The burden of guilt

I bet lots of people would agree with the following proposition: if God does not exist, and you're a bad person, then you've got nothing to fear. Eat, drink, be merry, revel in the delights of wrongdoing, because there is no retribution. Life is brief, so do what makes you happy, regardless of the consequences to others.

But I see it differently. How terrible to realize you are a bad person in a godless universe! When death eventually comes, all you will be able to claim is the content of a bad life. What joy is there in hurting people and getting away with it? None, because you will live with the nagging, cutting burden of guilt; even if you could convince everyone else of your innocence, that lie could convince you. It would ring hollow, and you would live out your days condemned by the truth. You would slowly die, living only to numb the aching inside with transient, ashen pleasures, knowing that you brought surplus pain into a world already overflowing with it. Better to be hanged and be done with it.

I say this, over and against the desires of my sinful heart, in the hope that there will be retribution, and that I will be hanged. Because only when I die will the guilt and shame go away.

But then maybe, just maybe, when I've drifted into the void and am no more, perhaps there will be something resembling our conception of a God waiting for me there. Perhaps I will meet those lips that produced divine whispers, the same whispers that have permeated the world from the beginning. Perhaps that God will pluck me out of nonbeing and back into being, and perhaps, retribution for my crimes being satisfied, I will also be reformed, and allowed to delight in good without the specter of guilt digging its claws into my skin. Perhaps there is hope.

But until then, the burden of sin is mine to bear. None may take it from me. Not even Christ.