God has not condemned me, nor do I.I
1. My Father knows my holiness.
²Should I deny what He knows and instead believe in what He could never know?
³Shall I accept as true what He declares to be false?
⁴Should I not rather accept what His Word says I am, since He is my Creator and the One who truly knows the condition of His Son?
2. Father,
I was mistaken about myself,
because I failed to recognize the Source from which I came.
²I have not left that Source to enter a body and die.
³My holiness remains a part of me,
just as I am a part of You.
⁴And the errors I have made about myself are nothing but dreams.
⁵Today I let them go.
⁶And I am ready to accept only Your Word about what I truly am.
I This lesson equates us with the woman caught in adultery in John 8, where, as the crowd is about to stone her, Jesus says, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw the first stone at her.” Then, after all her accusers have left, He asks her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?” She answers, “No one, Lord.” And He says to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”
Now Jesus urges us not to condemn ourselves, for God has not condemned us.
The word “arrogance,” from the Latin adrogare, means to ascribe to oneself capacities one does not possess. Guilt is nothing but arrogance disguised as humility. Whoever feels guilty has, first of all, proclaimed himself judge and assumed the capacity to correctly evaluate a situation and to issue a just sentence. The one who feels guilty claims to know more than God and, deep down, resents his Creator for having made him imperfect. The feeling of guilt is a direct attack against God and an act of blasphemy.
By now you should be very clear—because it has been repeated many times—that your heart is a reliable indicator of the state of your mind. If you feel bad, it is because you are thinking something that is not true. Guilt, whether your own or another’s, constricts the heart. This alone should be enough for you to realize that your guilt is unfounded, and that all the arguments you have built to justify it are fallacious.
Never blame or condemn yourself for anything. Acknowledge your mistakes and correct them, but also recognize that every error belongs to a past that no longer exists. You are born innocent in every instant of the eternal present, and this applies both to you and to your brothers. In the present, you and your brothers are absolutely innocent.
You relate to yourself through the idea you have of yourself, and your moods derive directly from that idea. That self-concept is always your own opinion, and as such exists only in the present, because opinions—from the Latin opinio, “the action or effect of forming a judgment”—exist only in the present. Understand well that this idea, opinion, or judgment about yourself can be whatever you choose, for it is the result of your will. You would do well, then, to choose the one that benefits you most, the one that prevents new mistakes and helps you fulfill your mission—which, as you already know, is to be happy and to make your brothers happy.
Guilt will never help you achieve this. Guilt is the obsessive idea of perpetuating the past by bringing it into the present to punish or to punish yourself. Never do it. Guilt and punishment will never make you a better person; forgiveness will.
God has not condemned me, and neither do I.
I acknowledge the certainty of my innocence and rest in my holiness.