By Many Christians carry a quiet guilt that they are never doing enough for God. They read the Bible, pray, serve, rest, work, and even enjoy God’s gifts with a lingering question in the background: am I doing this in the most God-honouring way?
We Christians – especially we preachers – have an unnerving ability to make each other feel guilty.
And I think we’re trying to use that to our advantage
What do I mean?
That although we operate out of an ostensible theology of grace, that’s not actually how we relate towards other Christians when we get the mic.
In my first few drafts of this post I named a name here, but on reflection I cut it – in part because I couldn’t do justice so some of his nuances and make the critical point I want to make, but mostly because the problem is much wider.
I read an article recently which was trying to make me feel guilty for not resting properly. Not for not resting at all – but for not resting in a God-honouring way.
Now, I get that there might be a pastoral problem here. If your idea of resting is to spend your evenings bingeing on Netflix while chomping multiple pizzas then we need to have a talk. That is not a rest-inducing lifestyle. And if ‘switching off’ for you involves switching off that you’re a disciple, then you need to get the guilties. Porn and gambling sites will not help you.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that for all the ways I might get it wrong, there was no guaranteed way to get it right. By design, the author chose to keep me in a state of suspended, mild guilt. Even if I’d spent all my rest in bible reading and prayer, it wouldn’t have been good enough to get me off the hook.
And if Im being unfair to that article, I don’t just mean that piece, or the subject of rest. I mean the whole of Christian discipleship, in all its pieces and its patterns.
We Cannot Give God Infinite Attention
It’s as though I can never do enough. It’s as though there are only two modes of being awake: reading my bible and praying. And I need to do both with a blazing intensity, because a holy, loving Lord deserves nothing less.
Here’s my first problem: that’s a massively unattainable target. Infinitely so. I cannot match God’s passion for me with my passion for him.
But I seem to be breathing an air that says if I’m doing anything else then that is at best a distraction, and probably an idol that needs killing.
All my heart, all my soul, all my mind, all my strength – where’s the time to walk the dog or fill up the car? It’s an all-consuming Christian perfectionism.
Does the all in that commandment mean that I don’t get to do anything else?
So here’s my second problem, which flows from that: if God is an overflowing fountain of love and joy (which he is, and yes, I’ve read my Edwards) then isn’t finding joy or even pleasure in anything else spiritually ruinous?
Isn’t it making a secondary reality an idol, when I look at that thing, rather than the source?
When Every Pleasure Feels Like an Idol
At this point I’m going to look at another hero here: Tim Keller. I’m a huge admirer of Keller’s thought, and he has rightly re-introduced us to the Augustinian language of idol-worship.
But in less sophisticated hands than his, the language of idolatry turns every secondary pleasure into a death trap.
Now a second’s reflection says that that is ludicrously unliveable. And unbiblical. God has placed us in a world of staggering beauty and pleasure; the idea that he doesn’t want us to enjoy that must be nonsense, mustn’t it?
But our hair-trigger alert to not making a thing an idol means I feel guilty if I notice something with delight. Especially if noticing it stops me from praying.
(Hint – I can make you feel guilty too, if I try.)
The Problem With Spiritual Multitasking
Here’s my third problem: I cannot focus on two things at the same time. I can do multiple things: walk, talk, feel the sun and wind, control the dog. But I can’t focus on multiple things. I can’t read and listen to a podcast. I can’t have a conversation with you and at the same time do my tax return. And if I keep switching between tasks, well then you know the cognitive load that carries.
I can walk the dog and pray. Easy. Although that’s only because walking the dog is on ‘automatic’.
But I can’t follow a complex recipe and pray – my brain can’t focus that double way. I really can’t. And if I’m caught in this guilt trap, then cooking becomes a source of spiritual death.
So does everything that requires attention. Smelling a rose. Hugging the kids. Enjoying a poem.
Now put that together and it’s a toxic mix. Have I read my bible today? Yes. Did I give it my full, undivided, utterly absorbed, heart-soul-mind-strength attention? Well, no. I had to drag my focus back from other things multiple times. Ditto prayer. Did I pray while I was preaching? Well, no – I’ve learnt I can’t do that. But others can, I learn, and I ought to.
And I sigh.
How Christian Content Manipulates Our Guilt
I could drive this issue theologically, to do with the gospel, and grace, and various other ideas. We are finite by design.
But I want to drive it technologically.
What’s the number one pathway that the online world uses to keep us online?
Outrage. Just a little bit of discomfort and disagreement. A little bit of a worldview you find distasteful. Enough to make you tut – but you’ve noticed, and engaged. At the moment I’m spotting the algorithms are trying to tease me politically, to show me stuff to my right, to my left, to gauge me and lead me out there.
The Christian equivalent of outrage is guilt manipulation.
The Christian equivalent of outrage is guilt manipulation. It’s writing the headline, the summary, the hashtags which will cut through the noise.
And we’ve learnt that it’s much less effective to say ‘Here are ten ways you can improve your prayer life’ than to say, ‘Ten prayers that Christians pray which God finds offensive.’ Or something like that.
I think that’s what going on in our small part of the web.
We’ve learnt that the best way to get Christians reading our blogs, watching our vids, listening to our pods – is to make them feel guilty.
And because it works (the algorithm says so), we haven’t noticed that it’s the opposite of grace.
Or worse, we don’t care as long as it works.
Disclosure: In line with my AI policy, note that the image at the top of this post was generated using ChatGPT.
