But I would argue that guilt can actually be a good thing. There are times and situations when guilt is the emotionally healthy, mature, loving response to our own sin. Guilt is to the soul what pain is to the body. A kind of moral discomfort. Pain is bad only when it goes on indefinitely; in the short term, it’s a gift from God to our bodies, a messenger whose job is to tell us we need to fix something and fast. Guilt is unhealthy only when we wallow in it.
