Sin is not an arbitrary category that God imposes.  And it is not synonymous with simple error or misjudgement.  This is a truth, like others we are examining, that is best revealed in the searchlight of honest introspection.  We know the difference between regret and remorse.  We regret giving erroneous directions that get the stranger lost.  We feel remorse for the slander deliberately spoken.  We regret an action that leads to harm.  We feel remorse for choosing that action to inflict harm.  Legitimate guilt, the kind we cannot explain away or therapeutically resolve, involves more than bad judgment or human error.  The degree of guilt we experience is proportional to the deliberateness with which we cause hurt.  Herein lies the clue to the meaning of sin, and the way beyond it.

Terryl & Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps, pg. 80

Guilt, the legitimate remorse we feel for a deliberate decision to do wtrong, is all the proof we need that arguments about determinism and predestination are a philosopher's game.  Guilt is how we know we are free to choose.

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

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