In its best moments, guilt can protect and guide us, much like the pain that teaches us to avoid a hot stove or sharp objects.

The prophets and apostles, though, told us that sin and guilt—along with the search for a meaning to life, the fear of death, and an answer to shame—might be culturally amplified realities ...

Sin and guilt mustn’t define us, even as we face the full brunt of our actions and accept the consequences of failure. Committing a sin doesn’t make us sinful people.

Guilt is an injury to our soul that exposes us to further pain. Isaiah felt the pain of his sin most acutely in his mouth. So intense was his guilt that he called woe and ruin on himself.

For James Joyce, humanity’s faulty condition “is happy because faults, errors, mistakes and misunderstandings” are the birth of comedy, writes Gabrielle Carey in a new biography.