1. Everyone plagued by blasphemous thoughts

2. Or those who, despite repeated assurances, keep fearing they are unforgivable

If you fall into either category, your friends, loved ones, counselors and spiritual advisors will end up not only distressingly perplexed and frustrated but unable to give you appropriate support. The condition affecting you is so rarely understood that the dear people who care about you need these webpages almost as much as you do. I strongly recommend that you not only read all of the following but that you encourage these people to read it as well.

I understand your agony. God’s solution, however, is very different to what you expect, and you and I will be at cross purposes until you can see beyond the superficial to understand what is really happening to you. Our priorities will differ as much as if you had acute appendicitis and want nothing but painkillers whereas my understanding of the medical necessities obligates me to focus not on pain relief (as much as I want that for you) but on the cause of the pain and to convince you of the critical importance of getting proper treatment. Just as pain killers would not be the real answer to appendicitis but would actually lessen your motivation to get the help you desperately need, so assurance that you are divinely forgiven or ending your unwanted thoughts is not the help you really need, despite it seeming that way to the sufferer.

You are being hit by torturously strong temptation, but the Tempter is hoping to get you so confused that you do not even recognize the temptation. Blasphemy, for example, is not the temptation. The spirit realm is amazingly unconcerned about that. Not even gross sin is the real temptation. The temptation is to doubt that because of Jesus, God forgives, loves and delights in you.

You might be sure God’s forgiveness and cleansing extend to everyone else, but your ugly temptation is to believe you have managed to expose a flaw in God’s love and goodness; that the power of Christ’s sacrifice is not as infinite as Scripture claims; that your repeated sin and blasphemy are able to make a liar out of the God who offers forgiveness to all who accept Christ’s cleansing; that you have somehow found a loophole in Scripture to all of God’s promises regarding salvation; that because you feel guilty, uneasy and distant from God that your feeling is more spiritually dependable than the love and integrity of God and the power of the cross.

Just as an addict yearns for a miraculous end to withdrawal symptoms, you yearn for a quick fix – a miraculous deliverance from your distress. But although you are sure miraculous deliverances from the temptation to doubt would be in your best interest and God’s best interest, they are not. Life’s Mysteries explains this surprising truth but if you read it, you must keep in focus that the spirit world does not see blasphemy as the temptation. The real temptation is to fall for the Deceiver’s malicious lies that if you suffer disgusting thoughts then God no longer delights in you. It is a concerted attempt to trick you into giving up on God because you wrongly suppose the blood of Christ no longer cleanses you. That is like being conned into thinking Fort Knox is filled with fake gold. It is only by having to battle this temptation to doubt that you can truly become Christlike and grow in faith. Miraculous deliverances are superficial. They leave you as weak as being carried everywhere would cause your muscles to waste away. No matter how appallingly agonizing your affliction is, and how pathetic and ungodly it makes you feel, it can become a springboard to spiritual greatness.

It can take them years of agony before they finally realize it but it turns out that for many devout Christians nothing – with the possible exception of medical help – is capable of ending their doubts, fears and overwhelmingly strong guilt feelings. Like a thirsty man chasing a mirage, these genuine Christians sincerely believe there must be some assurance that would finally satisfy them. They will temporarily feel better after receiving a full explanation of why their fears are spiritually, biblically and rationally groundless but the horrible worry that they are doomed will soon return. Despite the mirage seeming so real, the truth is that this side of heaven there is literally no experience or proof, no matter how stupendous or spectacular that could permanently quell their fears. To illustrate, let’s go to extremes.

Suppose not just one but hundreds of gigantic angels in dazzling white clothes and supernatural glory appeared to you and declared that Almighty God is pleased with you and will reward you eternally. If you are one of the Christians who suffer the affliction described below, you would be on Cloud Nine, flooded with peace and joy. You would finally feel certain that you are saved and that you will never doubt again. Within a few days, however, all your doubts and fears will begin to return. You would begin to worry, thinking, “What if that divine visitation were just my imagination or a dream or wishful thinking or a false memory or a psychotic episode? What if what I experienced were someone playing a clever prank with lasers and holograms? What if it were demonic deception? What if that angelic pronouncement were true at the time but I’ve since sinned and am now lost forever? What if . . ?”

Similarly, if you are one of the many people this webpage zeroes in on, you could be convinced that if certain Christians whose spiritual discernment you highly respect thoroughly knew your heart and your every sin in detail and after meticulous investigation and weeks of prayer concluded that God has forgiven you, then at last you would have peace. As mysterious as it seems, however, it turns out that if every revered theologian, Christian superstar and saintly person on the planet devoted weeks to examining you thoroughly and ended up swearing on a pile of Bibles that you are truly cleansed from all your sins, your peace would soon give way to worrying over whether they could all be mistaken.

Earlier in this series of webpages (starting at Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope!) I have provided enormous quantities of detailed information, carefully explaining all the biblical, spiritual and rational reasons why forgiveness is fully available to absolutely everyone who puts faith in Jesus’ forgiveness, no matter how gross or repeated their sin (before or after salvation, including the vilest blasphemies) and no matter how plagued they are by blasphemous thoughts. Later in this series I have added many testimonies from people whose atrocious blasphemies and hideous sins after salvation confirm that forgiveness is available to all. (I am almost ashamed to include these testimonies, however, because they are totally unnecessary. It is like suggesting the Bible is unreliable and God might be a selfish liar unless people have testimonies that prove otherwise.) In addition to all this proof, I have another long series of webpages beginning at How Much does God Love Me? Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s Love for You proving the magnitude of God’s personal, never-ending love for every person. All of this only helps normal people, however.

Many people are tormented incessantly from what feels precisely like a guilty conscience and inability to feel God’s love, and yet it turns out that the cause is not spiritual at all. It seems initially unbelievable but for these people what drives intense feelings that are so easily mistaken for divine judgment – and it can even generate horrifically blasphemous thoughts as well – is a mild medical disorder that causes excess anxiety. None of my vast array of carefully written information will lower the deep concerns plaguing the millions of people whose anxiety has a medical basis. Just as proof that you are forgiven will not end the pain of a physical illness, neither will proof that you are forgiven end the inner pain of all the doubt, fears and worries caused by a physical illness – a disorder in one’s brain chemistry.

