Howard C. Wilkinson - "The Guilty Conscience" (February 1, 1970)
MP3
Loading the media player...
Transcript
- Download transcript as:
-
Text
-
PDF
-
WebVTT (includes timecodes)
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| - | Be of good kind. | 0:05 |
| (light music) | 0:16 | |
| ♪ The lord is my shepherd ♪ | 1:05 | |
| ♪ No want shall I know ♪ | 1:14 | |
| (indistinct singing) | 1:23 | |
| ♪ He leadeth me where waters, waters flow ♪ | 1:34 | |
| ♪ My (indistinct) ♪ | 1:54 | |
| ♪ And wine, he is the way (indistinct) ♪ | 2:05 | |
| ♪ Oh lord, divine he is ♪ | 2:16 | |
| ♪ And oh, he (indistinct) ♪ | 2:35 | |
| ♪ I hear him shine on me ♪ | 2:55 | |
| ♪ Oh lord, I need thee ♪ | 3:05 | |
| (indistinct) | 3:20 | |
| ♪ Revelation fall over me ♪ | 3:33 | |
| The scripture lesson this morning is the 51:1-12. | 4:12 | |
| #Have mercy upon me oh God, | 4:19 | |
| according to thy steadfast love. | 4:20 | |
| According to thy abundant mercy, | 4:22 | |
| blot out my transgressions. | 4:24 | |
| Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity | 4:26 | |
| and cleanse me from my sin. | 4:29 | |
| For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me. | 4:32 | |
| Against thee, thee only have I sinned and done | 4:36 | |
| which is evil and by sight. | 4:39 | |
| So that though art justified in thy sentence and blameless | 4:41 | |
| in they judgment. | 4:45 | |
| Behold, I was brought forth in inequity | 4:47 | |
| and in sin did my mother conceived me. | 4:50 | |
| Behold, thou desires truth in the inward being, | 4:53 | |
| therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart. | 4:57 | |
| Purge me with thyself and I shall be clean. | 5:00 | |
| Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. | 5:03 | |
| Fill me with joy and gladness. | 5:06 | |
| Let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice. | 5:09 | |
| Hide thy face from my sins and blot out | 5:13 | |
| all my iniquities. | 5:16 | |
| Create in me a clean heart, oh god, | 5:18 | |
| and put a new and right spirit within me. | 5:21 | |
| Cast me not away from thy presence and take not | 5:24 | |
| thy holy spirit from me. | 5:28 | |
| Restore me to the joy of their salvation and uphold me with | 5:30 | |
| a willing spirit. | 5:35 | |
| Here endeth the first lesson. | 5:36 | |
| (bright organ music) | 5:40 | |
| (organ drowning out singers) | 5:50 | |
| - | The Lord be with you. | 6:26 |
| - | And with you. | 6:28 |
| - | Let us pray. | 6:29 |
| Let us offer unto God our prayers of thanksgiving. | 6:39 | |
| Almighty God, our heavenly father. | 6:47 | |
| We give thee thanks for unnumbered gifts. | 6:50 | |
| Thou has given us parents and teachers from whom to learn, | 6:57 | |
| thou was given us books and laboratories | 7:02 | |
| to enlighten our mind. | 7:06 | |
| We thank thee for our times of testing by which we can learn | 7:09 | |
| where we are strong and where we need to be strengthened. | 7:15 | |
| We thank thee for thy grace in our trials. | 7:21 | |
| We're grateful to thee for giving us light in darkness, | 7:27 | |
| strength in weakness, health to overcome illness, | 7:32 | |
| love to dispel loneliness, and hope to erase despair. | 7:39 | |
| For all these favors, | 7:47 | |
| we give thee hearty thanks | 7:48 | |
| through our Lord Jesus Christ. | 7:52 | |
| Let us offer one special prayer of thanksgiving | 7:56 | |
| for service workers on the campus. | 8:00 | |
| We thank thee oh God for the faithfulness | 8:06 | |
| of those who care for us | 8:08 | |
| in this university, | 8:11 | |
| for those who cook and serve our food, | 8:14 | |
| for those who tidy rooms and halls. | 8:18 | |
| For those who scrub and paint and clean. | 8:23 | |
| For all who ease our life with endless daily chores, | 8:28 | |
| grant to them, joy in what they do, | 8:35 | |
| grant to us graciousness to show our thankfulness to them | 8:40 | |
