The Two Me’s 259But first, the second missing factor. Unfortunately, we still have the
problem of guilt. The nasty pain induced by honesty in areas of personal
shortcoming often prevents me from completing the leap across the chasm
separating childhood 'facts' from adult belief. It is fine to talk, in theoretical
terms, about changing me, and even to study the process in detail. But,
suppose that I actually discover that a new me is really possible. Once I
accept this fact, then all of my previous endeavors become laced with
feelings of guilt. Why? Because every Mercy goal which I pursued while
living within the old me has become a dead-end—literally. My pursuit of
the „bait‟ of childish identification, blame and denial, has „hooked‟ me
with the unpleasant results of a childish me. This me is now faced with the
sentence of „death.‟ And the longer that I have lived within the old me, the
stronger will be these impending
feelings of guilt.
We can see this principle
illustrated by the response of the
Western World to the carnage of the
First World War. A whole generation
of young people was almost wiped out
by the withering fire of the machine
gun. What was the root cause of this
war? I suggest that it was the childish
me of nationalism and imperialism.
This mentality motivated millions to
volunteer as cannon fodder. As a
result, those who were still alive began,
even during the war, to conceive of a
new me, in which nations cooperated
instead of constantly fighting one another. But, the war and the dying
continued. Why? Because abandoning the old me would have meant
admitting that all of the fighting had been useless and worthless. The
feeling of guilt which this would have produced was too great to accept.
Therefore, the rallying cry became, “They must not have died in vain,” and
the war effort continued, as nations struggled to prove that the old me did
not have to be abandoned. Because of this blind refusal to face guilt,
millions more died, cut down by senseless forays into a real no-man‟s land
of flying bullets.
When the war finally did come to a close, then the problem of guilt
could no longer be avoided. How was it „solved‟? By placing the
responsibility on the losers. In the Peace Accord was a clause specifically
blaming the Germans for causing the war and ordering the German nation
to pay impossibly high sums in war reparations, in the process bankrupting
the country, and laying the foundation for a new war.
I should point out that the need for an answer to guilt comes at a
different stage in the path of patience than it does in the path of suffering.