I completely understand you thinking I am mad, or at least unspiritual, to suggest such a thing. If you have not yet read many of my other webpages, you have not had the opportunity to discover how strongly conservative and into prayer and Scripture I am. If you need convincing, quickly scan You’re Forgivable: A Sample of the Bible Proof and Life’s Too Short to Skimp on Prayer for just a couple of sample webpages, and then immediately return to this page.

For years I have devoted enormous amounts of time and agony trying to help people who felt unforgivable. (For example, despite me being an exceptionally slow writer you will find on this website over 500 pages I have written specifically for people who find it hard to believe God forgives them.) For very many of those years, if anyone had suggested that there could be a medical component to this spiritual matter I would have thought they were crazy or ungodly. Large numbers of people kept e-mailing me seeking help, however, and as I kept pouring my life into trying to help them, I began noticing something peculiar. It was astoundingly common for those who could not be helped even by large numbers of faith-building Scriptures to have an anxiety disorder. Usually they regarded their anxiety disorder as irrelevant to their spiritual concerns, but as I kept conversing with more and more people, the link kept occurring far too often to be mere coincidence. Eventually, I discovered that a huge body of scientific research had already confirmed the link.

Like me, you will probably need a lot of convincing. That’s okay. I am so passionate about helping people who are suffering this horrific spiritual torment that I have gone to immense lengths assembling and carefully explaining the evidence in a logical, easily intelligible manner. All I ask is that you keep prayerfully reading it.

People afflicted by blasphemous thoughts or by continual doubts are among the surprisingly large number of people who are perfectly sane – and some are highly intelligent – except that their mind plays tricks in whatever narrow area of their life is of greatest importance to them. It is not because they have less faith, Bible knowledge, will-power or devotion than other Christians. In fact, they are usually above average on such measures. It is just that in this area of life, anxiety is almost literally driving them crazy. Contrary to what seems intuitively obvious, their fears are not spiritually or rationally driven but stem from a chemical imbalance that causes them to suffer from abnormal levels of anxiety. Because it has a medical basis, you cannot switch off this anxiety (and corresponding guilt feelings, worries about salvation, inability to control your thoughts, etc.) by more Bible reading, trying to worry less, working harder on building up your faith, or whatever. To suffer from medically caused anxiety is no more an indication that one is spiritually lacking than suffering a broken leg means one is spiritually lacking.

It boils down to the fact that the unfortunate people suffering this physical problem feel needlessly guilty, ill at ease or worry about at least one thing (it usually zeroes in on whatever is most important to them) far more than average people. And regardless of what they do – how much fellowship with God they have, how much faith they muster, how much theological knowledge they gain – that awful, unsettling feeling keeps gnawing away at them because the cause is not spiritual or rational but physical. No matter what they believe or think and how much God approves of them and delights in them, that horrible feeling keeps returning. Our brain is designed to treat that feeling – usually called anxiety – as an alarm warning us that something is seriously wrong. The problem is that when a chemical imbalance sets off a false alarm, the very alarm we rely on to alert us to physical or spiritual danger has been triggered. The part of our brain designed to respond to the alarm cannot distinguish a chemically induced false alarm from the real thing. As the alarm keeps on and on, the brain keeps frantically hunting for some danger that set off the alarm. No matter what reassurances come from God, Scripture, spiritual authorities, past experiences or whatever, the alarm keeps blaring and so the fear keeps persisting that there must be some genuine spiritual danger.

What confuses these people is that what some call their gut feeling – some call it one’s conscience and some even confuse it with the voice of God – has been seriously distorted by a condition well known to the medical profession. Unfortunately, in contrast to the experts, the implications are rarely understood by the general population.

With this deeply disturbing false alarm indistinguishable from the real thing blaring within a person day after day it is enough to seriously distort anyone’s spiritual perception. This devastating feeling keeps incessantly nagging; drowning out what for anyone not subjected to it would be more than enough proof of God’s acceptance. Although this highly unpleasant and confusing affliction troubles a relatively small proportion of people, the numbers add up to literally millions of people worldwide.

Multitudes of people suffer from an undiagnosed anxiety disorder. You could be one of them and if it turns out that you are, so many things will not make sense to you. For example:

* If you are plagued by horrible thoughts, the harder you try not to think them, the more you will have them.

* If you yearn for assurance of God’s forgiveness, the more you seek assurance, the less you will have it.

There is no space for a full explanation here – that comes further on – but once the process is carefully explained, it is readily understood by average people. Those suffering from this affliction, however, will have a much harder time accepting the truth because they find it so contrary to what feels intuitively right, and that dreadful feeling that something is terribly wrong keeps droning on as incessantly as ever. Everything within someone suffering from excess anxiety will scream against the truth. So despite trying to the point of utter exhaustion, those suffering this way will keep getting worse instead of better unless they totally change their understanding.

I hyperventilated once. I felt certain I was not getting enough air and so I breathed harder, totally oblivious to the fact that I was actually suffering from too much air and I needed to breathe less. So it is with those who are hounded by unwanted thoughts or yearning for assurance of salvation. They will only get worse until they learn to do almost the exact opposite of what they feel sure will help. They are so convinced that they need to be doing the opposite of what will actually help that they usually cannot even grasp what the following webpages are saying, but keep misinterpreting them to line up with their mistaken views.

I long to help you but it is impossible unless you not only read the following webpages but study them, regularly praying that your eyes be opened to the truths in them that you are currently blinded to. Even after you finally grasp the truth, you will repeatedly find yourself letting it slip and reverting to your old mistaken thinking that feels so intuitively right. So to keep on track you will need to keep returning to these webpages.

If you are a Christian suffering from oppressive guilt feelings or unwanted thoughts so ugly that you wonder whether you are demon possessed, you might never have realized that you almost certainly have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Although most people have heard of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, few recognize it when it turns spiritual. So we’ll look briefly at OCD and then consider how it causes Christians to be plagued with false guilt feelings or suffer spiritually repulsive thoughts that horrify them. We’ll then examine whether these insights and modern treatments can be of practical help to Christians.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an anxiety disorder. Some experts go deeper into the cause of the anxiety and call it a biochemical or neurological (nerve) disorder. This highlights that the anxiety is not the person’s fault or ignorance or lack of faith. It is still correct, however, to call it an anxiety disorder because it manifests itself as anxiety that, in turn, causes repeated, unwanted thoughts or doubts (obsessions). For many, but not all OCD sufferers, these obsessions lead to feeling driven to certain repetitive behaviors (compulsions) such as excessive cleaning, checking, counting or seeking assurances. A not uncommon form of OCD that is less publicized is for a normal heterosexual to be plagued with fear that he or she is homosexual. Another is for a normal, mild mannered person to be stricken with an abnormal fear that he or she will violently harm loved ones.