| through him who came not to be served, | 8:47 | |
| but to serve, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 8:51 | |
| And let us offer one prayer of intercession, | 9:00 | |
| particularly this morning for the whole hospital complex. | 9:04 | |
| We commend unto thee oh father all who hallow suffering. | 9:11 | |
| Those who in their thoughts for others | 9:18 | |
| leave no room for pity of themselves. | 9:22 | |
| Those whose patience inspires others to hold on. | 9:27 | |
| We commend unto thee all who endure suffering. | 9:33 | |
| Those whose bodies, our minds are distressed. | 9:38 | |
| Those who cannot be themselves because of pain. | 9:44 | |
| Grant to all who are bound. | 9:52 | |
| one to another in the fellowship of suffering, | 9:54 | |
| the sense of comradeship, the knowledge of thy presence, | 9:58 | |
| and give them thy peace, which passes understanding. | 10:05 | |
| Now, let us offer prayers of supplication, | 10:15 | |
| first for the athletic aspects of our life. | 10:21 | |
| Oh God who has made a world where struggle brings strength | 10:27 | |
| and indolence leads to weakness, | 10:31 | |
| grant us the best rewards in all our contests of strength | 10:35 | |
| and skill in the realm of athletics. | 10:39 | |
| Deliver us from vain glory and eager wisdom, | 10:44 | |
| from spite and the harboring of any grudge. | 10:48 | |
| Make us thoughtful winners and gracious losers. | 10:54 | |
| Keep our rivalries from becoming obsessions. | 11:00 | |
| Make us grateful for the discipline of playing | 11:05 | |
| with and against others, but earn control of muscle, | 11:08 | |
| mind, and eye. | 11:14 | |
| And for the fraternity | 11:16 | |
| of coaches and players and supporters. | 11:18 | |
| And let us offer the prayer of supplication for the military | 11:25 | |
| aspects of our life. | 11:28 | |
| Almighty and eternal God who has set our lives | 11:33 | |
| in a time of war, | 11:38 | |
| enable us to convert to a good purpose, | 11:41 | |
| whatever military demands are laid upon us. | 11:45 | |
| If we undergo training, | 11:51 | |
| may it strengthen our discipline | 11:55 | |
| and lift our ideals of service. | 11:57 | |
| If we face comeback, may it not wrench away | 12:02 | |
| our Christian sympathy, nor harden our heart. | 12:06 | |
| If we refuse the military way, | 12:13 | |
| may our decision be made with insight and humility so that | 12:17 | |
| whatever our response to the violence of men and nations, | 12:24 | |
| we may continually fight the good fight of faith | 12:30 | |
| in him whose kingdom is not of this world. | 12:34 | |
| Even Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 12:40 | |
| And let us offer a short application for ourselves. | 12:45 | |
| Oh God, may there be nothing done this day | 12:52 | |
| of which we shall be ashamed when the sun has set. | 12:56 | |
| Nor in the eventide of our life, when our task is done | 13:03 | |
| and we come home to see the face to face. | 13:10 | |
| And now, as our savior Christ has taught us, | 13:18 | |
| we humbly pray together saying our father who art in heaven, | 13:21 | |
| hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, | 13:28 | |
| thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. | 13:33 | |
| Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us | 13:38 | |
| our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, | 13:42 | |
| and lead us, not into temptation, | 13:48 | |
| but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom | 13:51 | |
| and the power and the glory forever. | 13:55 | |
| Amen. | 14:00 | |
| - | Shakespeare has King Richard to say, | 14:23 |
| "My conscience half a thousand several tongues, | 14:28 | |
| "and every tongue brings in a several tail and every tail | 14:35 | |
| "condemns me for a villain." | 14:41 | |
| King Richard's problem was that he had a guilty conscience. | 14:47 | |
