Who gets to be guilty?

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Who gets to be guilty?

From biblical law to Elon Musk and Trump, guilt should not be considered as weakness, but as a necessary bond between people. 

By Walter Hesford | FāVS News Columnist

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. 

On our way home on Mother’s Day from a matinee performance of Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors,” my wife and I saw a man standing on the corner of Main and 6th Street holding up a sign that claimed, “You can get rid of your guilt.” 

Hmm, methinks, what guilt would this be? Should we feel guilty for having just been to a raucous play with ribald dialogue? But living as we do in Moscow, Idaho, home of a church that hopes to take over the town, it’s more likely we were being encouraged to shed our sinful ways and join the sign-bearer’s righteous community.

Guilt by association

Since this community upholds Christian nationalism, maybe we would be rightly deemed guilty of not being sufficiently American … or maybe too American in believing that church and state should remain separate for the good of both.

Perhaps the fellow with the sign thinks that Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, should remain holy, so just our driving past him reveals our guilt. 

The Torah, the first five books of the Bible, offers 613 commandments for us to obey, including keeping the Sabbath holy. As Leviticus, Torah’s third book indicates, we are guilty if we violate these commandments. 

The way to get rid of our guilt is to sacrifice an animal such as a sheep or a goat (see, for example, Leviticus 5: 1-6). According to some Christian Scriptures, Jesus is the one sacrificed for us, as we are all guilty under the law (see, for example, Romans 3:9-26).

In the Bible and elsewhere, guilt and the law go hand in hand. The American Heritage Dictionary notes that the word “guilt” stems from Old English “gylt,” meaning “crime.” 

When accused of a crime, we may plead innocent, but if found guilty, we can expect punishment. But what if, like Josef K. in Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” we can’t figure out what we are accused of, or what we might be guilty of? We may be suspended in dread. Perhaps the sign we saw on Mother’s Day was meant to cultivate this dread so we would seek relief from it. 

As a teenager, and a born and bred Lutheran, I was swamped with all manner of guilt, physical and spiritual. I have to admit I was guilty of wallowing in guilt, even though my religion offered me the opportunity to move beyond it.

When guilt becomes a weapon

Maturity naturally has made me more accepting of myself, or maybe just more callous. But in truth being wholly rid of guilt seems unnatural, like losing some of my humanity and my connection to others. 

Noah Hawley, in “Everything is Free, and Nothing Matters”, reflecting on a retreat he spent with Jeff Bezos and other super wealthy people, asserts that such people “have left the world of consequences behind. Their actions are only ever judged by themselves.” Why feel guilty about anything when you control everything?

Surely not all wealthy folk have egos as vast as Hawley implies. But he makes a good case that a couple of them do. He includes Trump among those who are in a world of their own, who have no shame, no sense of the possibility that they can ever be guilty of anything. 

And Hawley includes Trump’s off and on buddy Elon Musk, who critiques empathy as “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” It is, thinks Musk, “a weapon wielded by liberal society to bludgeon otherwise rational people into operating against their own interests.”

Neither empathy nor guilt are rational, but are both valued in Jewish and Christian traditions. We are called to love our neighbors as ourselves and made to feel guilty if we don’t. Our guilt may prompt us to live more fully with regard for others and to more fully realize our humanity. 

In its own way, Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors” also revealed the commonality and value of guilt, as all of its major characters make mistakes, which they eventually acknowledge and in so doing achieve happiness. And this left us happy as we drove home that Mother’s Day afternoon.

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