Additional notes
(from DP)

Well, with all the accretions growing around LM's original letter, it is looking a bit complex at this stage. So, why not add another layer?

When LM's letter first passed by me I let it go with just a minimal comment. Having seen the strength with which it hit others in the group I began to wonder why I didn't respond more fully. I have been busy, it's true; but that's not unusual. Then it struck me.... I just don't feel guilty these days. What a delight that is, but how did it happen?

Many years ago (and I mean about 35 years) someone asked my advice about feelings of guilt. It was not that she had any dark secrets, but simply that she felt the same vague feelings of guilt that others have mentioned in this 'complex' of correspondence. Of course, I expressed myself in evangelical terms at that time, saying, "If the Holy Spirit convicts you of sin, he'll tell you what the problem is so that you can confess it and be cleansed. If you just feel vaguely guilty, with nothing specific to aim at, that's the devil's accusation, so ignore it." I wouldn't express myself in the same terms today, but I recall it as a reminder that the solutions I now enjoy are nothing new. I already knew how to be free all those years ago, but it took a long time for the experience to work into my psyche.

Grace, as LM says, can appear to be just a virtual reality, rather than a solid experience. Then we seem to wake up to a reality that is not so pleasant. At another time, however, the light of grace suddenly becomes overwhelmingly and delightfully real once more.... until it fades again. We are pulled this way and that, just like Paul said. The battle goes on until we become exhausted, and that's the point where we reach the real breakthrough. The anonymous mediaeval writer of 'The Cloud of Unknowing' offers this tip - "When you feel utterly exhausted from fighting your thoughts, say to yourself 'It is futile to contend with it any longer', and then fall down before them like a captive or a coward". Give up. Stop trying. Don't care. If God wants you to feel guilty after offering you all that grace then that's his problem. If he doesn't want you to feel guilty then it's still his problem. If it is grace then there's no point in my fighting for it.

Sheila comments "Is guilt always negative?" and, as Alan points out, it "has a legitimate function when we are guilty". It is like fear, which usefully prepares us to run away from danger but can crush us when it comes into play in inappropriate situations. The root of our guilt problem is not usually in our evangelicalism, but in childhood misunderstandings with our parents or other adults. In saying that, I am accepting the Freudian concept that Alan describes. The trouble with evangelicalism is that it fails to clear these psychological problems and thereby misses its stated objective. Instead of receiving the gospel of grace we were given another basin-full of law that reinforced our original problems. Christianity has failed. But God didn't invent Christianity; he invented grace.

Our problem with guilt is a problem of un-learning ideas that have become habituated in us. We don't need a new gospel for this, or a new teaching, or a new technique. We knew the right answers years ago but, as Dave's song says, we still felt "caught between what's right and wrong". So let's give up and stop caring; and let's not care that we don't care!

I agree with Maurice that this exchange is "an excellent use of ACWG".

Derrick