| Now in this, he was not alone, certainly. | 14:55 | |
| Every person old enough to listen to a sermon | 14:59 | |
| has that problem. | 15:04 | |
| This is true of the religious person. | 15:07 | |
| It's also true of the irreligious person. | 15:10 | |
| If in the home of an atheist | 15:16 | |
| the radio was inadvertently left on while | 15:19 | |
| the Duke Chapel Service came on the air | 15:23 | |
| just a little while ago, | 15:26 | |
| the atheist may now be thinking that he doesn't have | 15:29 | |
| the problem of a guilty conscience | 15:33 | |
| the way those religious people have. | 15:36 | |
| If he thinks that he doesn't know what is going on in his | 15:41 | |
| own subconscious mind, | 15:46 | |
| for whether we conceive of it as being an outraged | 15:50 | |
| conscience formed and informed by the revelations | 15:54 | |
| of supernatural religion or whether we conceive of it | 15:59 | |
| as being a violated and painful superego inlaid | 16:03 | |
| with the mores of society, | 16:09 | |
| we all have to deal with the sense of guilt. | 16:13 | |
| We may repress it by denial and force it to fester | 16:20 | |
| underneath the surface, | 16:25 | |
| or we may openly face it and constructively deal with it. | 16:27 | |
| This sermon is one attempt to do the latter. | 16:35 | |
| You know, this might be thought of | 16:42 | |
| as being a particularly good time | 16:44 | |
| to examine our guilty conscience because Ash Wednesday | 16:46 | |
| is only 10 days away. | 16:50 | |
| Ash Wednesday inaugurates the season of Lent, | 16:54 | |
| a 40 day period during which we Christians | 16:59 | |
| have traditionally inspected our consciences | 17:01 | |
| and have sought to make amendment | 17:06 | |
| at the points where we are guilty. | 17:08 | |
| Actually, however, anytime is a good time | 17:12 | |
| to come to terms with a sense of guilt. | 17:17 | |
| For as much as we may sympathize with Ogden Nash in in his | 17:22 | |
| impulsive wish to have either a clear conscience | 17:27 | |
| or none at all, | 17:31 | |
| our realistic choice is not quite that simple. | 17:35 | |
| We cannot merely by wishing have no conscience at all. | 17:41 | |
| Whether our religious commitment or lack of it | 17:48 | |
| is Christian or whatever. | 17:52 | |
| Now, in the case of the religious person, | 17:56 | |
| his or her conscience is formed largely by the teachings | 17:58 | |
| of the religious body to which he or she gives allegiance. | 18:02 | |
| In the case of the non-religious person, | 18:07 | |
| his or her conscience is foreign by the standards and mores | 18:10 | |
| of the groups in which he or she finds meaning. | 18:14 | |
| Now in this latter view, (indistinct) | 18:19 | |
| mom defined the conscience simply as the guardian | 18:22 | |
| in the individual of the rules | 18:26 | |
| which the community has evolved for its own preservation. | 18:30 | |
| Dr. Dayton Vandusen says that a man's guilt feeling is | 18:37 | |
| immediately connected with his own sense of values | 18:41 | |
| from what he expects of himself. | 18:48 | |
| And it is an empirical fact that all of us discover pretty | 18:56 | |
| early in life that we have outreached our own accepted code | 19:01 | |
| enough times, and with sufficient seriousness, | 19:07 | |
| that we feel guilty by our own standards. | 19:12 | |
| Now, this is often a rather big problem to us. | 19:21 | |
| So much so that we come at last to agree | 19:25 | |
| with Huckleberry Finn that our conscience takes up more room | 19:27 | |
| than all the rest of a person's insides. | 19:32 | |
| Let's be very blunt about it. | 19:37 | |
| No one of us enjoys feeling guilty. | 19:39 | |
| It's quite uncomfortable. | 19:44 | |
| Now, it makes us uneasy enough when another person | 19:47 | |
| declares we are guilty. | 19:50 | |
| But when we ourselves bring in that verdict, | 19:52 | |
