Preaching Connection: Guilt

Movies for Preaching

Heaven (2002)

Directed by Tom Tykwer.  Written by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Krysztof Piesiewicz.  Music by Arvo Pärt.  Starring Cate Blanchett, Giovanni Ribisi, and Remo Girone.  97 mins.  Rated  R. For all of their importance in living, there are very few confession sequences in films, at least good ones.  The best known, perhaps, is implicit.  George Bailey in…

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The Shawshank Redemption (1994) – 1

Story by Stephen King, screenplay by Frank Darabont. 142 minutes, rated R. Starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. The first question of The Shawshank Redemption (1994) asks how in the world could this film—full of blasphemy, rancor, obscenity, and violence, though most of the last occurs off-screen—ever find its way onto a list of religiously…

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Reading for Preaching

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush

Growing up, George H. W. Bush was a magnet for other boys. They liked him and felt “protected and secure in his orbit.” But one time he stepped out of character and used an anti-Semitic slur to describe a Jewish friend. The sensitive Bush accused himself for this misstep for the rest of his life....
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Damage

Peter Calderon, a psychiatrist: ” Guilt, guilt, its pious expression alone is in fact today’s great absolution. Just say the guilt prayer, ‘I feel guilty,’ and, hey, presto, that’s the punishment! The guilt is the punishment. So punished, and therefore cleansed, one can continue with the crime.
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Additional content related to Guilt

Psalm 32

Most of his friends had been hanged.  But despite his central role in helping to construct Adolf Hitler’s Nazi nightmare, Albert Speer somehow managed to receive from the Nuremberg trials only a twenty-year sentence at the Spandau Prison in Berlin.  Not long after arriving in Spandau, Speer met with the prison chaplain.  To the chaplain’s…

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Exodus 6:1-12

Deep discouragement, even discouragement with God. That is the background to Moses’ grievance against the Almighty. Moses complains bitterly to the Lord that he has mistreated his people. He has sent Moses on a fool’s errand. In sum, Moses charges: “you have done nothing at all to deliver your people” (5:23).Some pious interpreters of previous…

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