If you grew up in a religious household, you’ve probably felt religious guilt at some point. You know, that feeling that you have done something wrong and now your eternal soul is on the line.
I’m here to tell you that religious guilt is not real, and the belief that it is a reality prevents you from achieving true internal spiritual growth. So, if you feel like you have sinned and need to repent for your wrongdoings, look no further, I got you covered.
The Root Cause of Religious Guilt
The best way to address religious guilt is to start by tracing where it comes from. You might believe it to be from a source outside of yourself, but in reality, it comes from within.
Like any guilty feeling, it comes from just that, a feeling. Let’s take the thought form of “I don’t resonate with my religion’s teachings.” Do you feel that uncomfortable feeling arise in your stomach and chest? Where did that come from?
You may say, “Well my church or religion makes me feel guilty!” Even if that were the case, what you’re saying is something outside yourself CAUSED this feeling you have, that you are powerless over your emotions. Essentially, you are a victim.
However, I’ll offer a different way to view this situation that keeps you moving forward on your spiritual journey and doesn’t stifle your growth by playing victim to external forces. You can better understand this by understanding “projection.”
The Many Projections of Guilt
Projection is when one bottles up their emotions, repressing or suppressing them out of conscious awareness, then sees those emotions play out in people or situations in the external world.
The fearful person sees a world that is dangerous and full of threats. The angry person sees that everyone is confrontational and they need to be dealt with through arguments or fights.
One who lives a life of projection blames the world for all their misfortunes. The danger in that is that person now feels they have zero responsibility to change their behaviors because the world is at fault, not them.
In terms of guilt, nothing CAUSED you to feel religious guilt; you were already feeling guilty and merely projected that emotion onto something.
If this seems hard to believe or ridiculous, my own ego would like to agree with you. I would love to be able to blame the external world for all my problems! However, I have to accept that projection is true, because when I accept that and act in a manner where I take responsibility for my emotions, everything in my life seems to work out perfectly.
By understanding projection, it is impossible to feel like a victim to anything. You can’t blame the outside world for your shortcomings or misfortunes, because the fault started with you. YOU take responsibility for YOUR emotions.
Let’s look at common things we project religious guilt onto:
1) Parents
If you’ve ever felt religious guilt, you’ll know a lot of it stems from the pressure to be devout like our parents.
I grew up in a religious Catholic household, and I actually thoroughly enjoyed my childhood. Yes, going to mass as a kid every Sunday is boring and I would have rather just played video games or gone to the beach, but overall I felt Catholicism added meaning to a lot of holidays and school experiences.
This wasn’t the case as I got older and started taking philosophy classes in college. I began to question my faith, and who was the easy target to call out for forcing these beliefs onto me? My mom.
I remember arguing at the dinner table about how I didn’t have a choice what to believe as a kid because SHE forced me to believe in the Catholic church’s teachings.
In reality, I was now an adult and heard other perspectives outside of my Catholic bubble, and the novelty of a new way of thinking made me prideful. I felt empowered to debate my mom, thinking I was smarter than she was.
SHE was the source of my guilt, and now I was finally able to quash that feeling once and for all with my philosophical arguments.
I was finally able to move away from family to pursue more spiritual goals without the drain of familial baggage, but it would have saved me a lot of arguments with my mom if I realized how much religious guilt I projected onto her.
2) Religious Institutions
If you’re not blaming your parents for your guilt, perhaps, it’s the religion itself. I find it funny in our current society that we have atheists who are more knowledgable about religions and religious institutions than the actual churchgoers.
Many turn to atheism because of their religious guilt. Some of the biggest arguments I hear from them are, “Religion is the reason for so many wars and deaths in our world!”, “You think the Bible is factual? Where’s all the physical evidence?”, “Science provides real explanations to the world, whereas religion is naive and outdated thinking.”
On the surface, what they say actually makes a lot of logical sense. (Perhaps why being an atheist grants a superiority complex). However, they ignore the context of what’s truly spiritually going on beneath the surface.
They can be so blinded by their own vendetta to dismantle every religion that they ignore that their behavior stems from their own internal guilt. You show me an atheist, and I’ll show you a person who had some sort of experience with a religion that brought up a lot of internal guilt and has now set out to attack the institution.
You don’t just set out to attack a religious institution without first feeling wronged by it. In any case, feeling justified that you must do something about this religious institution gets you farther and farther away from the truth.
One can simply look inwards and face the guilt, instead of taking it so personally.
3) God Himself
Last on the list is God. Oh, how we humans have projected our guilt onto God! You can look through history and ancient times and see how much we project our emotions onto God.
Just look in the Bible, and you’ll see in the Old Testament stories of a vengeful God who will smite those who oppose his truth. It is a tad barbaric. That vindictive God is in contradiction to the all-loving and merciful God in the New Testament.
We’ve even done this with Greek gods. You have stories of gods who are the full embodiment of all our human negative qualities: lust, desire, anger, wrath, pride, vengefulness, etc. See: The Story Of Narcissus.
Don’t get me started on the gods of indigenous tribes who needed to be appeased by human sacrifices.
In whatever shape or form we believe God comes in, we’ve been looking in the wrong place.
God is the experiential reality that is witnessed internally when all negative emotions have been relinquished.
And with that in mind, there is no possible way that God can be the source of your guilt or pain. God is infinite peace and love, and therefore, void of causing any suffering.
Putting Power outside yourself prevents true spiritual progress
When one puts their power outside of themselves, it stops true spiritual progress dead in its tracks. What is true spiritual progress? It is acknowledging that we have negative emotions and that they can be transcended.
When negative emotions are transcended, it does not mean they disappear completely; rather, they lose their grip over us. We can now operate in the world without emotional reactivity, bringing forth a sense of peace. We become peaceful internally and so we experience a world of peace.
We do this through awareness, practicing mindfulness, dedication, and devotion to a higher power. When we accept that the people around us are not out to get us and situations are not happening to us, we finally see reality, and that’s based on what we are feeling on the inside. Our true power is our ability to choose to transcend our negative emotions.
Feelings of religious guilt no longer stifle or trigger us; instead, we can float through the world progressing effortlessly towards a more peaceful, successful, and fulfilling life. We finally become a vessel of light rather than a victim of circumstance.
Related: KISS Principle: The Spiritual Wisdom In Keeping It Simple