| the pain is very excruciating. | 19:55 | |
| Our minds go to work at once to solve the problem, | 19:58 | |
| one way or another, | 20:02 | |
| hoping to get relief from the lash of a nagging conscience | 20:04 | |
| and to restore our better self image | 20:09 | |
| to a state of self-respect. | 20:14 | |
| But watch out, watch out. | 20:18 | |
| How we enterprise the doing of this | 20:27 | |
| is of the greatest importance. | 20:34 | |
| As understandable as it is to desire freedom | 20:41 | |
| from the awareness of guilt, the route that we take toward | 20:44 | |
| that freedom may lead to a heartbreaking | 20:49 | |
| tragedy or to great bliss, depending. | 20:52 | |
| Some of the escapes we attempt are not only unsuccessful, | 20:59 | |
| but terribly destructive, | 21:05 | |
| so that our sense of guilt itself becomes a problem to us. | 21:09 | |
| It may even lead to the compounding of our guilt. | 21:17 | |
| Accordingly, we often observe a person struggling | 21:23 | |
| to free himself from guilt, only to find himself | 21:26 | |
| the more ensnared, | 21:29 | |
| like a fly struggling to free itself from flypaper. | 21:31 | |
| Now there is a Christian solution to the problem | 21:38 | |
| of the guilty conscience. | 21:41 | |
| And I wish at this point merely to mention it and then | 21:43 | |
| contrast it with some of the non-Christian attempts | 21:47 | |
| at the solution of this problem. | 21:51 | |
| Christian faith, as was hinted at | 21:55 | |
| in the reading from Psalms earlier in this service, | 21:58 | |
| declares that anyone who wishes to be free | 22:02 | |
| from his guilt should whole heartedly acknowledge his sin. | 22:05 | |
| Be truly sorry about it. | 22:12 | |
| Ask in faith for the forgiveness of God | 22:15 | |
| and of any human he has wronged, | 22:20 | |
| turn his back on sin and make such an amendment | 22:26 | |
| of past wrongs as are within his power. | 22:29 | |
| All who will do these things have been fully assured | 22:35 | |
| of complete pardon by God, | 22:41 | |
| and are entitled to be en entirely free | 22:45 | |
| from all feelings of past guilt. | 22:49 | |
| A sense of guilt | 22:55 | |
| which leads to this kind of action is wholesome and good for | 22:56 | |
| it is unlikely that we would even seek forgiveness | 23:00 | |
| for our sins without a painful prick from our consciences. | 23:03 | |
| But a sense of guilt, | 23:11 | |
| which does not lead to such action as that | 23:12 | |
| can be extremely destructive. | 23:16 | |
| This is the case because even if a person is unwilling | 23:20 | |
| to admit his guilt and to seek forgiveness, | 23:23 | |
| he nevertheless cries out to be free from the awareness | 23:26 | |
| of his guilt, | 23:30 | |
| from the guilty feeling and his subconscious mind continues | 23:31 | |
| to work in an effort to achieve that freedom | 23:37 | |
| and the things which a guilty conscience will do to us | 23:42 | |
| and in turn make us do to ourselves and to others | 23:47 | |
| are truly frightening. | 23:51 | |
| A man going through life with a guilty conscience | 23:55 | |
| is like a mack truck without a driver, | 23:59 | |
| rolling downhill on a street crowded with pedestrians. | 24:02 | |
| There is no way in advance to calculate the damage | 24:08 | |
| which will be done, | 24:11 | |
| but it is certain that the agony will be extensive. | 24:13 | |
| One thing a guilty conscience does is to cause us | 24:20 | |
| to resent other people, | 24:25 | |
| to perceive them in distorted fashion and therefore | 24:29 | |
| to misrepresent them. | 24:34 | |
| You see, if I have done you an injury, | 24:37 | |
| and I really know that I have, | 24:42 | |
| if I am unwilling to acknowledge it, | 24:45 | |
| make amends and ask your forgiveness, | 24:50 | |
| the very thought of you is going to make me uncomfortable. | 24:55 | |
