guilt

March for Life 2024 | Bloodguilt

by Ben Zornes · Jan 27, 2024

Introduction

We live in a nation that for a half century has insisted on quibbling over the acceptable amount of innocent blood to be spilled. Roe was ruled unconstitutional by the Dobbs decision in June of 2022; although that was a victory, it was a victory of redrawn battle lines. It sent the duty of abolishing abortion back to the various state legislatures.

Happily, many states have acted swiftly to eradicate, or at least severely curtail, abortion in their state. Idaho is amongst the handful of states which have passed Heartbeat Laws. And for that we should continue to give thanks. And continue to work towards complete abolition of this horrific practice of abortion.

Sadly however, the overturning of Roe has been a baseball bat to a hornet’s nest in many states. These states have doubled down on continuing the bloodshed of the unborn. In some places like NY, CA, and CO our nation has not only continued the shedding of innocent blood, but insisted on expanding the scope of how old that blood can be when it is shed. While no innocent blood should be shed, our progressive states are deranged with bloodlust to slaughter unborn babies even until birth. European countries, which progressives view as the cool kid they need to impress, don’t even have such heinous laws, and would be considered repressive by these progressives.

The explanation for this heightened madness is that the guilt of sin (both individually and collectively) is like water. It will wear down and grind away and seep through all barriers eventually. Roe was the dam which held at bay their guilty conscience, now that it has burst they are racing to find anything to stop the flood of bloodguilt which is bearing down upon them. I want to highlight how pervasive guilt is for both the individual and the community.

Guilt Hiding Around the Corner

Those who are complicit in abortion as individuals need to remember this, the thing about guilt is that it finds a way to get around every garrison we put up to keep it out. Guilt knows its way away around the prescriptions you take to numb your emotions. Guilt is there after the high. Your guilt doesn’t take pity on your hangover headache. Guilt knows how to find you at midnight and in the broad daylight. Your therapist cannot extract the guilt that plagues you. All the ways you try to hide from your guilt are like the proverbial screen door on a submarine. A guilty conscience weighs upon you and motivates all other actions. The guilt influences every other decision, consciously and unconsciously.

This partly explains why there is such affection between abortion advocates and champions of establishing an overweening nanny-State. They’ve slaughtered their babies and to soothe a guilty conscience they adorn themselves with robes of State-run empathy. But advocating for a Matriarchal Government won’t take away the guilt. Trying to express the feminine virtue of nurturing via the arm of Government is like performing brain surgery with a backhoe.

This is why the advocates for choice are so very wrong about abortion being a private matter. The weight of the bloodguilt of abortion cannot be kept at the individual level. The stench of that guilt has seeped into our nation as a community. Our civic leaders have snuck language into our laws that they think will be a bulwark against the guilt that gnaws at them when they are alone with their thoughts.

Recently, the US Senate voted down the Women’s Health Protection Act, by a 51-49 margin. However, despite it failing as a bill, the Senate Democrats once more revealed their endgame. They sought to codify Roe as law of every state in the Union, an attempt to overrule laws (like Idaho’s Heartbeat Law) which prohibit or severely restrict abortion. In the aftermath of Roe’s downfall the mask has slipped and abortionists have begun insisting for abortion up to birth, nationwide, for any reason. The guilty conscience reasons if abortion is lawful at 12 weeks it must be lawful up to birth.

A gathering of Christian pro-life advocates like this is lectured for being heartless, unreasonable, and unfeeling towards the most exceptional instances of abortion. But guilty consciences are unreasonable. Nationally, we’ve heaped up five decades of crushed skulls, turned wombs into chemical wastelands, and trafficked the body parts of the unborn (using the unusable bits of their corpses to heat our hospitals and universities). We have boyfriends, husbands, and parents who have persuaded women to slaughter their own offspring in order to maintain their own comfort and standing in society. We have doctors who’ve perverted the noble office of physicians of mercy to become the rubber-gloved hands which terminate innocent lives made in the image of God.

