Burden | Grace | Guilt | Honesty | Hypocrisy

OUR FEELINGS OF INADEQUACY AND GUILT
In the “guilt versus grace” discussion it seems that most people have a deep sensitivity about their own guilt, flaws and inadequacies. Most of us don’t need to be told we are hypocrites, we already know this about ourselves. Man can identify with the feelings expressed by Jules Fiefer in his poem, first published in The Village Voice. I felt like a fraud, so I learned to fly an airplane. At 50,000 feet I thought, “A fraud is flying an airplane.” So I crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat. I docked at Cherbourg, and I thought, “A fraud has crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat.” So I took a space shot to the moon. On the way home I thought, “A fraud has circled the moon.” So I took a full page ad in the newspaper, and confessed to the world that I was a fraud. I read the ad and thought — “A fraud is pretending to…