| I begin to resent you. | 25:01 | |
| And finally, I come to hate you. | 25:03 | |
| You probably have heard the old saying | 25:09 | |
| that one of the surest ways to make a man hate you | 25:10 | |
| is to loan him $10. | 25:13 | |
| Now the thought behind that old adage is that the man who | 25:16 | |
| does not soon repay the money | 25:19 | |
| finds that the sight of you reminds him of the debt he owes. | 25:23 | |
| And he resents the fact that he's obligated to you | 25:30 | |
| and finally comes to resent you personally. | 25:33 | |
| Unfortunately, the process does not stop there. | 25:38 | |
| The next step is that he begins to tell himself | 25:42 | |
| that he really does not owe you that $10 | 25:46 | |
| because you once did something bad to him, | 25:49 | |
| or you're a cruel person who does not deserve | 25:53 | |
| to be repaid the $10. | 25:55 | |
| During my ministry | 26:00 | |
| I have counseled a number of women who have been having | 26:02 | |
| illicit affairs with men who were married to other women. | 26:07 | |
| Each one of these paramours said that the man told her | 26:12 | |
| his wife did not try to understand him or his wife | 26:18 | |
| was mean to him or had broken a promise, | 26:23 | |
| which was important. | 26:27 | |
| Whatever may have been the truth about those reports, | 26:30 | |
| the likelihood is that these men did not notice | 26:32 | |
| how great these supposed defects were | 26:36 | |
| in their wives until they began the illicit affairs | 26:39 | |
| and their consciences began to torment them | 26:43 | |
| about their broken marriage vows. | 26:47 | |
| Then they tried to ease their bruised consciences | 26:50 | |
| by a distorted perception of their wives. | 26:53 | |
| And the result was to heap character misrepresentation | 26:58 | |
| on top of unfaithfulness so that their guilt | 27:04 | |
| was heavily compounded. | 27:09 | |
| Second, a guilty conscience can make us poor judges | 27:14 | |
| of what is wise and right. | 27:19 | |
| Dr. Hubert C Noble, executive director of the division of | 27:23 | |
| Educational Institutions of the National Council of Churches | 27:29 | |
| has recently pointed out | 27:33 | |
| how destructive a sense of guilt can be | 27:35 | |
| in the whole area of race relations. | 27:38 | |
| He said that some white churchmen who in the past have done | 27:41 | |
| very little to bring about racial justice now find | 27:46 | |
| that they have a huge unrelieved sense of guilt regarding | 27:51 | |
| their black brothers, as indeed they should have. | 27:56 | |
| They therefore he says will support any idea or scheme | 28:02 | |
| proposed to them by any black man, | 28:07 | |
| whether it is wise or foolish, | 28:11 | |
| constructive or destructive. | 28:13 | |
| They therefore run the risk of adding to their past guilt | 28:16 | |
| caused by inaction. | 28:20 | |
| The present guilt of supporting unworkable and utterly | 28:23 | |
| stupid schemes, merely to be able to tell themselves | 28:27 | |
| that they're helping some black man or some black group | 28:31 | |
| get what they say they want. | 28:35 | |
| Many parents fall into this variety of trap because of their | 28:42 | |
| guilt feelings toward their children. | 28:47 | |
| Fathers who come home from the office and take out the day's | 28:51 | |
| frustrations on their children, | 28:54 | |
| socialite mothers who spend almost no time | 28:57 | |
| with their children, drinking parents, | 29:01 | |
| whose children regularly discovered them drunk, | 29:04 | |
| divorced parents who fight a tug of war over their children, | 29:07 | |
| all these and many others find themselves with an unrelieved | 29:12 | |
| burden of guilt with regard to their children. | 29:17 | |
| Now, and all too typical and destructive tendency therefor | 29:21 | |
| is for the parent to grant any request | 29:30 | |