Deliverance from Bloodguilt

Our guilt is heaped high indeed. But what I declare to you is the Gospel tidings of Jesus Christ who rose from the grave. Here is what King David the Psalmist declared in Psalm 51:14, “Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.”

The only way to escape the haunting presence of guilt is to have the Judge of all the earth reckon you as righteous. The only way to obtain this glorious deliverance from guilt is to turn with sincere repentance to Jesus the Son of God. Christ gladly takes your guilty sentence upon Himself, and then offers to you His decree of righteousness. This is why David says that if God delivers him from bloodguilt he will sing aloud of God’s righteousness. Deliverance from bloodguilt is followed by God’s justice being proclaimed.

So then, you cannot build a wall high enough to keep the guilt out. You can’t legislate your guilt away, or have a Supreme Court ruling assuage your plagued conscience. But your guilt can be taken away entirely. And here is how: confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. So, to the meek of the earth gathered here, and to the great ones in Washington, D.C., board rooms of Planned Parenthood, and City Councils near and far, I adjure you to repent of your sins, turn to Christ, and so have your bloodguilt taken and cast into the deeps of the Atlantic Ocean.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Amen.

A Guilt-Free Feast

by Ben Zornes · Nov 23, 2022

Introduction

Earthly joys are like an elevator. They can only go so high. They are intended to leave us longing for the eternal joys found in the presence of the Most High, and the pleasures at His right hand. Sinful man keeps trying to make the trip to the top floor last just a bit longer, but he’s always disappointed when he must return to the lobby. Instead of being content with the fleetingness of the shadow-glories, he tries to live in the elevator. As a result, he has filled it full of his stench and filth.

The Text

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.

Romans 4:5-8

Summary of the Text

This text is full-proof Gospel. It is high-octane Gospel. It is 24-karat Gospel. Paul, using Abraham as the archetype of all the righteous, argues that faith is the means whereby the saints in all ages are reckoned as righteous. It is not the works of righteousness that justifies you (v5a), rather, by believing on Christ who justifies the ungodly you receive righteousness not your own (v5b).

Paul isn’t innovating some new-fangled doctrine. This doctrine is evident in the Old Testament in both Abraham’s example and in David’s Psalms. Paul summarizes the 32nd Psalm: David is describing the blessing of receiving imputed righteousness through no works of our own (v6). Paul quotes Psalm 32:1-2, which extols the blessedness of our sins being forgiven, our guilt being covered, and our ledger being purged by the graciousness of the Lord (vv7-8).

It is worth noting what else is contained in Psalm 32. When we try to hide our sin, the hand of the Lord is heavy upon us (Ps. 32:3-4). But when we confess our sin, and flee to Jehovah we find Him to be a shelter from the flood, and a symphony of redeeming love (Ps. 32:5-7). While the wicked are encompassed by sorrow (Ps. 32:10), those who trust in the Lord are marked by hearty rejoicing (Ps. 32:11). In other words, God clears the guilty by offering them the righteousness of Christ. Those who receive this righteousness by faith enjoy true blessedness.

The Earth is the Lord’s

Mankind has two ways in which he treats earthly joys. The first is by devouring them feverishly, as if eternal life is found in them. The other is the ascetic who tries to float two inches off the ground, lest he be soiled by the ickiness of matter. A mark of the moralist is trying to locate moral righteousness in our relation to the stuff of creation instead of in our relation to the Creator. Put differently, sinful man has discovered many clever ways to play a shell game with his guilt.

One of the primary places this tendency shows up is in regards to food. It’s not uncommon to speak of food in moralistic terms: good for you; junk food; guilty pleasure; clean eating; natural (as opposed to what? Unnatural?); those brownies are just sinful. It might be concluded that if you can have guilt-free Whipped-Cream, maybe you don’t need to confess that simmering malice towards your co-worker.

