When Suffering Hardness of Heart, Severe Condemnation, Doubt or Vile Thoughts
What Must a Christian do?

Christians have so much to worry about that they should be almost as stressed out as my cat. Despite an overwhelming urge to panic, beg forgiveness, run to a pastor, beat yourself up, or believe you are doomed, the most Christ-exalting counter-attack to such feelings is to do all you can to ignore them.

I am acutely aware that choosing to do nothing in this situation is both exceedingly difficult and the exact opposite of what feels like the correct response. Note, however, that if doing what comes naturally were the answer, you would not be reading this; you would already be free from these attacks. You need a radically different approach – probably one you have not even considered.

Regardless of how intense, prolonged and repeated your awful feelings or thoughts are, it is perfectly safe to treat them as if they did not exist or had never happened. As shocking as it seems, you should view them as being of not the slightest consequence.

You have grown so used to letting these things alarm you, that reacting in fear has become a deeply ingrained, unthinking habit. And habits are hard to break. In fact, as ridiculous as it is, not being afraid can seem scary. It is time to break the cycle by choosing to act as if these unwanted thoughts and feelings were not even happening. Don’t interact with them in any way. Don’t fear them, don’t be ashamed of them, or worry about them, or fight them. Don’t even ask forgiveness. Just, as much as you can, remain relaxed and unconcerned, and move on.

Not only does acting in fear achieve nothing positive, it achieves less than nothing. It ramps up fear by reinforcing in one’s mind the lie that there must actually be something to be scared of.

Doing nothing does not mean wanting nothing. It is not, of course, losing all desire to please God. It is ceasing to imagine that human effort can ever save anyone. Neither is it giving up on God. On the contrary, it is believing in God more than ever – not merely believing in his power and willingness to forgive some people but in his power and eagerness to forgive you as you currently are, no matter how atrociously you have messed up.

It is abandoning all hope of anyone ever being good enough for God, and redirecting that hope and faith into believing God is good enough, powerful enough and loving enough for you. Cease imagining you must somehow try to compensate for any inadequacies or reluctance in God’s ability to save you. Instead, realize that the almighty God of love is infinitely more that you will ever need to override your every inadequacy, no matter how gross or extreme your inadequacies could ever get.

He’s your heavenly Father; the perfect guardian who totally outclasses any human attempt at parenthood. He’s the loving, competent one; you’re the helpless infant. No matter how much we grow in Christ, you and I always remain utterly dependent upon him and he is always up to the task. In Christ, the Almighty’s power and eagerness to forgive is always boundlessly greater than your power to mess things up. No matter how passionately and desperately you yearn for God’s acceptance, his yearning to accept you and his power to do so, is stupendously greater. And that is all that matters.

As explained elsewhere, vast numbers of people have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) without even realizing it, and this is precisely the weakness that the enemy of our souls exploits when Christians are plagued with doubts, unwanted thoughts, and so on. Let’s look at this spiritually: OCD is fear-driven, which leads to what the Bible calls ‘works’ – our own desperate attempt to save ourselves.

What makes doing nothing the perfect counter-attack for Christians is that the spiritual opposite of both fear and ‘works’ is faith. Deliberately doing nothing in response to these attacks is faith in action. It is declaring to the entire spirit world that there is nothing to fear and that Jesus, not your efforts, is your Savior.

Fighting the symptoms gives the illusion of helping because it can temporarily ease them. The sad truth, however, is that it actually ends up worsening them by reinforcing the unspiritual notion that you should act in fear, rather than in faith. Since fear fires the problem, you need to put out the fire. Instead, frantically fighting the symptoms – reacting as if there were something to fear – fans the fire and so inflames the problem.

I mentioned in a previous webpage that I once hyperventilated. Let me describe what happened. It vividly illustrates why choosing to do nothing when terrified by doubts, despicable thoughts and so on, is the ideal response.

I was feeling a little unwell and began to focus on my breathing. Thinking I needed a little more air, I breathed slightly deeper. That did not seem to help, so I calmly breathed still deeper. That make me feel as if I needed even more air. I breathed even quicker and deeper. Soon I was caught in a vicious circle in which I found myself gasping for more and more air. Then my hands began to uncontrollably clench and go numb. Thinking I must be having a stroke or something, I panicked even more, which further affected my breathing. Someone with nursing experience placed a paper bag over my face (not recommended these days). Certain that I needed more air, I tried to fight her off.