| which comes from the child, | 29:33 | |
| even though the granting of the request might be the most | 29:36 | |
| harmful thing the parent could do for the child. | 29:39 | |
| But the load of guilt which the parent has | 29:44 | |
| so impairs his judgment | 29:48 | |
| that he cannot understand what is wise or unwise. | 29:51 | |
| Third, a guilty conscience unrelieved can cause us | 29:59 | |
| to make the innocent suffer because of our sins. | 30:05 | |
| The concept of a scapegoat is very old. | 30:11 | |
| Human beings have busied themselves in this way | 30:16 | |
| for a great many centuries. | 30:19 | |
| In the days of the priest, Aaron, | 30:22 | |
| the children of Israel followed the practice | 30:26 | |
| of ceremonially placing their own guilt upon the head | 30:28 | |
| of a live goat, | 30:33 | |
| and then seeing to it that the goat escaped | 30:36 | |
| into the wilderness, | 30:40 | |
| thinking that the sins and guilt would go with the goat | 30:43 | |
| and the goat would be devoured by the wild beast. | 30:48 | |
| At some risk, I pointed out | 30:54 | |
| that we see how this works in basketball. | 30:57 | |
| Get ready. | 31:03 | |
| The referee has a very hard job at best, | 31:07 | |
| trying to call the plays fairly, | 31:10 | |
| but in the hustle of the game, | 31:15 | |
| he makes a call, which almost as soon as he has made, | 31:17 | |
| he realizes was unfair to player A on the blue team and all | 31:21 | |
| the supporters of the blue teams see that the call was | 31:28 | |
| unfair and they are mighty vocal about it. | 31:31 | |
| Now the referee isn't going to change his call, | 31:36 | |
| but he feels guilty about his erroneous call | 31:40 | |
| against the blue team. | 31:46 | |
| Now, what does he do? | 31:49 | |
| Very soon he calls a foul against player B | 31:52 | |
| on the white team. | 31:56 | |
| This satisfies the outraged blue fans | 31:59 | |
| and eases the referee's conscience. | 32:02 | |
| Ah, but instead of easing his conscience, | 32:06 | |
| it should make him feel doubly guilty in that he made | 32:09 | |
| a scapegoat of a player on the white team who had committed | 32:13 | |
| no foul and who did nothing to deserve | 32:18 | |
| having a foul charged against him. | 32:21 | |
| And yet this kind of thing happens. | 32:25 | |
| It's the shame of the game. | 32:28 | |
| Wellforth, a guilty conscience can make us sick. | 32:32 | |
| Physicians who practice in psychosomatic medicine | 32:38 | |
| bear testimony to the power of guilt to make the flesh sick. | 32:43 | |
| Psychiatrists tell us how unrelieved guilt | 32:51 | |
| can make us emotionally ill. | 32:54 | |
| Dr. Carol Wise has explained it in this way. | 32:58 | |
| Because feelings of guilt are so painful, | 33:02 | |
| and because they're often too strong for an individual | 33:06 | |
| to face and handle openly by himself, | 33:09 | |
| they're pushed back to deeper levels of the mind. | 33:13 | |
| Technically this is called repression. | 33:17 | |
| Repression is a protective process of the mind | 33:21 | |
| which makes one unaware of feelings that are painful. | 33:25 | |
| Dr. Wise says, one may not be aware of guilt feelings, | 33:31 | |
| but unconsciously may feel very guilty. | 33:34 | |
| If this is the case, | 33:39 | |
| the feelings of guilt will find some disguised | 33:40 | |
| form of expression, | 33:43 | |
| such as a symptom of physical illness or a compulsive need | 33:46 | |
| to wash his hands or engage | 33:50 | |
| in some other unexplained activity. | 33:52 | |
| Or he may have the idea that other people | 33:55 | |
| are always watching. | 33:57 | |
| These symptoms, he says, | 33:59 | |
| serve as a defense against allowing the feeling of guilt | 34:01 | |
| to become conscious again. | 34:06 | |
| This is where the illness comes in. | 34:09 | |
| The person finds himself forced by feelings of which he is | 34:13 | |
