protect a heart. You might even hang a sign on your office wall: "Grace happens here."
In my experience with conflicts between people, the one who has caused all the damage has a pretty clear conscience about it. They probably use the easy practice of rationalization to clear themselves of guilt. For reconciliation to take place, the damaged party or some third party has to point it out. Then, it is the duty of the offender to try to make amends. It is not biblical to ask God for forgiveness and leave in your wake a row of damaged people whose duty it is to forgive you whether you think it necessary to make amends or not. If somebody comes to you and tells you that you have caused personal damage, that person has done an extremely difficult thing. You must accommodate and make the process as easy as possible on the person who believes he/she has been damaged. You want people to find you approachable, not dangerous.
Matthew 18:15-20.
Consider this passage from Matthew 3:7-8:
But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.
Imagine John's reaction of a Pharisees said, "If I have done or said anything to offend, I repent." It is a meaningless repentance. A better answer is for me to say, "Please tell me what I have done or said to offend. [Then, actively listen. Only then must I say,] I repent." Then, don't expect instant forgiveness. Give the poor hurt person a little time to process my sincere repentance. Also, don't expect your relationship to be completely repaired. That will never happen. The chill can be warmed up; but reconciled brothers will be more cautious from now on.
How do you suppose John would have reacted if a Sadducee said, "I know what I did to my brother; but I have made my peace with God about it." It is the equivalent of bumping the reconciliation volleyball back over the net. It's your problem now. My conscience is clean before God. Here is a Bandaid for that bullet hole (to cite Taylor Swift's song, Bad Blood).
Lucado's book seeks to refute the notion of salvation by works. In doing so, Lucado presses the point, intentionally or not, that you don't have to do anything as a Christian. There is no difference between a Christian and a nonChristian except for the Christian's feelings of guilt. Those feelings can be assuaged by a quick prayer of confession to God. If that prayer does not help, there is something wrong with you. The way I read the Bible, if that prayer does not help, there is something abundantly right with you that you should water and cultivate to strengthen!
I am not near the writer that Max Lucado is. I can see why books like this sell. I wonder if big sales is the point.
Footnote: By the way, I find Lucado's use of Psalm 51:4 troubling.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.
Locado implies that feelings of guilt are completely handled in prayer. Maybe, prayer will motivate a person to apologize.
This Psalm is David's expression of repentance over the Bathsheba-Uriah affair. David is not clearing himself of responsibility for the pain he caused to Bathsheba, her husband Uriah, Uriah's family and possibly many other people. David does not mean to say that he owes those people nothing. He is saying that his actions are seen in God's eyes as sin and have adversely affected his relationship with God. He should still feel guilt for all the hurt, the dead soldiers and dead babies.
This Psalm is David's expression of repentance over the Bathsheba-Uriah affair. David is not clearing himself of responsibility for the pain he caused to Bathsheba, her husband Uriah, Uriah's family and possibly many other people. David does not mean to say that he owes those people nothing. He is saying that his actions are seen in God's eyes as sin and have adversely affected his relationship with God. He should still feel guilt for all the hurt, the dead soldiers and dead babies.
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