Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

The Fat Man of Flanders

by Dave Wilkinson

Psalm 32:1-5

November 12. 2000

"Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage." This is a well-worn saying -- but it is true -- especially as we consider the case of Raynald the Third, a 14th century Duke of Flanders in what is now the country of Belgium. Raynald was a very overweight man -- so obese that his people commonly referred to him by his Latin nickname Crassus, which means, "fatty."

After a violent quarrel, Raynald's younger brother Edward led a revolt against him. Edward captured Raynald in battle and then named himself duke in his brother's place. But, contrary to the custom of the time, Edward did not kill his older brother. Instead he built a room around him in the castle of Nieuwkerk and promised him that as soon as he was able to escape from the room, he would be free and regain his title and possessions.

This should not have been difficult for Raynald, since the room had several doors and windows, and none of these doors or windows were locked or barred in any way. But there was a hitch. The doors and windows were made so narrow that Raynald could not squeeze his huge frame through the openings. To regain his freedom, he needed to lose weight. But Edward knew his older brother. Each day, Edward sent his brother a great variety of delicious foods. Instead of dieting his way out of prison, Raynald grew fatter and fatter -- he built his own prison through his gluttony.

Raynald stayed in that room for ten years and was not released until after his brother died. By then, his health was so ruined that he died within a year.

What a description of unresolved guilt -- a prison we build for ourselves by which we destroy our own lives.

David, the King of Israel, knew a lot about guilt after committing adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband murdered to cover up his crime. Listen to how David describes the impact of his guilt in Psalms 32 and 38.

"When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away

Through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;

My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer.

There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation;

There is no health in my whole frame because of my sin.

I am battered and benumbed,

I groan aloud because of the agitation of my heart.

My heart beats fast, my strength has ebbed away,

And the light has gone out of my eyes.

My loved ones and my friends shun me in my sickness,

And my relatives keep far away."

David felt the heavy weight of great guilt upon his soul.

What does unresolved guilt do to our lives?

As David describes -- as modern psychologists describe guilt can cause physical and mental illness and depression. Psychologist Carl Rogers states that when there is an internal strain and lack of wholeness, it is almost always due to the fact that a person is repressing feelings from his conscience. In his book, Competent to Counsel, Jay Adams states that in every case where there is no biochemical cause, the counselor should approach a severely depressed person with the assumption that his or her depression is caused by the presence of unresolved guilt in his or her life.

Guilt can cause us to lose our effectiveness in Christian service. We ask ourselves, how can we witness to the saving power of God when we are emotional wrecks. Unresolved guilt in our Christian lives acts like a covering of barnacles and weeds on the hull of a ship. Instead of moving swiftly and joyously through life, the load we carry slows us down and causes us to lose our direction. Paranoia is another result of unresolved guilt. Proverbs 28:1 declares: "The guilty flee when no one is pursuing, but the righteous are confident as a lion." The fear that comes from guilt cuts us off from other people because we are always looking for the hidden meaning behind a casual comment -- "What did she really mean by saying that? Does she suspect my secret?"

Inscribed across an old map of the island of Jamaica is the title: "Land of Look Behind." This goes back to the days when there were still slaves in Jamaica. When the slaves escaped, they headed for the mountains. Sometimes, the government sent troops and dogs after them. So the escaping slaves frequently looked fearfully over their shoulders. This gave the mountainous area the name "Land of Look Behind."

Too many people live in "The Land of Look Behind." Because of the guilt they carry with them, fear is also their constant companion -- the fear of being found out.

Illness, depression, ineffectiveness and fear what an unnecessary weight so many people carry because of their guilt.

Austrian Psychiatrist Victor Frankl who was imprisoned in a Nazi prison camp has pointed out that "no animal except man experiences guilt." Mark Train said the same thing in a more homely way when he declared, "Man is the only animal who blushes --or needs to."

The reason we feel shame is because we have within us the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. The Apostle Paul declared in Romans that there is no law, there is no sin -- but that each one of us has God's moral law engraved upon our hearts. Philosopher Immanuel Kant observed, "Two things astound me -- the starry heavens above and the moral law beneath." Authentic guilt is described by one writer as "a negative emotion experienced by a conscious mind that passes a personal moral judgement upon itself.

We are aware of falling short of the goal. There is a bit of Charlie Brown in each of us.

In one Peanuts strip, Charlie Brown is sitting on a school bench talking to himself. "Why don't I go over and talk to that little red-haired girl?"

Then he buries his face in his hands with the cry: "I can't -- I just can't." And as he trudges dejectedly away, he declares: "I hate myself for not having enough nerve to talk to her!" But then he pauses to reflect on his entire situation and admits: "Well that isn't exactly true -- I hate myself for a lot of other reasons too!"

Like Charlie Brown we pronounce judgement upon ourselves and our actions -- and if we attempt to repress our guilt and hide from sin, as David so eloquently declared, it will destroy us.

After David stole the wife of Uriah the Hittite and had Uriah killed to cover his sin, he refused to confront and deal with his guilt and this hidden guilt came close to killing him. That's the theme of this psalm. But God, in His great mercy, sent His Prophet Nathan to pull David's dark sin out into the light where he could finally be released from its weight.

Nathan approached the King very shrewdly -- "Sir, we have this problem in your Kingdom. I'd like your advice." The fateful encounter is found in 2 Samuel 12: 1-7.

"Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. And he came to him and said, 'There were two men in one city, the one rich and the other poor. But the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb, which he bought and nourished; and it grew up together with him and his children. It would eat of his bread and drink of his cup and lie in his bosom, and was like a daughter to him. Now a traveler came to the rich man, and he was unwilling to take from his own flock or his own herd, to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him; rather he took the poor man's ewe lamb and prepared it for the man who had come to him.'

"Then David's anger burned greatly against the man, and he said to Nathan, 'As the Lord lives, surely the man who has done this deserves to die.'

Nathan said to David, "You are the man!"

David pronounced judgement upon himself with his own mouth -- "As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die."

And Nathan said to David, "You are that man." David was trapped. It was all over. David was openly, fully exposed. Now he knew what he wouldn't allow himself to think before -- "God knows all about it." David could no longer hide -- and that was the best thing that could have happened to him. The solution began with the recognition of his sin. Tradition holds that David wrote this Psalm 31 after Psalm 51 - next week's theme -- in which he confesses his sin. Here he proclaims the joy of God's forgiveness.

Now it is real important at this point to carefully distinguish between authentic guilt and inauthentic guilt. Authentic guilt is a product of a violation of the moral law of God. It is good and necessary to lead us to repentance and forgiveness. Inauthentic guilt has nothing to do with the law of God, but is something we put on ourselves from a variety of other sources. Inauthentic guilt is always harmful because it doesn't lead us anywhere worth going.

I believe that inauthentic guilt or false guilt is often a temptation sent by Satan which is meant to divert us both from the wonderful sense of forgiveness that God means us to have, and also from the real problems in our lives that God wants to change. False guilt needs to be faced for exactly what it is. If you experience false guilt, don't pray to God for the hundredth time to forgive it. Instead, ask Him to help you leave such self- hating feelings behind, and get on with life.

An example of this inauthentic guilt might be the guilt a woman might feel if she allowed her floor to go unwaxed during a hectic week even though her mother brought her up to wax her floor every week come what may. The guilt she would feel for that unwaxed floor is a result of her upbringing, and is not a sign that her unwaxed floor is a violation of God's perfect purpose for the universe.

I am sure that if the priest in Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan had stopped to aid the injured man by the road, he would have felt pangs of conscience for being late to church. And yet, his guilt feeling would not be an indication that he was sinning in helping the injured man. It would be a sign that he was violating his upbringing by finally keeping the moral law of God. His guilt feeling would not be a result of his sin, but a result of the sin of those who had taught him the wrong way.

We tend to think that our conscience is the voice of God. Sometimes it is. But sometimes it is really more like the voice of our parents, our society and the sum of our experiences formed over many years.

There is a primitive tribe where all men are brought up to have homosexual relations with other men --they would feel guilty if they didn't. There is a tribe where it is considered noble to betray a person who trusts you. There is a tribe where lying is a virtue. All people do, Paul points out in Romans 1, know the difference between right and wrong. And they don't necessarily know the difference between every right and every wrong and they do not necessarily feel the difference between right and wrong. In other words, real guilt isn't the same as guilt feelings. Guilt feelings can come from either true or false guilt.

This is why J.B. Phillips points out in Your God is Too Small, that conscience itself is not a substitute for God. Some consciences are almost immune to guilt while others are so sensitive that they feel guilty about everything they think or do. The voice of our consciences depends a lot on our training and background. That is why it is essential to recognize that the moral law of God is found much more perfectly in God's word, the Bible, than in our consciences. It often isn't sufficient to let our consciences be our guides.

This is especially true when we recognize all the efforts that have been made to relieve persons of guilt, by denying the existence of objective moral law and the responsibility of the individual for his or her behavior.

There are only two situations in which people feel no shame. One is a state of perfect wholeness. The other is a state of illusion.

As Jay Adams points out in Competent to Counsel, "Freud has not made people irresponsible; but he has provided a philosophical and pseudoscientific rationale for irresponsible people to use to justify themselves."

Songwriter Anna Russell characterizes the situation this way;

"I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed

To find out why I killed the cat and blacked my husband's eyes.

He laid me on a downy couch to see what he could find,

And here is what he dredged up from my subconscious mind;

When I was one, my mommy hid my dolly in a trunk,

And so it follows naturally that I am always drunk.

When I was two, I saw my father kiss the maid one- day,

And that is why I suffer from kleptomania.

At three, I had the feeling of ambivalence toward my brothers,

And so it follows naturally I poison all my lovers.

But I am happy now I've learned the lesson this has taught;

That everything I do that's wrong is someone else's fault."

Charles Schulz's Lucy is very much a daughter of our time when she approaches Charlie Brown with the announcements; "As your sister's consulting psychiatrist, I must put the blame for her fears on you."

To Charlie Brown's shocked cry; "On me!?!" Lucy replies: "Each generation must be able to blame the previous generation for its problems -- it doesn't solve anything but it makes us all feel better."

But if we all feel better, why is the suicide rate among psychiatrists significantly higher than those of any of the other sixteen specialty groups listed by the American Medical Association? If we're all feeling so good, why does our nation have an estimated fifteen million alcoholics and why are over a million of those alcoholics between ten and nineteen years old? If we're all feeling great, why is suicide still the number one killer among college students?

Despite all of our societies best efforts to deny moral law, guilt and sin are still with us. In chapter 9 verse 2, Job asks the question that confronts us all: "How can people be in the right before God?" How can we be relieved of the weight? How can we diet down and get out of our prison?

That is the question for nest Sunday. But, if you can't wait until then, or if you can't be present, read 1 John 1: 5-9, Colossians 1: 13-14, and Ephesians 2: 1-9.

If you have questions, let's talk.