A recent post on spiritual blackmail obviously struck a chord. Someone commented: "Amen! Amen amen amen!!!" It can be a big problem in the Church. There are many forms of it, but it would seem to me that it typically plays on guilt, or seeks to introduce guilt. It is quite a serious matter. Some such cases are subtle, some are spectacular. Some turn issues of principle or justice or agreement (and so on) into guilt. It is a technique which I have experienced occasionally in spiritual counselling. If a counselee wants to shut down a certain line of thought, they seek to induce guilt in the minister. But it is not merely ministers who need to cope with this. Many of the "foot folk" need to deal with it, and they may not be as aware of it. OBSERVATION: In 2014 I blogged: "There are people who seek to sniff out guilt in a minister. If they find it, then they run with it (and sometimes they run with it even where they don't find it). They deal in guilt. They disseminate guilt."
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