The United Nations’ World Health Organization ranks Obsessive Compulsive Disorder high among the most disabling of all illnesses, in terms of the monetary and personal cost. Millions of people have their lives dominated by some form of OCD. It is so common throughout the world that if there are just one hundred people in your church, two or three of them probably have OCD, although there is a good chance that one is so embarrassed by it that he is trying to keep it secret, and another does not even know she has it. (More about these figures)

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a medical condition. Put at its very simplest, OCD seems to be the consequence of a brain mechanism intended to warn a person of danger, doing so excessively. Scientists think they have identified a small part of the brain that does not function as perfectly in people with OCD. A key role of this part of the brain is to filter out inappropriate thoughts and feelings. Unless this filter is functionally normally, another part of the brain becomes overactive. Scans have shown unusual patterns of activity in the brains of OCD sufferers. In a few cases, head injuries seem to have caused OCD.

Scrupulosity is a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that plagues people who are anxious to please God. For them, the unwelcome, involuntary thoughts or images feature God or the devil, and compulsions feature the need to keep seeking assurance of salvation, or repeatedly engaging in some sort of religious exercise – such as prayer or witnessing or confessing sin – beyond what other Christians feel is needed.

The word scrupulosity alludes to the torment of an oversensitive conscience. It often involves mistakenly thinking that innocent or unavoidable things are sin and so feeling needlessly guilty. (Actually, it is other way around: anxiety feels like a guilty conscience, so the presence of excess anxiety causes its victims to feel needlessly guilty about minor or harmless things.) People afflicted with this condition often feel driven to do what to them seems to be minimum Christian requirements for God’s approval but is actually abandoning grace and heading for spiritual burnout in a joyless, exhausting religious works program. As mentioned, when scrupulosity turns to obsessive thoughts, it can generate upsetting, uncontrollable blasphemous thoughts or images about God, Jesus or the Holy Spirit, or exalting the devil. We’ll see later how people with an abnormally sensitive conscience end up hounded by the very thing they detest. We’ll also see that as the loving Lord holds no one responsible for being forcibly raped against his or her will, so he holds no one responsible for invasive thoughts or images that a person does not want.

Just as some people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder feel compelled to keep checking locks or washing their hands, others feel compelled to obsess over blasphemous thoughts that they hate or to keep doubting their salvation. In fact, scrupulosity has been called “pathological doubt.” OCD sufferers do something simple – depending on the person, it might be locking a door, switching off the oven, or receiving God’s forgiveness – and then their illness causes them to worry abnormally over whether they did it correctly. They feel driven to keep seeking assurance far beyond what is rational.

Scrupulosity can fill people with such false guilt that many are unlikely to admit to it, while others have no idea that they have an unhealthy sense of guilt and so suppose there is nothing wrong with them. Consequently, scrupulosity remains such a hidden disease that researchers have been unable to determine how common it is. One study of Catholic high school students found that a staggering 25% seemed to have scrupulosity. Perhaps there was something in their religious teaching that contributed to this astounding figure.

Famous Christians often thought to have suffered from scrupulosity include Martin Luther, who spear-headed the Protestant Reformation, and John Bunyan, author of one of the most influential of all Christian books, Pilgrims Progress. If so, it highlights how Christians can not only survive but spiritually thrive despite this affliction. The Almighty can turn this horror on its head, even bringing incalculable good out of a most distressing illness. This most certainly does not mean, however, that the God of love who went to the extreme of the cross wants anyone to suffer the torment of believing they are unforgivable – to say nothing of the fact that such a belief insults our Savior.

It is well known that in his early days as a monk, Luther was overwhelmed by feelings of utter depravity and terror of judgment. It is claimed that, despite desperately wanting to please God, he was assaulted by anger and hatred towards God, urges to curse God and, during prayer, obsessing about the devil’s rear end. It is frequently told how he threw an inkpot at a vision of the devil, but less well publicized is that he also threw an inkpot at a vision of Christ. I can only speculate, but perhaps Luther’s violent reaction was because the vision of Christ was sexual or in some other way grossly insulting to Christ. The great reformer often suffered such depression that he wished he had never been born.

Interestingly, Luther’s wife, Kate, is thought to have suffered from a different anxiety disorder; Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Not only is this condition often treated with the same medication as used to treat OCD, it can also be spiritually bewildering. A dear friend of mine was tormented by mysterious guilt feelings and feeling cut off from God. He suffered from a serious illness that caused great physical pain and yet he found this inner pain far worse than the physical pain. The torment persisted for years despite him having a solid biblical understanding of salvation, being strongly committed to God and frequently being powerfully used of God. Eventually, he discovered that GAD was causing what almost seemed to be spiritual symptoms. I will not pursue this subject here, but keep it in mind as another possible cause of feelings of guilt and/or alienation from God.

Other possible reasons for persistent guilt feelings include major depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia or delusional disorder. If there is no obvious psychological disorder, another possibility that should be examined is a besetting sin one is aware of, or maybe past sins that one finds too upsetting to think about or perhaps even consciously remember, but have not been confessed to God and repented of. There is a wide range of mental afflictions in which people are quite sane except for one small area of life in which their mind keeps lying to them. Take phobias and anxieties as an example. Most of us have one thing – perhaps heights or harmless spiders or public speaking – over which our mind, against all logic, floods us with fear or anxiety. Anorexic girls whose minds keep mistakenly telling them they are fat is another example. Hypochondriacs are people with healthy bodies whose mind keeps insisting that they must have an illness. Then there are people plagued with ridiculously low self-esteem.

We could go on and on listing examples until nearly everyone on the planet is included. Almost all of us have one area of life over which our mind consistently goes haywire, setting off alarms when there is no need for concern. Scrupulosity, or religious OCD, is simply another example.

If you suffer from scrupulosity, the sad, frustrating thing is that your sincere, heartfelt efforts have the opposite effect to what you want. The more you focus on your sin, the less time you have to focus on God’s love and grace; the harder you try to stop thinking about something, or the more it alarms or repulses you, the more you will think of it. It is like wiring people to detect the slightest change in sweat, breathing, blood pressure and pulse. Everything is fine until the stakes are raised by holding a gun to their heads and threatening to kill them if they show the tiniest bodily sign of nervousness. The more important it is to them that their hearts not beat faster, the more inevitable it is that this is exactly what will happen.

