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After working late last night to finish off my short talk for Drive In Church this Sunday, this morning I was out of bed at first light to check on a moany little lamb (one of the sort that's always moaning) that was kicking off quite loud outside on the farm.
There'd been a storm last night, in fairness and it had RAINED, but they carry their 'roof' on their backs and stay quite cosy. The little lamb was just fine after all..
But they guilt-trip you, y'see, these little lambs.
They make this noise that ... if you love them ... goes right through you, and you just can't help but go straight to them and respond.
So we talk about a thing we call 'Farmer Guilt'.
Farmer guilt
You may well heard of something called 'Parental Guilt'?
It's when parents let their fears about their parenting short-comings get the better of them.
You can't get everything right in parenting, but although most of our little mistakes don't do ANY lasting harm, we can dwell on our perceived weaknesses and end up beating ourselves up badly with guilt feelings.
It's a really common modern burden of careful parenting.
But no-one in the media in our therapeutic society would dare to beat up parents in public.
Quite a lot of media effort seems to go into resolving parental guilt.
The opposite is the case with the farmer's version.
It's all about ...
Being the bad guys
People with anti-farming agendas ... because they think that farming is cruel or wrecks the climate, or because they think farmers are rich toffs with lifestyles they'd like to be able to afford (all highly questionable ideas!) ... have done a lot to gain huge traction on TV and radio.
The effect is that farmers have been stigmatised as the bad guys, whereas there are good ones and bad ones in farming, just like any other trade or profession like building or banking.
So let's not also forget that guilt shaming to manipulate people to conforming to YOUR wishes and aspirations is not very ethical either!
Sensitive consciences ... not often credited to farming though there are MANY of them out there ... are damaged and injured psychologically in the process. Trust me, I see LOTS of conscientious farmers being damaged by what's going on.
But whatever your trade or profession, unresolved guilt is very damaging to people's heath, and holding it over them is really destructive.
And there's a really troubling parallel that I've been watching develop in creating 'bad guys' out of believers in our culture. I'm troubled by what I get to see happening to ...
Conscientious Christians in an age of guilt manipulators
The Liberal consensus has got really pretty skilled at shaming believers with sensitive consciences to soak up its own ethic.
Wha happens is that the society around us gets sold some principle as being the 'right' thing, then believing people who have an interest in 'being good' are guilt-shamed into embracing that ethic.
It might be a certain understanding of what constitutes the best Environmental course of conduct, or a dietary choice or an attitude to some political or economic development, which becomes the new 'law', the new regulations ... but it could be anything.
Failure to conform to the particular principle brings down condemnation and a sense of guilt ... a guilt that may well be misplaced.
There are at least three big reasons that allowing yourself to be manipulated by guilt-shamers is misplaced
The first reason is in the definition of 'good'
Going along with what other people define as 'good' or as 'bad' is a hiding to nothing because - frankly - people's definitions of good obviously vary.
There's no clear or settled definition of what actually constitutes 'good' when you let yourself be conned into that way of thinking.
But God's Word defines righteousness clearly as what is exemplified in the character of God, the only wise true and Holy One ... the Lord Himself.
It's a definition that's worked for billions of people across the course of thousand of years against the background of multiple cultures.
Contemporary culture's definition of 'Good' isn't ultimately do-able, because it is variously defined and is therefore un-knowable. You can't reliably do what is unreliably know-able.
The second reason lies in thinking that anyone IS actually 'good'
Given the weakness of human ability to behave perfectly, the drive to always do good stacks up about just as much as tilting at windmills ... you ain't going to hit that moving target!
When challenged by a young bright spark about how to live right, who approached him with an admirable question: 'Good Teacher what must I do to inherit eternal life?" the Lord Jesus put Him and us right on this matter.
"Who" said Jesus "is good but God alone?" (Mark 10:18)
His point was that no-one is actually good, which is what make it so important to trust the truth about the only way God has paved to human salvation and life free from guilt and shaming, because ...
The third reason that guilt is misplaced lies in a failure to live in the truth that Christ's sin-atoning death has put things right
In the words of our verse for the day:
"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,
because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life
has set you free from the law of sin and death."
Romans 8:1-2
Let's face it, that is a spiritually and psychologically healthy place to rest a guilt-wracked head!
Now before you get the wrong idea about this Biblical guilt-free living, none of this leads to living a life that excuses the stuff we do wrong, because the gratitude it brings is the powerful motivational and behavioural 'modifier' of the believer... and that's a far more psychologically healthy one than manipulating guilt.
The Point
It's really harmful to allow human definitions and manipulation of guilt to direct and to govern your life.
It amounts to letting people who are too insecure to allow dissent from their opinions to have control over the course of your life.
It doesn't sound so 'good' when I put it like that, does it? It sounds just about on a par with being manipulated by moany lambs!
It is much more appropriate to keep an eye on who dictates to you what's 'good' and 'bad', always asking yourself what it ACTUALLY is that they intend for you, in the end.
And it is much more appropriate to take the failures we ALL have in life to the foot of the Cross for Christ's pardon, and help to amend our life!
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