| not aware to act or think in certain ways that produce | 34:18 | |
| unhappiness and destroy his capacity for effective living. | 34:23 | |
| He is sick because he does not consciously know what makes | 34:29 | |
| him do what he consciously does not want to do, | 34:34 | |
| and because he cannot control his behavior. | 34:39 | |
| Part of him is controlling all of him. | 34:43 | |
| There is a fifth kind of damage that comes | 34:49 | |
| from a tortured conscience. | 34:52 | |
| It causes us to fail. | 34:55 | |
| It makes us defeat ourselves. | 34:57 | |
| Subconsciously we feel that we deserve to be defeated. | 35:02 | |
| Detectives say that many criminals are caught by clues | 35:08 | |
| which they left themselves. | 35:11 | |
| Some of these clues seem almost to have been planted as | 35:15 | |
| though the criminal were saying, please catch me. | 35:20 | |
| I deserve to be punished. | 35:24 | |
| Some people who appeared to be accident prone have been | 35:28 | |
| known to have fewer accidents | 35:31 | |
| after their guilt was relieved. | 35:34 | |
| Well, a guilty conscience often causes us | 35:39 | |
| to major in minors, to make mountains out of molehills, | 35:42 | |
| magnify small issues into great ones. | 35:47 | |
| A Casper Milquetoast whose conscience troubles him because | 35:52 | |
| he's wrong on a great issue will sometimes become a zealot | 35:56 | |
| about a petty issue to salvage his conscience. | 36:01 | |
| Jesus noted how this was true of the Pharisees in his day, | 36:05 | |
| they had a guilty conscience about big issues | 36:09 | |
| so they compensated by being zealous over small ones. | 36:12 | |
| They strained at gnats | 36:16 | |
| after having already swallowed camels. | 36:19 | |
| A seventh possible difficulty resulting | 36:25 | |
| from a tortured conscience | 36:28 | |
| is what psychologists call projection. | 36:29 | |
| We try to ease the pain of knowing that we are bad by | 36:33 | |
| reporting that the whole world is bad. | 36:36 | |
| Dr. Fosdick said, | 36:40 | |
| "The bully thinks the world is full of bullies. | 36:42 | |
| "The homosexual perceives homosexuality everywhere. | 36:45 | |
| "The bad tempered man is always discovering | 36:50 | |
| "bad temper in others. | 36:52 | |
| "The liar says all men are liars." | 36:55 | |
| Believe it, beloved, | 37:02 | |
| there are other harmful effects of an unrelieved guilty | 37:04 | |
| conscience, which could be described if time permitted. | 37:07 | |
| But today these seven are enough to suggest that the damage | 37:12 | |
| which can be done is indeed formidable. | 37:18 | |
| The pained conscience, which can be good, | 37:23 | |
| and which is a necessary step toward repentance, confession, | 37:27 | |
| and forgiveness, can also be destructive if we stop short | 37:31 | |
| of such a remedy as that. | 37:37 | |
| The good news of the gospel is that there is forgiveness | 37:41 | |
| for every repentant sinner. | 37:46 | |
| That no one needs to suffer under the weight | 37:50 | |
| of a burden of guilt. | 37:53 | |
| This is true because of the love revealed in Jesus Christ | 37:56 | |
| and the forgiveness and grace which he offers. | 38:01 | |
| It's even true of the person whose emotions | 38:06 | |
| and whose mental processes have been twisted by guilt long | 38:08 | |
| sustained and often compounded. | 38:12 | |
| In the year 1878, | 38:16 | |
| William C Gladstone said, "The disease of an evil conscience | 38:18 | |
| "is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all | 38:22 | |
| "the countries in the world." | 38:25 | |
| Now I will not argue whether that statement was true | 38:29 | |
| or untrue at the time he made it. | 38:31 | |
| But I am to be able to say it certainly is not true in 1970. | 38:34 | |
| There are many physicians whose successful practice includes | 38:40 | |
