Guilt, Fear, and Religion

Disclaimer: The ideas in this article may not apply to every individual on the planet

For the sake of this post, let us assume that there are are four types of people. These people are defined as those who are willing to live with guilt and those who are not. And those who are willing to live with fear and those who are not.

People generally have an innate need to live an “easy” life. With that in mind, consider the following. A person willing to live with guilt can accept religion and accept Gods rulings. This become apparent when a person “sins” or doesn’t fulfill the duty that is required of them by their religion, they accept the fact, internally, that they will feel guilty for not doing the “right” thing.

However, someone who refuses to live with any form of guilt and is driven by obtaining an “easy” life, can quite effortlessly deny Gods existence. They may not even be aware that they are doing this, but it is much easier for them to deny the existence of any supreme being than to live with the guilty feeling that they may be constantly doing something wrong.

The same mindset can be applied to ‘fear’ as well. Someone who refuses to live in fear can deny Gods existence whereas someone who is willing to accept fear will find it much easier to be religious since they see themselves as “God Fearing”.

I heard an idea once that guilt can actually be a driving force of the evil inclination. Often when one feels guilty they “throw the towel in” and decide that they are no longer willing to live with this feeling thus removing anything that may be a cause of said feeling. However, what they don’t realize is that by doing so they also remove anything good that can come from the guilt, be it a learning opportunity or otherwise.

Take the other personality trait, fear. This may be easier to identify with, since everyone experiences some form of fear. Those who live without fear can err in irredeemable ways and those who live in constant fear will never experience or attempt new things.

The depth of these traits within each individual can, maybe, be the cause of whether one is more prone to being gnostic, agnostic, theist or atheist. For instance, someone with the ability to be shrouded in guilt and not even consider its repercussions is probably more inclined to be a gnostic theist, whereas the inverse may be true of someone won’t touch fear or guilt with a bargepole, they may be more likely to becoming an agnostic atheist.

So why is this all this even relevant? Well, even though the world isn’t actually split into these categories of guilt / non-guilt or fear / non-fear individuals, I would like to propose a different outlook. There is nothing ultimately profound in this, but I think that everyone has a bit of all of these traits within them and thus religiosity is able to be broad spectrum ranging from not religious at all to extreme orthodox. Could it be that this spectrum is merely defined by how much guilt or fear you are willing to live with? This may also be the reason why at times it may be difficult to the most common question of “Are you religious?”

I think, the necessities that we need to bear are how we maintain a balance. I coin the term guiltium (guilt-medium; medium amount of guilt. Not guilty and not guiltless) , because I think we would all do a little worse without any guilt and a little worse completely engulfed with guilt. So I propose that we all try to create a middle ground, a guiltium and fearium, life for ourselves and thus finding some spirituality and serenity within ourselves, be it religious or otherwise . How do we do that? Well, I will leave that to you, the reader - as only you know the intricacies of your own soul and being.

As I end this post, I want to convey that my intention was not to turn this into a religious vs non-religious post (albeit that is probably quite difficult considering that ‘religion’ is part of the title of this post) and by no means does this post attempt to shun anyone away from religion, I am a religious person myself, at least I like to think I am, or maybe that’s just my fear and guilt talking? I’ll be off now and try to find a guiltium life.