When Could Replaces Should
Guilt does not seem to be what it used to be. It doesn’t mean guilt isn’t real. It is. Sin is alive and well. It is just the feeling of guilt does not seem to be what it once was.
Author and theologian Andrew Root argues that even though our modern culture has abandoned God, they have not been able to abandon guilt. We still feel guilty, but it is how we feel guilty that has changed. We tend to worry a lot more about letting ourselves down than we do God.
In more traditional religious cultures people lived under the tyranny of the should. There was a strong sense of social expectation and a feeling that you “should” do things and behave certain ways. If you did not live according to cultural standards, you wrestled with shame and guilt.
Today’s culture, Root argues, is far from traditional and religious. In fact, they tend to throw off any admonition that they “should” have to do anything at all. This is not all bad. There was and is a lot of hypocrisy, rigidity, and excessive shaming in traditional religious culture.
But that does not mean we have rid ourselves of guilt. We have exchanged the guilt of should for the tyranny of could. We may not feel societies pressure that we conform, but we feel our own pressure that we perform. We could be this, or we could be that, but it is up to us.
To paraphrase Charles Taylor, the modern pressure is to be magnificent. To shine, to stick out, to achieve and perform. Watch any set of commercials during a football game and you will see this. There will be a relentless litany of supposed ordinary people transcending their limits through the power of exercise or technology. Even the beer commercials are about working out.
And what happens when you are not magnificent? Or maybe not magnificent enough? Or your moment in the sun fades? There is as much guilt with could as there is with should. I know I feel the tyranny of could. I feel pressured by all the options. Instead of open doors I feel fear of falling behind. Pressure might replace guilt, but it feels like falling short all the same.
In Philippians 2, Paul reminds us that “God is at work in us, enabling us to will and to work for His good pleasure…so that we may shine like stars in the world.” The way to magnificence, it seems, isn’t through should or could. It comes through the work and blessings of God in our lives. And the source of that blessing is Jesus. He breaks the tyranny of the should and the could in our lives.
God bless,
