Guilt as a Sign of Punishment

 Sometimes it feels relieving to feel bad. After willfully committing a sin, I feel that it is only appropriate that I be punished and feel the consequences of my actions. In this section, I hope to consider not the mental state, actions, and decisions that lead to the act of sinning, but rather the nature of atonement and repentance for my sins, and sins in general.

These past couple of days I’ve been sinning quite a bit, mainly in the form of shirking my responsibilities and breaking good habits that I’ve formed, such as maintaining daily productivity, abstaining from base temptation, maintaining a pattern of good exercise, eating healthily (which makes my body feel good), and holding an upper limit on pleasurable actions such as playing chess.

Thus, having experienced the crushing guilt of partaking in such actions, I’m all too eager to break free from their satanic shackles and endure the suffering that comes with the struggle to return to a glorious, chaste, and pure state. Perhaps I had only left such a state because maintaining these habits had started to feel boring, and indulging in hellish temptations gave me a means (though a rather unholy one) to escape such want for excitement and happiness.

I would be remiss if I overlooked the difficulty in overcoming sin and enduring suffering. One period of bitter suffering that I recall is how I felt when reprimanded by my parents and doctor regarding my health. The claim was that I was not eating enough, and that I was dishonestly engaging in practices that led to my self-gratification, at the expense of my health. Though I know (and knew) not whether such a claim was true, and true to the extent that it was claimed, I find comfort in knowing that the suggestions I was given were given at the direction of a doctor, which made me trust that the matter of my health was not inaccurately put into question or placed at the hands of whim or an untrustworthy mind. Nevertheless, one day, I felt intense emotions of anger, resentment, and slight embarrassment.

I felt angry. I threw my bottle across my room, slammed my room door, and punched the gutter running alongside the exterior wall of the home, denting the metal frame. I was furious, and in a state of mental agitation. Yet, I knew that such feelings were not useless, nor was the ordeal through which I was being placed without value, nor was there no merit in the reason I was being punished. I reason that if that were that the case, I would not experience such feelings of guilt and anger, and the doctor would resist a baseless idea. While my inner recognition of this sentiment did not stop the wrath of my fury from coming into full force and did not inhibit the poisoned fantasies of my creative imagination, I felt weeks later a happy contentment in the experience and enjoyed the value it had brought into my life, as  soon as events in my life and my inner emotional state had settled down.

So, yeah. I know that such pain as the pain endured during punishment for one’s sins is rough. However, it is a noble pain that indicates the presence of holiness inside oneself, and is one that can be freely expressed without the inner fear and shame that continues until repentance is achieved. So, I am grateful for such an opportunity to clear one’s self to oneself, if not to others around oneself. I offer thanks and brace for the embrace of God’s loving punishment.