Legitimate guilt is to the spirit what the sharp protest of a twisted ankle is to the foot: its purpose is to hurt enough to stop you from crippling yourself further.  Its function is to prevent more pain, not expand it.  This kind of guilt comes from the light and beckons us to follow; its counterfeit takes us only deeper into the darkness of despair.  for, as William law wrote, "Christ never was, nor can be, in any creature but purely as a spirit of love."

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 49