Just like increased heart rate, unwanted thoughts are not a moral or spiritual issue but an uncontrollable psychological reaction to anxiety. Unwanted thoughts are not sin. Morally, any thought you regret is in a totally different world to deliberately cultivated thoughts that come from a heart that truly hates God. In fact, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder latches on to what is most precious to us. A common form of OCD, for example, involves being hounded by thoughts of violently harming loved ones. This is to be expected because, with OCD, the very reason thoughts keep returning is because the thoughts horrify the person. This distressing illness reveals people’s heart by showing what they most fear doing. With OCD, repeated thoughts reveal not what a person wants but what the person least wants.

The God of infinite understanding and compassion knows this. The Almighty views obsessive blasphemous thoughts through eyes of love and not only does not see this behavior as sin, but sees it as proof of a heart that is anxious to honor him.

Moreover, even if you had repeatedly and deliberately committed the most atrocious conceivable sins, it could not keep you from God, if you want him. As biblically expounded elsewhere on this site, God’s Word is emphatic that no sin is beyond the forgiving power of Christ’s sacrifice, provided the offender wants God’s forgiveness and trusts Jesus for it. Yes, even enjoying the most vile, sinful, disgusting thoughts about sacred things, cursing the Holy Spirit and selling your soul to the devil after fully experiencing salvation, is fully forgivable the moment anyone repents and trusts Jesus for forgiveness.

Studies, such as one by psychologist Stanley Rachman, have found that normal people admit to having shockingly bizarre, perverted, sadistic or blasphemous impulses from time to time. It is an inescapable part of being human.

Almost never, does Satan or one of his demons use his own audible voice to tempt anyone. His time-proven method is to tempt by speaking to us in our minds. Since Jesus was “tempted in every way, just as we are” (Hebrews 4:15), the sinless Son of God must also have at times suffered the type of temptation that comes in the form of unwanted thoughts and urges. As I have explained elsewhere, temptation is spiritual rape. And we know that Jesus was tempted to “bow down and worship” Satan (Matthew 4:9). (Would you panic if that thought came to you or an image flashed into your mind of you worshipping Satan? Would you wrongly think there is something spiritually wrong with you?) And let’s not suppose that Jesus was only tempted in the wilderness. When the forty days were finally over, Luke 4:13 says the devil “departed from him for a season” (KJV) or, as the NIV puts it “left him until an opportune time.” So it is scriptural to believe that the Holy Lord suffered from unwanted blasphemous thoughts and images, “yet was without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

Average Christians have the occasional blasphemous thought or spiritually disgusting image flash through their minds. They dismiss it as nonsense and are so unconcerned that they quickly forget that it had ever happened. If, however, you managed to fool them into supposing that such a thought could doom them to hell, the very terror would make it inevitable that they could not stop thinking about it. The thought would keep returning over and over, not because these people are sinful, but solely because they are excessively anxious not to think such thoughts. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you will recall, is an anxiety disorder.

Phobias are another type of anxiety disorder. OCD is similar in that both problems involve an exaggerated fear of something that is unlikely to prove a genuine reason for serious concern. And the fear might not be an accurate barometer of the person’s faith. There are ways, however, in which OCD is even more distressing than phobias. One is that the average person can more readily identify with, and sympathetically tolerate, people who have phobias. Even if someone does not fear spiders, for instance, he can usually put himself in the shoes of those who do. With OCD, however, the fear is of one’s own thoughts. The average person might find that harder to understand. People with OCD might display behavior that frustrates other people and those close to them might need to be reminded that OCD sufferers are coping the best they can. Most of the time, people with phobias can chose to avoid what they fear, even though avoidance might be most inconvenient. When the fear is one’s own thoughts, however, there is nowhere to hide and it could strike at any time. (Source)

To try to reassure Christians with scrupulosity, I have gone way over the top in producing a vast number of webpages about the certainty of God’s forgiveness, starting at Feeling Condemned? There’s Hope! But just as arguing that someone’s hands are clean does not stop a compulsive hand washer from washing dozens of times a day, so rational, biblical arguments do not stop a Christian with religious OCD from continuing to feel anxious about his salvation and keep craving still more reassurance. Moreover, convincing arguments can only prove certain thoughts incorrect, they can never stop those thoughts from buzzing around in our brains like pesky flies.

Seeking reassurance on the Internet is particularly dangerous because lurking in cyberspace are many wolves in sheep’s clothing and “know-alls” who know nothing about OCD. If you must keep checking, please limit yourself to your pastor, or people he delegates, and my exhaustive, Bible-based exploration of the subject. But know that doubts will persist, because that’s the nature of the illness, and the relentless nature of the Tempter. Salvation is by faith – by choosing to disbelieve your own doubts and guilt feelings and placing your faith solely in the fact that Christ died for the sins of the whole world, which must include every sin you could ever commit.

No part of us – our consciences included – is infallible. The Bible insists that forgiven Christians can have hearts (consciences) that condemn them but this does not change the spiritual reality that the infallible, all-seeing Judge sees them as forgiven.

1 John 3:19-20 This then is how we . . . set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts . . .

Saving faith is about choosing to exalt Christ above your own conscience. Faith involves stubbornly and defiantly believing in the unlimited power of Christ’s sacrifice to forgive, even in the face of a relentlessly accusing conscience. This is spiritual warfare at its highest and those who hold on to Christ, refusing to believe their faulty conscience, win heaven’s highest praise.

Strongman Samson was eventually defeated by Delilah, a physically much weaker woman. Here’s how it happened:

Judges 16:16 With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was tired to death.

She wore him down by using the same old method day after day. It’s one of the devil’s favorite tactics. Be smarter than Samson. Keep resisting the nagging of your conscience, no matter how tiring it gets.

To believe in the saving power of Christ’s sacrifice and yet be plagued with a guilty conscience is like having the misfortune of living in a house with a faulty fire alarm that goes off every few minutes. That would be most unpleasant, but taking the alarm seriously and fearing that you are about to be burnt alive every time the alarm goes off, would needlessly turn an unpleasant situation into sheer torment.

While preparing this webpage I received an email from a middle-aged man. It illustrates the steadfast faith we can have in the power of Christ’s salvation despite numerous challenging issues in our lives.