When it was all over, I was flabbergasted to learn that the entire incident had been fear-driven. Every part of me had seemed to be screaming that I needed more air and that I was having a medically dangerous episode. It turned out that it was not that I needed more oxygen, but that I was actually getting too much. I simply needed to calm down (not easy when so worked up) and act normally.

That’s what it is like with OCD. When in the midst of it, panicking and trying harder and harder seems the appropriate, Christ-honoring response and yet it drives a vicious circle that makes everything worse. As counter-intuitive as it seems, you actually need to do the exact opposite of what fear tells you.

This is the safe, God-honoring thing to do, but it will not feel that way. Fear feels like a friend that keeps you safe and helps you be a better person, when it is actually an insidiously cruel parasite that sucks spiritual life out of us and robs God of the glory he deserves. So reverse this. Choose to honor God by accepting that, regardless of all your turmoil, through Christ you are accepted by God.

Why is fear dishonoring to God? When Christ died for the sins of the world (including your every sin) the God of the impossible achieved the impossible. You are washed clean – spotlessly pure – and totally accepted by the Holy Lord, not because of what you have or haven’t done, but because the eternal Son of God swapped places with you on the cross. When Almighty God looked at his innocent Son on the cross, he saw not Jesus’ perfection but your moral filth. Then God unleashed all his wrath upon Jesus until not a speck of anger remained. Finally, Jesus was able to gasp, “It is finished” and he died (John 19:30). He suffered all this so that when you simply look to him in faith, the astonishing exchange is complete. Now, when the Holy Lord sees you, he sees not your sin but the purity and moral perfection of Jesus. This staggering truth is summarized here:

2 Corinthians 5:21 God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

The exchange occurred not so that we could have our pathetic attempt at righteousness, but God’s righteousness. Moreover, as Jesus declared, it is finished. No need to struggle, beg, plead, shed tears, or whatever. It’s all over. You are divinely accepted and approved, because of Jesus.

Despite this spiritual reality, OCD causes us to panic and continually focus on a molehill until it looms in our mind as enormous as a mountain. So honor God by doing the opposite. Let even the molehill shrink to nothing by disregarding it.

OCD is like having the most annoying itch that incessantly demands to be scratched. If, despite that intense urge, you leave it alone, it will eventually calm down. Give into its demands, however, and do what feels like the natural thing to do – scratch it – and you will feel temporary relief but the itch will soon return even stronger than before. With eczema, for example, scratching can even cause infection. Enduring that irritating itch and refusing to scratch it, is agonizing and feels so unnatural, but it is the only way to stop it from getting worse than ever.

This is the dilemma you face: will you do what feels natural and give the guilt feeling, unwanted thought, or doubt, the attention it seems to demand, or will you trust that God can handle it? Will you act out that faith by deliberately doing nothing, despite the infuriatingly strong urge to believe the deceptive feeling or thought, or to fight it, ask forgiveness, or whatever you have been doing? Will you put your faith in Jesus or in your own efforts? Will you, by faith, accept that what seems to you a terrifyingly enormous mountain is nothing because of your almighty Savior? Or will you act as if he is pathetically weak and needs you to sweat, struggle and strive?

Basically, to have OCD is to be controlled by fear. The precise nature of the fear varies from person to person (and from time to time). With religious OCD, it usually boils down to a fear of being – or becoming – unforgivable. This, in turn, usually leads to people becoming enslaved (addicted) to some type of ritual they vainly hope might reduce the fear. Religious examples are begging for God’s forgiveness, confessing to someone, seeking someone’s reassurance, or beat oneself up (despite the fact that Christ was beaten for us). It often includes avoidance of things that could trigger fear, such as Bible-reading, church attendance or prayer. Fear becomes such a monster that even stopping the foolish rituals or avoidance becomes terrifying.

You cannot stop fear from taunting you but you can stop yourself from doing what it says. It is not your choice whether fear follows you wherever you go but it is your choice whether you turn around and follow it, making it your god by doing whatever it screams. What fear does is up to fear, but what you do is up to you.