Thread: Are Guilt and “Hell” Closely Tied Together?

I am most familiar with the Christian beliefs about hell; however, I would appreciate anyone’s input on how their beliefs/religion views hell or if they even do.

There are times when I have heard others say that their parents or someone else “made them feel guilty” about one thing or another and it led me to think about what really causes those feelings and how repressing these feelings can create our own type of “hell”. I doubt that anyone can truly “make someone feel guilty”. The way I see it is that when somebody does something “wrong” they will sometimes try to bury feelings of guilt through rationalizations and by trying hard not to think about their actions.

When someone reminds us of something we did that was wrong, I think that the feelings of guilt will sometimes surface. The person who “made us feel guilty” really just helped to uncover what was already there.

So, for me the source of the feelings of guilt is one’s conscience, which I believe is something given to all of us by God to be used as a guide for our actions. Blaming others for our feelings of guilt is just another way in which we rationalize in an effort to help put our conscience at ease.

With that said, I think that our guilt will be the one thing most closely tied to why we will be “in hell” and this has to do with a few scriptures in the Book of Mormon (emphasis added):

Alma 11:43

43 The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; and we shall be brought to stand before God, knowing even as we know now, and have a bright recollection of all our guilt.

2 Nephi 9:14-16

14 Wherefore, we shall have a perfect knowledge of all our guilt, and our uncleanness, and our nakedness; and the righteous shall have a perfect knowledge of their enjoyment, and their righteousness, being clothed with purity, yea, even with the robe of righteousness.
15 And it shall come to pass that when all men shall have passed from this first death unto life, insomuch as they have become immortal, they must appear before the judgment-seat of the Holy One of Israel; and then cometh the judgment, and then must they be judged according to the holy judgment of God.
16 And assuredly, as the Lord liveth, for the Lord God hath spoken it, and it is his eternal word, which cannot pass away, that they who are righteous shall be righteous still, and they who are filthy shall be filthy still; wherefore, they who are filthy are the devil and his angels; and they shall go away into everlasting fire, prepared for them; and their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end.

According to this, it seems we will no longer have the ability to “bury” our guilt and this will begin to create our own “hell”.

According to my belief, God will not really send us to “hell”, it will be our own choice based on the decisions we make in this life and the “hell” will be something we will create ourselves. I see this as similar to the “chains” represented by the ghost Marley in “A Christmas Carol”. The more guilt or “chains” we create in this life that are not cleared up through repentance, the worse our “hell” will be after this life.

You are a deep thinker, I see. I'll look forward to your input.

I have a couple of short replies. Generally, though not always, if someone makes another "feel guilty," it is because thy have reminded the person of something they should have felt guilty about all along.

As for Hell. My take is this. There is an Ultimate Source in Creation of life, love, growth, healing, happiness and fulfillment. It a being turns away from that, rally and truly abandons it, what they have left, we could call Hell.

Originally Posted by Oftencold

You are a deep thinker, I see. I'll look forward to your input.

I have a couple of short replies. Generally, though not always, if someone makes another "feel guilty," it is because thy have reminded the person of something they should have felt guilty about all along.

As for Hell. My take is this. There is an Ultimate Source in Creation of life, love, growth, healing, happiness and fulfillment. It a being turns away from that, rally and truly abandons it, what they have left, we could call Hell.

I agree that there are some times when we may have feelings of guilt that were truly caused by another. For instance, when a parent has very high expectations for their child and expresses disappointment when the child does not meet them. I think this is often confused with our own guilt for things we do that are really “wrong”.

And…yes I agree with what you say about hell. Everyone tends to have confusion between the actions that bring real happiness (which are long-term feelings) and the actions which bring pleasure (short-term feelings).

Originally Posted by Christopher

So, for me the source of the feelings of guilt is one’s conscience, which I believe is something given to all of us by God to be used as a guide for our actions.[/FONT]

If this is true then tell me why I don't feel guilt over the hooker I got in Peru 10 years ago. And if god planted guilt to be my guide why don't I feel guilt over my divorce, or guilt over sharing a bed out of wed-lock, and I don't feel guilt when I buy a big TV rather than using that money to help someone out who really needs it. Wouldn't it stand to reason that I'd feel guilt after sinning if god gave me a sense of guilt to guide me according to his law?

From an atheist point of view, man creates his own feelings of guilt. I don't feel guilty for having had loveless sex yesterday, as for me sex is not a sin when both persons are honest to each others (I never lie or give false hopes just to get sex). Whereas a real christian would certainly feel guilty.
As I believe in the power of the human mind rather than in a divine power, I think each person's hell is built in his own mind according to his feelings of guilt. A person feeling guilty because he can't help behind a violent alcoholic will certainly think he deserves to be sent in hell, and will picture his own hell relatively to what he perceives as his sins and also according to the clichés he heard about Hell.
A crazy mass murderer convinced he's just following god's will, will be convinced he won't go in hell. He doesn't feel guilty as he's sure he's not committing a sin.