Over my life I have been hospitalized 23 times for mental illness. I have been a Christian less than a year. After I got saved I had another psychotic break and ended up in hospital for two months. Since getting out I have had disturbing thoughts of a sexual nature towards God and I am constantly reminded of these things. I am very disturbed by some of the things that go through my mind – distressing, unclean, profane, irreligious thoughts, etc.

I don’t really like myself very much. I could dredge up a lot of memories that contribute to this. When I was 15, for instance, I forced myself on a girl. People could see us. It is extremely hard for me to call it rape but it was very nearly that. Now I deal with perverse thoughts that I compulsively think about. It even happens at church and takes the joy out of worship. When we sing praise I think about the devil and think I’m praising him and not God.

I feel like killing myself almost every day. I am belligerent towards God. I am so preoccupied with my problems that it makes it hard for me to consider a relationship with a woman because all I can seem to think about is my problems.

I remember hearing John 3:16 the first time and thinking, “God loves me? So what?” But I am beginning to realize that the overriding reality in life is God’s amazing love. Really knowing deep down inside how truly loved and valued I am makes a big difference. I will keep revisiting your webpages about God’s love for me, because a core issue of mine is thinking that I am not loved or am unlovable. Why would anyone love me after all the sins I’ve committed? I do feel worthless at times.

Today I was really feeling like a person with a mental illness. I went to my mental health program for some horticultural therapy and really felt disabled. I had to come back to my apartment to chill out. I feel like I am letting God down. When I lie awake in bed for hours I feel guilty and the thought keeps coming that I am going to hell because I am not doing what God wants me to.

The Bible verse that came to me yesterday was if I delight in the Lord he will give me the desires of my heart. I immediately discounted the thought and started thinking about Satan and having compulsive thoughts but was able to bring myself out it. Just believing that Jesus lives in my heart and will never leave me brings everything back into focus. (Emphasis mine)

What a superb example of faith! How proud of him God and all of heaven must be! Great faith is not about instant changes to circumstances but holding on by sheer grit. Remember how Scripture repeatedly exalts Abraham as faith’s role model because he kept believing year after year after year that God would give him a child, despite there being no change in his circumstances, other than increasing age that seemed to make the situation increasingly hopeless.

The Bible reveals that not just salvation but everything in the Christian life – the power to love, answered prayer, victory over temptation, wisdom, spiritual gifts, understanding Scripture, and so on – is God’s unmerited gift that becomes ours through faith. Since it is through faith that we receive all these priceless gifts, faith is without question the most precious thing in the universe. Just as our physical bodies grow strong by being repeatedly pushed to the limit, so it is with growing in faith. Scrupulosity pushes one’s faith to the limit. By doing so, it can produce spiritual giants. So if Luther and Bunyan and other outstanding people of God had religious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, it comes as no surprise to me.

Oppressively strong doubts, a condemning conscience and feeling unforgivable are nothing but temptations to stop believing in the power of Jesus’ sacrifice to forgive all sin. Temptations are as sure to come as pimples on a teenage date. Yes, even the sinless Son of God was tempted. We can stop temptation from entering our minds no more than we can stop the devil from existing, but no matter how tortured with guilt feelings we are and how many anti-God thoughts flood our minds, we can stop ourselves from being fooled into thinking our Savior cannot, or will not, save everyone – no exceptions – who wants his salvation.

My mother has a phobia about birds. Intellectually, she knows that entering an aviary would be safe, but the thought of doing so terrifies her. This has nothing to do with her intelligence; it is a psychological condition. Likewise you can know that you are forgiven because you have put your faith in the power of Christ’s forgiveness, but you can still be afflicted with false guilt feelings, fears and unwanted thoughts. This has nothing to do with your salvation; it is a psychological condition.

Medical Considerations

It is tragically common for doctors to misdiagnose people with OCD as having depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism or schizophrenia. Studies show that in USA it takes an average of nine years from the onset of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder for people to receive even a correct diagnosis and, amazingly, a further eight years before they are suitably treated. But if having the courage and knowledge to find treatment is difficult with general OCD, it is usually significantly harder with scrupulosity. Few people suffering from religious OCD even realize they have a medical or psychological problem.

It is much easier, for example, to recognize that washing your hands fifty times a day is abnormal and undesirable than if OCD manifests itself as an overly sensitive conscience or feeling the need to pray or witness for hours each day. In fact, people with scrupulosity usually mistake their out-of-whack, condemning conscience for their loving Savior. They feel driven to excessive devotion that leads only to feelings of inadequacy and burnout, or to mistakenly supposing that the Bible condemns them as unforgivable and because anxiety feels like an unappeasable guilty conscience, they are likely to stubbornly cling to this delusion, no matter how many pastors, theologians or spiritual advisors tell them otherwise. Similarly, it is easier to realize you have a purely psychological affliction if you feel compelled to keep checking locks, than if you feel compelled to cuss the Holy Spirit. These serious hindrances to seeking treatment are further magnified by some Christians, who have no qualms about seeking human help if they have a plumbing problem, but somehow fear it might be unspiritual or a lack of faith to seek human help for a medical or mental problem.

As a man of science, and someone who has devoted his entire life to serving people without charge, I find it annoying that almost every possible natural cure for anything has been less rigorously researched and tested than substances that drug companies could make money out of. There is much scientifically based evidence that there are medications that can help OCD (although, because everyone reacts differently, finding the exact medication that best suits you is likely to take patience and trial and error). However, there is some scientific evidence that there are some simple things like vitamins that can be equally effective, often at lower cost and with fewer side effects. Since I am not medically trained, I urge you to consult a doctor before trying even vitamins but if you have not yet tried medication, I suggest you seek medical advice about first trying inositol, an essential, apparently harmless, naturally occurring substance found in every cell of your body. Although the current amount of scientific proof is less compelling for the effectiveness of inositol than for certain medication, it is also less likely to have any side effects. Information about inositol and other simple, natural cures is provided in another webpage (Natural Cures for Anxiety-Related Illnesses) but I suggest that for the moment you keep reading and turn to that page later.

When I mention medication, don’t for a moment suppose this is to drug you or in any way make you less mentally alert. I want your thinking sharpened, not dulled, and the way to facilitate mental clarity is for you to be in peak health and especially to correct any bodily abnormalities and imbalances that have the potential to distort one’s thinking and perceptions.

