41. A burden too heavy to bare

Micah 7:19: "He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities and You will cast all of their sins into the depths of the sea. Let them go because you have been forgiven."

    Many of us are sometimes faced with guilt and with things of the past that we regret doing, things that we are currently still struggling to overcome. Guilt can really be a burden that weighs us down and holds us back from truly living our lives. I am not saying that we should run away from guilt because it is often what we do. For many of us, guilt is an uncomfortable feeling. Guilt is the emotion we experience when we have done something wrong or when we've neglected to do what is right (a type of sin of omission). Sometimes we even experience feelings of guilt when we think we've done something wrong, but we haven't done anything wrong. We perceive to have crossed the boundary or perceive to have done something wrong.
    When we experience guilt, we often try and run away from it because it is a nasty feeling to have, it is a very uncomfortable feeling that kind of sits in your gut. We don't like the feeling of guilt because it is unsettling to our inner peace and stability. You might be struggling with guilt now, guilt from the past, guilt from the present or whatever it may be. If so, I do not want guilt to be the thing that holds you back in life, to be something that keeps unsettling your inner-peace and stability. Guilt has a job it needs to do and we need to allow what it needs to do and get it over and done with and move on with our lives.
    Guilt originates when a boundary is overstepped. All of us have certain rules and morals and values inside of us that we keep or not keep. When we overstep these boundaries and morals and rules and values, we start to struggle with feelings of guilt. Before we can go into this, we need to understand where our idea of right and wrong comes from. In other words, we need to understand where our boundaries come from in order to understand whether we are feeling guilty for an appropriate reason or for an inappropriate reason. Yes, there is such a thing as inappropriate guilt. Some of us are feeling guilty about something we shouldn't even be feeling guilty of. (More about this later.)
    So, where do we get our concept of right and wrong from? If I were to ask you whether it is right or wrong to engage in premarital intercourse, what would you answer? By using this example, I want to demonstrate to you where our idea of right and wrong comes from. It comes from various places:
• The first place where you learn what is right or wrong is from your parents. If I were to ask you what your parents taught you regarding premarital sex, whether it is right or wrong to have sex before marriage, you would probably tell me: "Nandi, my parents said it is not right, I need to wait until I am married." It depends on which family you come from because it is different for each one of us.
• You also get your idea of what's right and wrong from your extended family, not just your parents, but your brothers, your sisters, your grandparents, your aunts, uncles and cousins. If you were to ask them the same question, you might get different answers within your family; even regarding the specific rules. They might tell you: "You know what, if you wait until you are 18, when you're an adult, when you are formally old enough to make your own choices, then you can decide whether you want to engage in sexual relations before or after marriage."
• Another source where you learn your morals and certain rules and boundaries are your friends. If you were to ask yourself today what your friends said about premarital sex when you were growing up, they might have said something like: "If it feels good, why not? It cannot be wrong if it feels good."
• The school also taught us certain morals and values, certain rules and boundaries. Schools might have said: "No you shouldn't." But then they would hand out a condom which kind of speaks for something else, saying: "You're not supposed to, but if you do, please be safe."
• Then, if you go to church, the church would also have taught you something about sex before marriage.
• The society that you live in might have said something like: "You know what, it's really your business, it is none of our business. You do what you feel is right."
• What did your culture teach you about sex before marriage? Is it right or wrong? I am specifically using sex before marriage, but you can use this illustration with any type of moral or rule or boundary. There are some cultures that actually say you should wait until marriage, but then when it comes to initiation time I've been told, they dabble in sexual things.
• Then of course there is the Bible and God. When you read the Bible and you ask yourself what would God say, the answer would be no. The Bible calls sex before marriage fornication and it is listed as one of the sins of the Bible.
• Then of course there's the government. The government also makes rules and if you go and ask any government official in South Africa about the laws regarding sex before marriage, they will tell you that there is an age limit to sex. Back in the day, it was 16 or 18 and today as South Africa stands, the legal age limit for children to have sex is 12 years old. This is very confusing.
• The rules of your workplace might tell you if you want to have sex before marriage, it is your problem, just don't do it at work.
• Then we also have the media that teaches us certain morals. The media like television, magazines and social media have their own set of rules and morals. They will tell you regarding sex: "Anyone, anytime, anywhere, however you please." That is concerning, because at the end of the day you have your own decisions to make. You have your own internal morals and standards to adhere to.