The world is grappling with an unprecedented surge in negative emotions, as evidenced by Gallup's latest Negative Experience Index, which reveals that last year marked the highest levels of sadness, anger, worry, and stress in 15 years across more than 100 countries. This emotional downturn is not solely attributable to the pandemic; the global trajectory of negative emotions has been worsening for nearly a decade. In America, the mental health crisis spans all age groups, with nearly 60% of college students suffering from anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, and substance abuse even before the COVID-19 crisis, and 40% feeling so depressed they struggle to function. Among younger children, alarming statistics show that over 14% of those aged 2 to 8 have diagnosed mental, behavioral, or developmental disorders, with emergency room visits for mental health issues in children under 13 rising dramatically. Adults are not spared, as nearly 2 in 3 report stress from national uncertainty, and over 3 in 4 cite the future of the nation as a significant stressor, with many feeling this is the lowest point in the country's history. This collective mental health decline reflects a society struggling to cope with mounting challenges, resulting in increased violence, substance abuse, and a pervasive sense of confusion and fear.

Guilt, like bitterness and resentment, can be psychologically corrosive. It can eat a person up from the inside. Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt. Guilt is the sum total of all the negative feelings we have ever had about ourselves. Negative emotions like loneliness, envy, and guilt have an important role to play in a happy life. They're big flashing signs that something needs to change. It is not only natural for us to feel guilty, but it has an important role to play in our lives as a thermostat on our character and if we are full of guilt, that means something needs to change. He often makes use of guilt to motivate us. He sometimes kind of turns our guilt meter up just a bit, makes us feel really guilty to begin to move us toward change or to seek Him. He highlights Peter's guilt. It was pretty deep. Maybe he was feeling guilty for kind of pooh-poohing the idea that Jesus would know where to catch fish. Underestimating Jesus. Maybe it was his tone of voice, but maybe it was a lot more than that. Maybe what Jesus had done in this miracle made him think of how totally unworthy he was and he just felt dirty. He felt sinful. He felt all that guilt come to the surface, and he asked Jesus, his Savior, to leave him because it felt so terrible to have all that guilt come down, pressed down upon him after seeing this miracle. It was something that stirred in him this feeling of worthlessness that he did not like. He liked it so little that he wanted the cause of that, which he determined to be Jesus' righteousness and His holiness, to leave him so he could go back to being normal, have these normal feelings of self-worth. Standing next to Jesus, he knew he was not an okay guy. He was full of sin, and he felt it to his very bones. We are often full of doubt and unbelief. That is especially so when we are being called, that we see the grime of our lives, we see how awful we are and how we have been to people and how we have treated God, our very Creator. That drives us to seek a Savior for the remission of our sins, to pay the penalty in our stead, and remove that guilt that burdens us so much. Guilt is a bad thing. It is a bad thing because it means we have sinned. It means that we have something to be guilty about. We have transgressed God's holy law, which defines what sin is. By doing so we have incurred the death penalty and so that adds to the burden. Not only have we sinned and done this terrible thing against God and against our fellow men, but we have only death to look forward to because that is what we deserve for sinning. We have been judged guilty of sin against God, against our loved ones, or whoever we have sinned against, and we are guilty of sin against ourselves. We do terrible things to ourselves. We treat ourselves awfully by what we see, what we ingest, what we allow ourselves to do. There are literally thousands of destructive things that we could do that will kill us, maim us, or harm us in some way, and not just physically but mentally and psychologically and emotionally. When you start feeling that guilt, there is no assuaging it except by death. That is how bad guilt is. It is bad because you have sinned, and it is terrible because the only way to get rid of it is death either yours or your Savior's. Somebody has got to die because that guilt is not going to go away unless it is covered by death. Can you imagine the feelings of guilt they felt? They had been out there in the crowd saying, Barabbas, Barabbas! Crucify Him, crucify Him! You guys sinned. It was not just any sin; it was Deicide. They had killed their Savior. They had killed their Messiah, their God and King, whom they thought they worshipped. When He appeared, and they killed Him. Their question obviously is logical here. What can we do about this? Is there a way for this to be fixed? What does that mean for us? Are we doomed to de