Our bodies are highly complex and dependent upon a vast number of factors. If some imbalance prevents our bodies from functioning normally, it could affect not only our physical well-being but our feelings, emotions, perceptions and clarity of thinking.

Here are some well-known examples:

* Sleep deprivation can cause learning, concentration and memory difficulties, mood changes, lowered ability to tolerate stress, and make you error/accident-prone. Severe sleep deprivation often results in hallucinations.

* Low blood sugar can cause impaired mental functioning, irritability, confusion, difficulty speaking, anxiety, paranoia and/or aggression.

* Insufficient oxygen (such as in altitude sickness) can cause confusion, clumsiness, and stumbling. The first signs may be uncharacteristic behavior such as laziness, excessive emotion or violence.

* Hormonal imbalance can cause all sorts of mood changes, including postnatal (postpartum) depression.

* Insufficient sunlight can cause depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder, for example).

If your body were lacking in iron and it were affecting your health, would you refuse to take an iron supplement? Providing a doctor confirms you will benefit from an iron supplement, I believe it would be sinful to refuse because:

1. Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and so should be looked after.

2. As in the parable of the talents, we have a responsibility before God to develop responsibly what God has entrusted to us.

If someone kindly gave you a new car it would be disrespectful to the giver to let the car deteriorate by not changing the oil and so on. Likewise, it is disrespectful to the One who gave us our bodies not to do what we can to keep ourselves in peak health. We will one day have to give account to God if we achieve less in life because we have let ourselves be physically run down.

The same would apply if we achieve less in life than we are capable of because we let ourselves be psychologically run down by not taking dietary supplements if we have a deficiency. Just as being intoxicated creates a chemical imbalance that lowers one’s ability to think clearly and resist temptation, so do a number of other chemical imbalances that can occur within the body.

Religious OCD sufferers either feel spiritually inferior to most Christians or realize that they have it harder than most Christians. Few realize that the primary reason is not spiritual but physical. Correcting a physical imbalance that affects one’s thinking gives people a head start (pun intended) relative to where they would be if they kept suffering the disorder but it is no head start relative to where healthy people are. Knowingly maintaining the handicap by refusing to correct an imbalance is as spiritually irresponsible as deliberately choosing to expose oneself to horrific temptation. Like being sober, correcting an imbalance in no way eliminates the need for spiritual weapons, spiritual graces and so on; it simply allows a person to have more of the basic resources that help other Christians cope with trials.

To refuse whatever it takes to have a properly functioning body is neither being spiritual nor macho. It is simply being irresponsible.

There is not a Christian on the planet who is not tempted and it seems logical to assume that demons play a role in most temptation. Certainly Satan does not have the divine power to be everywhere at once, so if he is involved, it could only be through his underlings. Demons are nothing to be freaked out about; we should simply seek to expose and resist their attempts to deceive us. With this in mind, sober thought and experience with literally hundreds of people suffering from religious OCD has forced me to conclude that the temptation to not do whatever one can to correct a bodily chemical imbalance is not just illogical, it is demonically inspired. It is undeniable that demons have much to gain and the kingdom of God much to lose by keeping Christians from anything that would allow them to think more clearly.

Serotonin is a bodily substance essential for health. As a neurotransmitter it plays a vital role in brain function. Medications usually prescribed for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder are intended to affect serotonin levels and are technically known as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). Confusingly they are often popularly referred to as antidepressants. (It is not uncommon for a single medication to be prescribed for a diverse range of illnesses. For example, quinine is the first effective treatment for malaria and yet is used to treat arthritis and also lupus.) Certain medications that help people with OCD might happen to also benefit some people who are depressed, but their primary function is to correct a serotonin imbalance in the brain. This chemical imbalance seems to be a key factor in OCD and associated deceptive guilt feelings and unwanted thoughts. Sometimes a higher dosage is needed to treat OCD than to treat depression.

Interestingly, in trials involving placebos, a high proportion of depressed people reported less depression after taking fake pills, but very few people with OCD responded to fake pills.

Treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder has sometimes been found even more effective when two or more medications are combined. If, with a particular OCD sufferer, a prescribed medication has an unwanted side effect, there is often an alternative medication that is just as effective and for that person does not have the side effect. In fact, my mother’s doctor told her there are four different classes of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. She had to try all four until finally finding one that suited her. Abruptly ceasing medication can cause additional problems, such as withdrawal symptoms.

So if dissatisfied with the medication, there are good reasons for seeking further medical advice. A general doctor could get you started but for maximum effectiveness it might be best to see a doctor who specializes in this type of medication. These medical specialists are psychiatrists. They should not be confused with psychotherapists – the type popularly portrayed as getting you to lie on a couch and talk about your childhood. Neither should they be confused with psychologists. In contrast to psychiatrists, psychologists are not qualified as medical doctors and so cannot prescribe medication. Psychologists usually specialize in cognitive-behavior therapy, which we will discuss shortly.

A common mistake that even some doctors make is to underestimate how long it will take for the medication to begin to lessen the symptoms of OCD. Although medication often takes just a few weeks to begin to work, in some cases it could take up to three months. It is also important to realize that treatment is expected to reduce the severity of OCD rather than a complete removal of all symptoms.

Although response to attempts to correct the chemical imbalance varies considerably from person to person, Clifton’s experience might prove helpful for some readers. For several months, he found relief through taking 12 mg of inositol daily. In his case, however, the benefits eventually faded to the point where he needed to replace it with an antidepressant (Prozac). Clifton was already taking 1800 mg of omega 3 to help another medical condition. When researching OCD he learned that studies suggest fish oil can produce benefits similar to antidepressants but he took little notice as he knew that with fish oil alone his OCD was quite bad. When he later stopped taking fish oil, however, he discovered the benefits of fish oil. When combined with the antidepressant, the result was considerably better in combating OCD than with Prozac alone. Research suggests that fish oil has a multitude of positive effects and yet even fish oil can have negative effects in some people, such as thinning the blood too much. So, as with all “natural cures,” I strongly advise medical supervision.

Please be aware that if you cease the medication, symptoms could return to pretreatment levels. In fact, Professor of Psychology, Henry A. Virkler wrote the following in The Journal of Psychology and Christianity (Vol. 18, No.3, 1999, page 269), I quote it because it might also apply when these same medications are used to treat OCD.