It's not really important though, this imaginary hell exists only in one's mind, and we'll all die and be used as worm food

Originally Posted by Sparta

If this is true then tell me why I don't feel guilt over the hooker I got in Peru 10 years ago. And if god planted guilt to be my guide why don't I feel guilt over my divorce, or guilt over sharing a bed out of wed-lock, and I don't feel guilt when I buy a big TV rather than using that money to help someone out who really needs it. Wouldn't it stand to reason that I'd feel guilt after sinning if god gave me a sense of guilt to guide me according to his law?

This isn't too difficult to address.

Feelings of guilt are an aspect of conscience. Conscience is not compulsion, it is more akin to a map. One must examine it, preferably study it to have the use of it. One must have some sort of literacy and familiarity with the idea of relating a set of guides to the external world.

Frankly, conscience is akin to a gas station road map-- very detailed, extremely useful as a guide, very easy to fold into a small package, ignore, lose or discard.

It is something of a common misconception that God plants feelings of guilt in people. He gives us a tool. But He does not make us use it.

I'm not a Biblical scholar of course, but I can't think of a single instance int the Writ where God is said inflict feelings of guilt on someone who wasn't already a close follower.

Originally Posted by Kyryahn

. . . I believe in the power of the human mind. . .

God says that He does too,
and sincerely hopes that you
are not disappointed as often
as He is.

Originally Posted by Sparta

If this is true then tell me why I don't feel guilt over the hooker I got in Peru 10 years ago. And if god planted guilt to be my guide why don't I feel guilt over my divorce, or guilt over sharing a bed out of wed-lock, and I don't feel guilt when I buy a big TV rather than using that money to help someone out who really needs it. Wouldn't it stand to reason that I'd feel guilt after sinning if god gave me a sense of guilt to guide me according to his law?

I think Oftencold provided an excellent analogy, and this goes along with what I said that we tend to “bury” our guilt. We just forget its actually there.

Just to try and explain why I think it does not seem to be there, it is my belief that we have several areas of capacity with which we “know” something or through which we gain knowledge and I have posted something similar to this before.

These areas are physical, emotional and spiritual. I think the emotional and spiritual levels are closely tied together. The way I see it is that it takes a balance of using all of these levels to open up a greater capacity of knowledge and learning. When someone only focuses on one area, it puts them “out of balance” and they are not able to “know” something in the areas they are lacking. Similar to if you do not lift weights to exercise all your different muscles, they will not grow and develop for you to be as strong as you could be; or if people do not “exercise” their brain, I think we all know what happens. If people do not exercise thier emotional and spiritual levels either (which I believe are tied to our conscience), they will be lacking in “muscle”. The area or areas we focus on the most will “outweigh” the other areas that are there waiting to be "exercised". Of course, this is just my experience.

Originally Posted by Kyryahn

From an atheist point of view, man creates his own feelings of guilt. I don't feel guilty for having had loveless sex yesterday, as for me sex is not a sin when both persons are honest to each others (I never lie or give false hopes just to get sex). Whereas a real christian would certainly feel guilty.
As I believe in the power of the human mind rather than in a divine power, I think each person's hell is built in his own mind according to his feelings of guilt. A person feeling guilty because he can't help behind a violent alcoholic will certainly think he deserves to be sent in hell, and will picture his own hell relatively to what he perceives as his sins and also according to the clichés he heard about Hell.
A crazy mass murderer convinced he's just following god's will, will be convinced he won't go in hell. He doesn't feel guilty as he's sure he's not committing a sin.

It's not really important though, this imaginary hell exists only in one's mind, and we'll all die and be used as worm food

I believe in the power of the human mind too. I also believe in the other capacities we have for gaining knowledge (see my recent reply to Sparta).

I am just curious, but are you certain you are an atheist? Most people I have met were actually agnostic. I just don’t see how anyone can be absolutely certain there is no God or Gods without any evidence that disproves God’s existence, other than the typical “lack of evidence” claim.

There are different ways to define guilt. I would suppose to a Mormon or a Catholic or a Jesuit or a Christian from one of the thousands of other Christians sects it would take on moral assumptions and presumptions that flow from how its followers use the Bible to define "right" and "wrong" and the consequence of not doing the "right" thing.

In my humble opinion one reason religions were created was a political one-to control the masses from killing one another. Religion was the code used to enforce and entrench basic social taboos such as incest and murder. Without it societies would disentegrate.

From my perspective all organized religions use the preaching of what is morally right and wrong to control the masses. Guilt is in my opinion othing more then a device to manipulate peoples' emotions to coerce them into behaving in ways that might not otherwise come naturally.

I suppose psychiatry would avoid the Christian clieches and would explain guilt as neurosis.a person with an anti-social personality disorder of course would not suffer form guilt. A psycho-path would not distinguish truth from fiction or right from wrong. A socio-path would know the difference and truth from fiction but would not care and would not feel guilt either.

