Haunted by Guilt

The Regular Contributors to WIT are participating in a round table series, titled “Haunted.” This series will appear every (or every other) week throughout the Fall 2024 semester. Each current contributor to the blog will spend some time reflecting on what they are “haunted” by in their theological project.

A few weeks ago, I started rewatching Daredevil, a television series that aired on Netflix between from 2015-2018. It’s far darker and more violent than I remembered. If not for its recurring engagement with Catholicism, I likely would have stopped viewing after the first season. I’m glad that I have continued to watch, though, as the second season features a powerful scene. In the digital magazine, Think Christian, Tom Speelman describes the moment well: 

In the fourth episode, blind lawyer Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), who is secretly the superhero Daredevil, is talking to his priest (Peter McRobbie) at the funeral of a minor gangster whom Murdock had tried to protect from the righteous-minded vigilante The Punisher (Jon Bernthal). Murdock wonders why he still feels guilty even though he had done everything he could.

“Guilt can be a good thing,” the priest explains. “It’s the soul’s call to action. The indication that … something is wrong. The only way to rid your heart of it is to correct your mistakes and keep going until amends are made … the guilt means your work is not yet finished.”1 

Speelman then shifts to reflect on the function of guilt in Christian life. He writes that guilt propels continued action and reminds us that “we must not give in to our angst and regret, but know that we can move past them by God’s grace.”2 While Speelman’s interpretation captures the significance of this moment for the television show, I remain disquieted by his conclusions. In a world indelibly marked by injustice and violence, is it possible not to linger in guilt? Further, should we seek, with God’s help, to move beyond and rid ourselves of it? These questions about guilt, which are inextricably linked to issues of complicity and responsibility, haunt my work.

As I look back, I see that I have been haunted by guilt far longer than I realized. To my knowledge, the words “guilt” or “guilty” never appear in my dissertation, a project that focused on examining faith-based community organizing as a promising alternative for Christian political engagement. Responsibility was a key concern as was structural injustice but not guilt. Yet, I see now how guilt motivated my dissertation. Three years as professional community organizer enabled a deep understanding of community organizing practices; it also provided an intimate look into the inequalities woven into ordinary political engagement. As a result, I came to my doctoral work feeling increasingly guilty about my own political privilege and participation in unjust political processes which continued to marginalize and exclude those around me. While I do believe that my dissertation yielded valuable insights into Christian political responsibility, I also see how the project functioned as an exercise of absolution. I was wrestling with my guilt and longed to move past it, though I didn’t.  

I remain haunted with guilt becoming a more significant force in my work in the last couple of years. Rather than primarily motivating my scholarship, it has become a central object of study. As my 2023 blog “On Villains and Heroes” indicates, I am concerned with our collective preoccupation with innocence and strive to think more deeply about the theological roots and implications of particular understandings of guilt. Sustained attention to difficult concepts can be generative as on-going engagement with anger, within and beyond the academy, demonstrates.3 More than that, I am compelled to continue my exploration into guilt, tethered to concepts of complicity and responsibility. Rather than escape, lingering in and on guilt feels like a necessary act in an unjust and violent world. 

Notes:

1. Tom Speelman, “Daredevil and religious guilt,” Think Christian, April 29, 2016, https://thinkchristian.net/daredevil-and-religious-guilt  
2. Ibid.
3. See, for example, philosopher Myisha V. Cherry’s 2021 publication, The Case for Rage: Why Anger Is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle, and theologian Brendan Case’s article, “Abolishing Anger: A Christian Proposal,” crafted in response. Outside of the academy, community organizing groups have long distinguished between two types of anger, hot and cold, deeming the latter essential for social change. Mary Beth Rogers writes that cold anger is “not one based on sour resentments or a false sense of entitlement. Rather, it is an anger that seethes at the injustices of life and transforms itself into a compassion for those hurt by life. It is an anger rooted in direct experience and held in collective memory. It is the kind of anger that can energize a democracy – because it can lead to the first step in changing politics.” Mary Beth Rogers, Cold Anger: A Story of Faith and Power Politics, (University of North Texas Press, 1990), 9-10.

Photo by Joseph Corl on Unsplash.