All of this is the nervous tic of a culture with a guilty conscience. The soul plagued by the guilt of unconfessed sin, and without the assurance of imputed righteousness, will endeavor to find righteousness somewhere. Our culture has refused to come to Christ, and are now endeavoring to find moral righteousness anywhere other than in Christ. Shampoo bottles labeled “no guilt”; clothing made of ethically sourced materials; the mob cajoling everyone to get on “the right side of history.” In regards to this, CS Lewis once stated, “I do not dispute that History is a story written by the finger of God. But have we the text?”

All this sort of thing is an attempt to hide our sin from God and concoct a homemade brew of righteousness. If you eat the right sort of food, in the right amount, wearing the right clothing, from the right places, having washed with the right soaps, all while thinking all the right thoughts and embracing all the Correct Sentiments (handed down to you from I Support the Current Thing, Inc.) you imagine that your guilt is cleansed & righteousness is obtained.

But Scripture teaches us that it isn’t what goes into you that defiles you (Mt. 15:11). Sin isn’t in the stuff. Sin isn’t a disease that needs to be eradicated. Sin isn’t a mental illness that needs therapy & chemicals. Sin is lawlessness (1 Jn. 3:4). Likewise, righteousness isn’t found in the right clothing, the right sentiments, the right voting record. Righteousness is found in Christ alone.

Understanding that the only ground to stand before God is to be given Another’s righteousness then enables you to say with the Psalmist, “The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein (Psa 24:1).” You no longer fret about what you eat or drink or wear or where you will go or for how long (Cf. Mt. 6:31-34), not because you’ve turned into an apathetic hippy. Rather, you walk in the knowledge that all these earthly joys are the sampler platter for the eternal joys, which those who are justified by faith in Christ will enjoy in eternity.

Without Malice & Bitterness

We must reject both the asceticism & gluttony of the guilt-riddled, self-righteous world. God’s favor isn’t found by turning up a pietistic nose at the world’s pleasure. Nor is God’s wrath avoided by slurping up every last pleasure without a shred of gratitude. When we come to God, through Christ, we are assured that our sins are covered and the earth is ours.

Paul exhorts us to keep the feast, the Lord’s Supper, without malice or bitterness (1Co 5:8). This spiritual feast should be imitated in our earthly feasting. At the Lord’s table, there isn’t a VIP section that gets special treatment. Your sins are forgiven. But this means that your spouse’s sins against you are forgiven too. The sister who you feel gets all the attention, the friend who is more popular, the family whose Christmas card arrives on December 1st with bright-white smiles staring back at you, if they are Christ’s, their sins are forgiven too. You don’t get to come to this table holding on to the sins of others which God assures them He has forgiven them of.

Much of the time, when things go sideways at family gatherings, it’s due to all manner of rivalries, gripes, unconfessed sins, grievances, and contentions that are tangled up worse than the strands of Christmas lights. This isn’t how Christians should feast. Because of what we celebrate on this table, we can feast at our own tables in peace. Christ has covered your sin. God does not impute your sin to you. So stop bringing up that slight from 14 years ago, cover it.

The Blessing of Being Guiltless

While the world insists that blessedness is found in indulging all our carnal lusts, or in presenting the soiled garments of self-righteousness to God, you must rest in the knowledge that Scripture teaches that blessedness is found in being guiltless. This means, you need to stop looking at yourself. Stop licking your lips, craving only your self-gratification. Stop smugly relishing that sense of moral superiority because your cupboards have no trace of seed-oils. Self-righteousness is like trying to clean yourself up with manure. Self-gratification is like trying to convince yourself that the cardboard you’ve been munching on is actually pretty tasty.

A blessed life is a guilt-free life. How can you be held guiltless? By faith alone, in Christ alone. Not by self-indulgence or self-abnegation. Christ, the only guiltless-one, became guilty in your stead so that you could be righteous. Not only that, but because you are counted righteous and your guilt is forgiven, you can enjoy that extra slab of pecan pie without a moral crisis; you can retell the Pilgrim story without being plunged into a struggle session over white privilege. You are free. You are clean. You are righteous.