Persons with major depression who stop antidepressants too quickly may experience a recurrence of the depression, and it may not respond to a second round of antidepressants as rapidly or fully as it did to the first round. Similarly, for those with bipolar disorder, current treatment guidelines recommend permanent use of mood-stabilizing medication, for without it each manic or depressive episode tends to become more serious and difficult to treat.

A woman shared the following with me and has allowed me to quote her. Her experience of medication helping but not eliminating the problem is what I expect to be fairly typical.

I have suffered from scrupulosity practically all my life. It started with blasphemous thoughts while I was in church when I was 12 years old, and I am now a bit beyond middle-aged. Ultimately I stopped going to church because of the guilt. I felt as if I were possessed. Shortly after the thoughts, I began washing my hands a lot as if to “cleanse” the guilt. I also started checking things a lot.

I basically suffered in silence and was not diagnosed until many years later. Then I was put on Prozac and later Zoloft. The medication helped quite a bit with the thoughts and cleansing rituals. The thoughts are still there, but more like background noise and less guilt-inducing. The hand washing is pretty much gone, and the checking is under better control – only at times of stress does it resurface.

The only thing that still plagues me is an overwhelming feeling of responsibility, as well as feeling guilt over things I enjoy.

It is clear that she still has challenges – medication is not the wimp’s way out – but like carving an occasional foothold into a cliff face, it helps.

Please don’t be reluctant to get help. You owe it to God to seek the best treatment. For information about non-prescription ways of improving your brain chemistry, see Natural Cures for Depression & Anxiety-Related Illnesses.

New treatments are currently being tested, such as deep brain stimulation. Trials are also underway with drugs that target the brain chemical, glutamate, that is thought to be a factor in OCD.

In cases that are both extreme and rare, brain surgery or Electro-Convulsive Shock Therapy have been suggested. However, cognitive-behavioral therapy is far more proven and safe. It is widely recommended for people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, often in conjunction with medication.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is basically being skillfully guided to train yourself to lower the anxiety that causes the problem. You could think of it as overcoming a brain problem by retraining the brain. The effect is a little like what happens when, by retraining themselves, people overcome the debilitating effect of brain damage caused by a stroke.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy is usually done in a carefully controlled manner, but treatment typically involves deliberately doing the thing you fear, and refusing to engage in any compulsive “remedy.” For a compulsive hand washer, for instance, it would usually involve reaching the point of deliberately getting the hands dirty and refusing to wash for hours. At first, the anxiety over not washing would be high, but as time progresses without washing, anxiety would gradually lower. For the treatment to be effective and long lasting, anxiety merely has to be lowered, not necessarily completely eliminated.

This exact approach is awkward with religious OCD, however. It is easy to believe that you will not die or go to hell if you do not check locks thirty times a day. You will then be free to use cognitive-behavioral therapy to address the irrational anxiety you feel over not engaging in that behavior. But for cognitive-behavioral therapy to work, someone with scrupulosity must first reach the point of believing that the behavior he is anxious about – such as uncontrollably swearing at God or witnessing less – does not threaten one’s walk with God. Arriving at that belief will not automatically lower one’s anxiety – that’s where cognitive-behavioral therapy comes in. Since that belief is the starting point for cognitive-behavioral therapy, however, it must be reached by some means other than cognitive-behavioral therapy. That makes this extensive series of webpages particularly valuable.

Another problem with cognitive-behavioral therapy, however, is if the therapist wants you to train yourself to lower your anxiety by deliberately thinking blasphemous thoughts. That is certainly a way of tackling head-on one’s irrational fear of the thoughts, but it hardly seems desirable from a Christian perspective.

The next webpage in this series will introduce you to a Christian modification of cognitive-behavioral therapy that I think you will feel much more comfortable with.

Ralph shares his experience with scrupulosity:

When disgusting thoughts against the God I love first started screaming in my head, I thought I was “possessed” or crazy. Against my will, I found myself swearing at God and cursing him in the vilest manner. It was torture. I presumed I was the only one ever to have this problem. To my relief, I later found out that many others also suffer from this affliction. That helped. I now belong to a chat room called the Scrupe Group: the_scrupe_group-subscribe@yahoogroups.com The group was established by a Lutheran pastor who has scrupulosity. It really helps to talk with these people.

I’ve also read many books on this subject. (Details)

Medication has helped me, too, since Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain.

I try to keep in mind that it’s a disease and that God isn’t mad at me for having it. Would he be angry with a person for having cancer or diabetes? So he’s not angry with me for having this problem. He knows I hate these horrible thoughts and doubts.

At times, I get to thinking that God is just waiting to catch me doing something wrong so he can keep me out of heaven. I have to keep reminding myself that the God of love actually wants us to spend eternity with him. I think if any of us could grasp how much God loves us, we would never worry about anything ever again.

Another consequence of scrupulosity is that throughout my day, I think I’m sinning on every little thing, and it upsets me. For example, if someone cuts me off in traffic, I might mutter to myself, “Idiot!” Then I panic. “Oh no, I’ve sinned! Father, forgive me!”

Awful thoughts about God tend to especially hit me when I’m tired, or not doing anything in particular, or if I’m uptight about something.

I just want to be pleasing to God in everything I do and it’s upsetting to me when I think I’m not. I feel the need to pray a lot, which usually is good because I’m thanking him for all the good things that happen, large and small. But I spend too much time asking for forgiveness for this and that.

Although I don’t do this anymore, I often used to keep thinking I needed to ask Jesus to be my Lord and Savior “just one more time to make sure.” I read of a man who kept doing this over and over, day after day. Finally, his pastor told him, “God heard you the first time!”

It is a horrible disease to have terrifying doubts and terrible thoughts about God in my head, but I guess it’s my cross to bear. A year ago, I was barely able to function but I’m doing pretty good now.

I recently joined the Net-burst.Net ministry team. We receive prayer requests from needy people all over the world and I have found praying for these people most helpful in changing my focus from my own concerns to those of other people. It seems to make my own worries shrink in size.

If I could have just one dream come true when I die it is to see Jesus with his arms open for a hug, saying to me, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

I suggest you memorize the following:

* We are not morally responsible for the thoughts or images that come unbidden into our minds. It is no more our fault than it is Jesus’ fault that he was tempted to worship Satan.

* Disliking certain thoughts is the moral opposite of enjoying those thoughts.

* No matter how perverted or grossly insulting to God your thoughts are, normal Christians have such thoughts.