I suspect most humans have bits of socio-pathology and psycho-pathology in them or as you Christians would say evil. I would suspect all of us humans are both evil and good although Sparta clearly is going to hell condemned to nothing but Budweiser beer and Celine Dion music. Takes one to know one Sparta so they say.

That said If you wish to engage in Christian references I suppose the battle between heaven and hell, your God and your Satan most certainly takes place everyday in your mind and body and in each and every action you engage in. We all walk the fine line between savagery and divinity now don't we and guilty feelings create the illusion we think defines our divine essence. At least so I think.

For me guilt is unhealthy. In my humble opinion a person who feels guilty feels such a thing because he or she has not resolved a conflict and until they resolve it, guilt pings away like an annoying mosquitoe buzzing in one's ear to serve as a reminde that we need to resolve the thing we are avoiding resolving.

What we tend to do is bury our guilt -stow it away inside. Its what we humans do. We clutter our minds with guilt and in so doing prevent us from being able to create and see things. I suspect guilt is not good for our immunity systems and makes us vulenrable to diseases and anger and pimples and things like sexual impotence and bleeding gums.

Bury our guilt and each time we are rubbed the wrong way, they form a callus and so the average human psyche has layer upon layer of guilty calluses that form into a hard shell around what once was a pure and tender heart full of positive hope now dimmed by the layer upon layer of soot we accumulate around our hearts. Guilt is spritual cholesterol.

For me religion is a prime perpetuator of guilt which it force feeds to coerce the masses. Christianity is nothing more then a system designed to distribute fat and force people to swallow it to clog their spiritual arteries. All organized religions are force feeders of this lard.

The organized religions have force feed us this sludge...this need to feel sinful and guilty and in so doing make them so much easier to manipulate us because when we are weighed down by guilt, we move slowly making it easier to catch us and collect funds to keep the church of whatever going. Think of it as this big fat man who force fees you doughnuts and then says your heart problems have come about because you insist on masterbating.

Guilt for me is a fool's game. It is an illusion. Fools regret what they do and wonder what went wrong and pick at their skin in neurotic anxious respons to past mistakes and unresolved feelings. Picking at pimples is not good. All it does is leave big scabs and scars.

I say the more guilt you have the more pimples you will get each one full of pus. Pus is nothing more then the negative energy trapped in these guilt feelings.

Hell, guilt, evil, sin, its all simply a sophistic way of talking about negative behaviour patterns that flow from negative assumptions, presumptions and values and trap us in cycles of negative behaviour patterns that repeat again and again because we dare not scream out loud-fuck this I want to get off!

To me I find organized religion full of impositions about my guilt and how I need to be cleansed and always from the lecture of a dirty smelly man with a beard.

Fuck that. I shower thank you and I make sure my public lice is under control. But thanks I did read Leviticus.

Guilt? Guilt is the opposite or positive energy.... positive thought..the decision to look defeat and failure flush in the face and say as Grouch Marx once said-"that is the silliest thing I have ever hoyd...".

Guilt is what transpires when one chooses not to develop insights... that is to say, to learn from their failures and turn negative to positive.

I would suspect the real Jesus was a simple man who washed and told people to wash and told people something very simple-think positively and the rest will happen...I suspect all the rest is human gibberish from King COnstantine and others onwards designed to create a political system of control and had nothing to do with probably what was a very basic, simple man reacthing Teakam Olum-the Talmudic concept of the world having the power to heal itself through positive actions and thoughts-something of course that probably originated and perculated its way through Hindiuism, Zoroastreanism, ancient Judaism, Taoism, Buddism and so on.

Guilt I suspect was never part of the holisitic concept of healing and being at one with the universe that really was at the pith and substance of the religions we now misquote and use to bumb fuck people.

I have no time for guilt. Its usually preached by smelly bearded men in robes who make up unoriginal stories about virgin women giving birth to Gods and fables designed to convince people people to have anal sex that bearded man behind the booth bust shush don't ell anyone now-just confess and poof begone that sore bumb disappears.

Organized religion teaches people through guilt to repress their true feelings. Guilt is blocked energy. Blocked energy is negative not positive.

Energy in all of us must flow like water. Trap it and you have guilt. The life force is meant to be free and follow its own natural destiny or path unimpeded by some smelly man in a beard who fucks your young son or daughter while preaching virtue.

It is not about men who surround themselves in layers of lie upon lie, institution upon institution, devoted to controlling how you feel.


Hell is what man creates each and every moment. Hell is what we create when we are afraid to say SO FUCKING WHAT.

Guilt is what happens when a man stumbles and has too much pride to stand up and wipe the mud from his face and keep walking.

We are apes. We still learn to walk. Some of us are more good at it then others but we are all still apes waddling our way through.

Sasquatchs and mountain guerillas don't feel guilty, humans do. Then again they don't cause pollution and engage in indiscriminate mass murder like we human apes do.

Guilt is the hairless ape offended by his own smell.