All your guilt, both real & imagined is dealt with by the cross of the Lord Jesus. This doctrine doesn’t water down our enjoyment of earth’s joys. It thickens them up. The joys are fleeting. But your sins are forgiven. So pass around the gravy, sing a few loud psalms, toss the football, take a nap, and do it all to the glory of God.

Atoned by Weinstein

by Ben Zornes · Oct 16, 2017

As the saga with Hollywood scumbag Harvey Weinstein has unfolded, one thing is abundantly clear, and that is that Gospel truths are inescapable. One in particular is evident: substitutionary atonement.

Our culture is guilt-ridden due to our sexual “liberty.”Â For decades, we’ve applauded and awarded movies wherein the actors disrobe for our collective erotic pleasure, and the more scintillating the better. Actresses’ cleavage is plastered on our glossy magazine covers that we might collectively drink in the arousing pleasure of our Aphrodite. We’ve cordoned off city streets in order for grown men and women to walk around gyrating their hips in sexual liberation, and we applaud and throw confetti, rejoicing in the orgy. We’ve freed the nipple. We’ve made it a cultural norm for couples to sleep together prior to any sort of covenantal vows, thus encouraging “test drive sex.” We have sought every which way to remove responsibility fromÂ sexuality, and thus have subsidized “birth control” in our federal and state budgets. This lawlessness does not, and cannot, come without guilty conscience.

You may disdain God’s law, but you may notÂ escapeÂ God’s law. A person may wish the second law of thermodynamics didn’t exist, but they cannot imagine their way out of a universe in which that law and the force of it exists. Sin brings guilt. Guilty consciences can only be cleansed one way. However, the human heart is quite clever at coming up with ways to palliate our guilt by kicking the can down the road.

My case in point is that within a week, our culture has poured out all our wrath upon Weinstein. He’s been taken outside the camp, bearing away all our sins. Notice that there is hardly a voice out there who has not condemned how ghastly his sins were: how wicked, how evil, how dark, how wrong. We have stripped the man of his position, his awards, his achievements, and his glory. Our priests have laid their hands upon his head, and he is now on a plane, headed out into the wilderness, bearing our sins with him.

[epq-quote align=”align-right”]Our societal guilt has been soothed because someone has been made to bear it for us instead.[/epq-quote]Our societal guilt has been soothed because someone has been made to bear it for us instead. Both liberals and conservatives have delighted to roundly condemn the heinous sexual sins of the Hollywood magnate. What hardly anyone has done is confessÂ their sin and guilt. We still insist that the right to murder a baby accidentally conceived is an inherent right. We still won’t cancel our porn subscriptions. We still want vicarious sexual indulgence as we watch the latest season of The Bachelor. We still want to leave the natural use of male and female. We want to twist our sexual drives every which way in hopes that the euphoria will be somehow higher and better. We want our children instructed at school in the latest sexual kinks. We assume our teens will access to porn, and we give them the devices to do so, despite the growing evidence that this is incredibly damaging to their long term health.

Thus, to assuage our guilt, we find the likes of Weinstein and see in him a sad shadow of a hope for atonement. Someone must bear our guilt. The wages of our sin is death, after all. We don’t want to die. So we hope someone will die for us. Weinstein will do. He is guilty. Social and political factions have united surprisingly quickly, and have ceremonially declared that here is our scapegoat (Lev. 16). The crowds cheer. Our sins are atoned.

But if a thousand rams and rivers of oil were not sufficient to eternally redeem and atone mankind’s sin (Mic. 6:7), then Harvey Weinstein is only a temporary reprieve from the Everest of guilt that is crushing us to powder. The only eternal sacrifice for sin is Christ. “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water (Hebrews 10:22).” EitherÂ you will bear the guilt of your sin, or Christ will. Any other scapegoat is futile. Any other rock is sand. You will either be crushed by the Stone, or else fall upon it as your lone hope of salvation (Mt. 21:44).