| the disease of an evil conscience. | 38:46 | |
| Dr. Albert Adler in his book | 38:52 | |
| "Psychotherapy and the Christian Message" | 38:55 | |
| has said these words, | 38:59 | |
| which pack a great deal of wisdom | 39:01 | |
| and Christian insight into them. | 39:05 | |
| "The Christian experience of forgiveness | 39:07 | |
| "is not an earned acquittal, | 39:10 | |
| "nor an indulgent dismissal of the guilty. | 39:13 | |
| "Man, repentant, phases the transforming reordering impact | 39:19 | |
| "of God's grace on his disorder. | 39:25 | |
| "The moral law is neither relaxed nor violated. | 39:29 | |
| "Man comes to know that God's love has made cost to himself | 39:34 | |
| "in reconciling his estranged | 39:41 | |
| "but beloved children to himself." | 39:43 | |
| "The distinction between sin and the sinner | 39:47 | |
| "is firmly maintained." | 39:52 | |
| Thus, the Christian man forgiven can cast away the guilt | 39:55 | |
| and shame of his sins without any self-indulgent sense | 39:59 | |
| of complacency. | 40:05 | |
| So the most effective cure of all is the therapy | 40:08 | |
| of regular worship, | 40:14 | |
| in which the sinner confesses before God and man | 40:17 | |
| that he is guilty. | 40:20 | |
| That he's sorry for his sin, | 40:22 | |
| that he asks the heavenly father through Christ to pardon | 40:25 | |
| his sin and dissipate his guilt. | 40:28 | |
| And he asks for grace to repair the damage | 40:32 | |
| that has been done, to rise above sin in the future. | 40:35 | |
| And then even as Dean Cleland led us in our worship today, | 40:42 | |
| he hears the comforting words of scripture | 40:46 | |
| assuring him that if his repentance was genuine, | 40:50 | |
| his pardon is indeed secured, not on the word of man, | 40:54 | |
| but on the word of God. | 41:01 | |
| He then goes out into the world a free man, | 41:04 | |
| ready for a new and clean beginning. | 41:08 | |
| With joy he witnesses to the love of Christ | 41:12 | |
| and he is liberated from all the hangups of guilt | 41:17 | |
| and the sicknesses of guilt | 41:20 | |
| and the bad perceptions of guilt | 41:23 | |
| and the resentments. | 41:26 | |
| His perceptions are clear. | 41:27 | |
| His relationships are genuine and loving, | 41:30 | |
| and he is a real asset to the world. | 41:35 | |
| To the glory of Christ and in his name. | 41:40 | |
| Amen. | 41:45 | |
| (bright organ music) | 41:52 | |
| (organ drowning out singers) | 42:13 | |
| (solemn organ music) | 43:39 | |
| (singer singing in foreign language) | 45:17 | |
| ♪ All that I do, where might I find him ♪ | 47:29 | |
| ♪ That I might see your loving, warm (indistinct) ♪ | 47:35 | |
| ♪ Oh, that I might know, where I might find him ♪ | 47:44 | |
| ♪ That I might (indistinct) for his grace ♪ | 47:52 | |
| ♪ Oh, (indistinct) ♪ | 47:59 | |
| ♪ Oh, that I knew, where might I go to him ♪ | 48:09 | |
| (indistinct) | 48:28 | |
| ♪ Where he might find me ♪ | 48:41 | |
| (indistinct) | 48:48 | |
| ♪ He shall everlast, 'til he find me ♪ | 48:58 | |
| (singer singing in foreign language) | 49:10 | |
| (vigorous organ music drowning out singers) | 49:38 | |
| - | Oh God in whom we live and move and have our being, | 50:58 |
| here we offer and present onto thee | 51:03 | |
| our silver and our gold, | 51:07 | |
| the symbol of ourselves, | 51:10 | |
| to be out a reasonable, holy and living sacrifice | 51:13 | |
| unto thee through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 51:19 | |
| And unto God's gracious mercy and compassion, | 51:27 | |
| do we commit you? | 51:32 | |
| May the blessing of God come upon you abundantly. | 51:34 | |
| May it keep you strong and tranquil in the truth | 51:40 | |
| of his promises through Jesus Christ our Lord. | 51:46 | |
| Amen. | 51:54 | |
| (bells ringing) | 51:59 | |
| (dramatic organ music) | 52:15 | |
| (silence) | 55:59 | |
| (people speaking faintly) | 57:29 |
