Religious authorities sometimes use guilt to manipulate people.  They create an atmosphere in which over-scrupulous victims are made to feel guilty for every mistake they have ever made.  Unfortunately, the wrong people are being burdened with a sense of guilt they don’t deserve.  Furthermore, the people who should feel guilty seem totally immune to this type of manipulation.  This strategy takes aim on the guilty, but hits the innocent right between the eyes.  It harms more people than it helps, and it reflects poorly on those who practice it. Jesus didn’t pile on guilt, and you shouldn’t do it either.  You will only hurt yourself and the people you love.

Jesus used guilt sparingly, except when he was dealing with religious authorities who were ensnared in self-righteousness.  These religious know-it-alls thought they had everything figured out, and if you didn’t agree with them, they didn’t hesitate to tell you that you were wrong.  They were the God Squad, addicted to the law, and they had a compulsive need to be right.  Their religion was an ostentatious display of self-righteousness.  Jesus didn’t cut them any slack.  He made it clear that the focus of their life was wrong.  Jesus wouldn’t allow these spiritual bean counters to get away with their hypocrisy.  He hit them right between the eyes with a major dose of truth, but the record shows most of the time it had little positive effect.  These meticulously self-righteous people rarely felt guilt.   Why should they?  After all, they were perfect. 

You will never see a guilty person made better by heaping more guilt upon their head.  Piling on guilt only results in more spiritual and emotional damage.  Guilty people need love, and they need power to overcome the problem that caused their guilt in the first place.  They need to experience the power of God’s love so it can wash the guilt from their mind and heal their damaged emotions.

Excerpt from :

Zero Tolerance To Negative Thinking : Good-by Depression - Hello Positive Mind

David J Abbott M.D.