How Good Do We Have to Be? A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness - Harold S. Kushner
Rabbi Kushner reads the temptation account in Genesis 3 as “the Birth of Conscience” (21). He does not understand it as a negative movement in human becoming, but as a positive step forward. It is “a mythical description of how the first human beings left the world of animal existence behind and entered the problematic world of being human” (22). This forward movement brings great complexity and moral responsibility to humanity: “We can read it as an inspiring, even liberating story, a story of what a wonderful, complicated, painful, and rewarding thing it is to be a human being” (21). The shame the first parents feel is like adolescents who become self-conscious and begin to take responsibility for their moral choices. One does not have to agree with Kushner’s interpretation to benefit from his practical advice. By re-interpreting the temptation account, Kushner rejects the view of God as a perfectionist that demands perfection from his creatures. This view creates religion that produces nothing but guilt and shame: “It is unfortunate that so many of us have been brought up to think of religion as the scolding voice that makes us feel guilty. I wish we could learn to see religion as the source of healing and relieving guilt” (62). Religion then focuses on sin rather than healing: “Under that definition of sin, our lives will be dominated by feelings of guilt and fear, guilt for the mistakes we have made, and fear of making yet another one. And guilt and fear don’t bring out the best in anyone. They drain the joy out of life and make us unpleasant companions” (39). He continues: “God may be disappointed in some of the things we do; he is never disappointed in who we are, fallible people struggling with the implications of knowing Good and Evil” (53). God loves us and accepts us. We must learn to accept ourselves and seek to be “good enough” rather than perfect. Even better, we must seek to be “whole”: “To be whole before God means to stand before Him with all our faults as well as all of our virtues, and to hear the message of our acceptability. To be whole means to rise beyond the need to pretend that we are perfect, to rise above the fear that we will be rejected for not being perfect. And it means having the integrity not to let the inevitable moments of weakness and selfishness become permanent parts of our character. Know what is good and what is evil, and when you do wrong, realize that that was not the essential you. It was because the challenge of being human is so great that no one gets it right every time. God asks no more of us than that” (180). Besides his material on guilt and shame, Kushner also offers some very helpful chapters on marriage and parenting.