Stop apologising for things you've never done

Have you had the experience where someone apologises to you when they’ve done nothing wrong? Or maybe you do it yourself? You’re walking along and someone is coming towards you. You move left to avoid them and they move to their right. You move right and they instinctively move to their left. Sorry! You’re absentmindedly walking to the queue in the supermarket at the same split second as someone else. Who should go ahead? Sorry, you go first. No, you go first. You’re having a conversation with someone. They’re talking. You sneeze. Sorry! 

None of these situations need an apology. In none of them is something deliberately done wrong. So why do we do it? Is it some sense of guilt? Or just a social convention? Does it do any harm? 

I think we should be saying sorry when we have deliberately done something wrong. That should be clear and obvious. But what about unintentional wrongs? Political Correctness has created a minefield. You can say something which is inoffensive in your mind but someone slams you because you used a word they don’t like. Should you apologise in this situation? If it was unintentional, I would say you don’t have to, but it’s your call. Is the other person just trying to make you feel guilty when you have no need to? I remember somebody was in this situation and he basically said “I’m sorry that you took what I said like that”. This is a reasonable compromise. You’re not accepting guilt and are allowing the other person to see you didn’t intend to offend. 

Guilt is a funny old thing. Some people say we shouldn’t feel guilty about anything. This just seems wrong to me. It says you’re always right – you’re your own judge and jury and are always found innocent. It’s anarchy. Some people say we should feel guilty about everything. This is usually in the context of religious belief. This is also wrong. It treats the act of being human as a sin and doesn’t allow God to forgive you. I don’t see how either of these are conducive to happiness.  They deny reality in their own way.

There’s a way to be free from guilt and that’s to acknowledge when we’ve done something deliberately wrong, admit it and, where necessary and possible, make amends. In a Christian context, this would also involve confessing the wrong to God, asking forgiveness, determining not to do it again, then getting on with life. 

We can unintentionally do wrong things. In the eyes of the Law of the land, you would be guilty of a crime whether or not you knew it was an offence. It can be the same in the eyes of God. It’s possible to use a general confession, asking blanket forgiveness for such things. This doesn’t imply that everything you’ve done is wrong. I don’t think God wants us to feel guilty for the sake of it. After all, Jesus died to remove our guilt, so why would He want us to wallow in it?

Galatians 5:22-23 gives us a blueprint for guilt-free Christian living. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” And when we fail, “if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One” (1 John 2:1).