Guilty!

I’m ashamed to confess it.

Guilt nags at me.

I shouldn’t have done it. I knew better, but I did it anyhow.

Yes, again on Monday, when I had other, more constructive, things to do, I spent the whole day reading.

No, I was not reading some sleazy bodice-ripper, I was reading a book on the history of Florida…. Yet I feel guilty.

Why is that?

What is there about reading that makes me feel guilty?

I guess it’s my upbringing.

My parents hated for me to read. “Johnny, get your nose out of that book and do something useful” is a statement I heard over and over again as I was growing up.

Thus, I’ve never been able to associate reading with “doing something useful”.

Even in this journal I attempt to hide how much time I spend doing nothing but reading; I don’t want people to know how much time I spend with my nose in a book. It’s something I’m ashamed of, something I feel guilty about.

As a mature adult I realize that my folks distain for reading was a cultural thing reflecting their own background. They were concerned that I did not fit the pattern they were comfortable with in a son. They wanted to see me with a shovel in my hand. Doing something useful. Not with my nose stuck in a book.

So I feel guilty about doing something that objectively I have no reason to feel guilty about. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with reading a history book. Reading is neither illegal nor sinful.

A lot of times, I feel guilty about doing perfectly innocent things.

And I don’t feel a bit guilty about doing things that are wrong!

I’ve been known to steal without batting an eyelash. No qualm of conscience at all. I can justify my theft with a shrug and a flimsy thought.

The heart is deceitful above all things.

Feeling guilty about reading a state history book, not a qualm about stealing, lust, blasphemy, cheating, lying, you name it.

I feel guilty about the wrong things.

My heart and mind are just that twisted.

Straightening it all out is beyond me.

The story about the wheat and the sandspurs comforts me a bit. You know the one. Jesus said a guy planted a field of wheat but some enemy came along and planted sandspurs in the same place. The fieldhands wanted to root out the sandspurs but the owner said to leave the wheat and tares to grow together till harvest. Then they can be separated without stomping the wheat.

Traditionally, preachers liken the wheat to good guys and the tares to bad guys all growing in the field of the world till the end of the age and Judgment Day. They’re probably right.

But for myself, I see the field as my own whole life with a bit of good wheat growing in the midst of all these sandspurs. It’s such a tangle that I am not able to sort it all out.

But at harvest time, God Himself will separate out the things I really am guilty of from the things I feel guilty about.

And He will take care of the whole mess.

In mercy.

So. That’s where I am today… Still with my nose in a book.