“But when religion teaches us that God loves the wounded soul, the chastised soul that has learned something of its own fallibility and its own limitations, when religion teaches us that being human is such a complicated challenge that all of us will make mistakes in the process of learning how to do it right, then we can come to see our mistakes not as emblems of our unworthiness but as experiences we can learn from. We will be brave enough to try something new without being afraid of getting it wrong. Our sense of shame will be the result of our humility, our learning our limits, rather than our wanting to hide from scrutiny because we have done badly.”

Kushner, Harold S. How Good Do We Have to Be - A New Understanding of Guilt and Forgiveness, Little, Brown and Company Boston, MA Ó Copyright 1996 by Harold S. Kushner, p. 39