If I have repented, why do I still feel guilty?
Question
Gramps,
If I have done everything I need to do to repent (and the bishop has verified that I’ve done everything I need to) why do I still remember and feel guilty about what i’ve done?
Kay
Answer
Dear Kay,
Sometimes the hardest thing for us to do is forgive ourselves. Elder D. Chad Richardson once spoke of this:
“When the scriptures say to judge righteously, that means with fairness and compassion and charity. That’s how we must judge ourselves. We need to be patient and forgiving of ourselves, just as we must be patient and forgiving of others.
“Apparently, many individuals do not understand the importance of self-forgiveness in the process of repentance. The Lord, however, makes no exceptions when He declares, “I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men” (D&C 64:10; emphasis added). This includes forgiving ourselves.
Remember the words of Nephi in 1 Nephi 3:7,
“I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.”
The Lord wants you to forgive yourself, and He will help you to do so. Pray for that help.
Elder D. Chad Richardson also said,
“When we turn to our Savior, He can heal us not only of the sin but also of the self-recrimination and the constant mental replaying of our sins or obsessing over them. We must turn the sins and the guilt over to the Savior in a process of complete repentance. For serious sins we will need the help of a bishop or another appropriate priesthood leader to complete our repentance. We then must let the Savior judge whether we or He must make final payment for the sin. Finally, we will need the Savior’s help to feel self-acceptance rather than self-contempt. With the Lord’s help, we will experience a change in how we see ourselves.”
It may take time, but with the Lord’s help you can do it.
Gramps
In the Book of Mormon, the Nephites who heard King Benjamin’s discourse and repented of their sins received peace of conscience. This has long been taught in the church as the way to know if God has forgiven you of your sins. If one still feels guilt or humiliation over a sin, it might mean that the person has not turned to the Savior fully and dropped their load at his feet. The sin, rather than the Savior, is still the main focus of their concern. Learn to trust Him. Let him take the load, the guilt, the humiliation and the hurt. Remember, as long as Peter kept his focus on Christ, he could walk on water. It’s only when he turned his attention away to the chaos around him that he began to sink.
I believe Satan has a lot to do with a person continuing to feel guilty after repentance has been accomplished and forgiveness given. Satan will sit on our shoulder and whisper, “Remember when? Shame on you!” As you said, we must trust in Our Savior. A friend once told me, “Let go and let God.” And as Gramps wrote, we need to forgive ourselves.
One thing I found when I truly decided to change my life was that I was so racked with sin. The pain of bearing the weight of that sin was very intense. I think of two things, one, I never want to forget the feeling of bearing the weight of sin. And secondly, I can’t imagine what our dear Lord and Savior suffered from the moment he accepted his mission in the grand counsel before the world was and took upon our sins in the garden and on the cross, that so great was his pain the he sweat great drops of blood. So we need to forgive ourselves because the Lord descended below all things and suffered like know ever has or ever will so that you can forgive yourself. Therefore I forgive myself, but I never want to forget the pain i bore as a sinner and the pain of going through the process of repentance, because is was painful. And I never want to go through either of those two things again…BY THE WAY a sinner I still am, but not to the magnitude that I was before the Lord reached out and pulled me into his loving arms…for that I am forever grateful!