* If these thoughts torment you, the only thing distinguishing you from average Christians is that you have an excessively delicate, accusing conscience, causing these thoughts or images to alarm you. Other people would realize they are not responsible for intrusive thoughts and so remain unconcerned.

* If the thoughts keep returning, it is simply because you fear them.

* As overcoming a fear of heights, or of spiders, is very difficult, so is overcoming a fear of anti-God thoughts. God thinks the same of you, however, regardless of how successful or unsuccessful you are at overcoming the fear – and hence the repetition – of the thoughts.

* God is love. It is his very nature. For God to stop loving you he would have to stop being God. He wants you to enjoy all of eternity with him.

* Genuine, selfless love always wants to forgive. So the Almighty, for whom nothing is impossible, always wants to forgive you, no matter how gross or frequent your sins.

* Since Jesus died for the sins of the whole world, no sin is excluded from the power of God’s forgiveness.

* True love always respects the loved one’s wishes. Just as it would not be true love for a man to kidnap a woman and force her to be his wife, no matter how much he believed she would benefit from it, so it is against God’s nature to force his forgiveness on anyone.

* Since God is love, and Jesus was tortured to death to make possible the forgiveness of all sin, the only thing keeping anyone from Jesus’ forgiveness is God’s loving refusal to force forgiveness on anyone who does not want Jesus to forgive him and take away his sins.

* If you want Jesus to take away all your sins, and you trust him for forgiveness, you are not only loved of God (as everyone is), you are totally forgiven. In God’s eyes you are sinless, no matter how guilty your over-sensitive conscience makes you feel. Your loving, forgiving God is your Judge, not your fallible conscience.

Someone defeated by hypochondria will keep believing he is sick, no matter what medical tests and doctors say. Someone defeated by anorexia nervosa will keep believing she is fat, no matter what scales, mirrors and people say. Likewise, someone defeated by religious OCD will keep believing he is guilty and unforgivable, no matter what God, the Bible and pastors say. But no one has to be defeated. Anyone with religious OCD will keep suffering overwhelming feelings of guilt but no one is forced to believe his/her own feelings. It is the nature of this affliction that the feelings will be so strong and persistent that it feels that they must be true. It is ever so easy to cave into the feelings and choose to believe in them, rather than in the power of Christ, but no matter how convincing the feelings are, it is still a choice as to what we believe. Choose life! Choose to cling to faith in the forgiving power of the One who is Life (John 14:6) and gave his life for your every sin.

I suggest that you not only pray the following but that you record the web address of this page so that you can keep returning to it:

In the name of Jesus, who shed his blood that I might have eternal life, I rebuke and refuse to surrender to any and every evil power that would like me to doubt the infinity of God’s love and goodness and to doubt the power of Jesus’ sacrifice to forgive all sin. I hereby relinquish everything that is not of God and I swear my allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ, affirming him as my Lord and Savior and declaring that the cleansing power of his sacrifice is stronger than any sin I could ever commit.

Anxiety might plague me, Lord, but I praise you that you are stronger than any unwanted feeling, doubt, worry, guilt, fear or disgusting thoughts. Moreover, you have promised to work all things together for the good of those who love you. I love you, so this is your promise to me.

I thank you that this persistent anxiety that harasses and confuses me is my opportunity to grow spiritually stronger, just as having to keep running uphill is a chance to grow physically stronger. Faith is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7) and faith can only develop during times when feelings and circumstances clash with what you want me to believe. So I praise you for this opportunity to grow in faith. And I thank you that even though, because of the very nature of the trial, it will feel as if you have left me, you are actually with me every step of the way. Despite everything that might plague me and confuse me, you have pledged never to leave me nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5). Regardless of what I feel, you remain faithful and true.

You are Truth and you declare over and over such things as:

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

You rightly say that if I claim to have never sinned, I deceive myself and accuse you of lying. In the same way, if I, who have confessed to you my sins and put my faith in Jesus, claim to be unforgiven, I also deceive myself and accuse you of being a liar.

Anxiety feels like a guilty conscience. This tempts me to dishonor you by concluding that just because I feel guilty, you must have lied when you made this promise to cleanse all who confess their sin to you. Despite these horrible feelings, however, I make you, not my feelings, my God – my spiritual authority and source of truth. Since you, in the above Scripture, declare me purified from all unrighteousness, then I am purified from all unrighteousness, no matter what I experience and how powerfully I might be tempted to think otherwise. So I hang on to your truth, refusing to contradict you, no matter what feelings and doubts rage within.

I cannot stop powerful feelings that are contrary to your truth – even Jesus was tempted – but I can repent of caving into the temptation to accept those feelings as truth. I repent of being so carnal as to think that a mere feeling – rather than your Word – indicates spiritual truth. I have sinned by thinking that you might not be the God of infinite love and that you therefore must prove your love for me by giving me signs or feelings or assurances. I have insulted you by wanting such “proof,” as if you could lie or be unloving unless what you say is true matches my feelings or circumstances. From now on, I steadfastly refuse to believe that any feeling, no matter how strong, persistent and convincing, is a more reliable source of truth than you are.

“The just shall live by faith” (KJV, cited four times in the Bible – Habakkuk 2:4. Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38). So I choose to live by faith, not feelings. I hereby renounce feelings, or anything less than you alone, as a reliable source of spiritual truth.

The perfection of divine love means that you passionately love even your worst enemies; more fervently yearning to forgive them than any human is capable of craving anything. You recoil at the thought of in any way letting your beloved Son’s agonizing sacrifice for the sins of the entire world be in vain. You want no one to perish (1 Timothy 2:3-4; 2 Peter 3:9; Ezekiel 33:11).

You tell us to forgive “seventy times seven” and yet I keep worrying that you will tire of forgiving me, as if perhaps you were a hypocrite. The truth is that you love me far, far more than any human has ever managed to love himself or anyone else. Driven by infinite love, you passionately long to keep on forgiving me and to lavish your mercy upon me for all eternity. Since this is your burning desire, propelling you to the extreme of the cross, I was wrong to ever beg you to forgive me, as if there were any reluctance within you to cleanse me. You are eager to forgive; your reluctance is in giving signs and feelings because that makes me spiritually vulnerable by fostering a dependence upon means that the Deceiver can easily replicate and manipulate. Your word declares that it is faith, not signs and feelings, that is “the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, KJV). I repent of playing into the devil’s hand by seeking such things instead of simply accepting your loving forgiveness. I acknowledge that signs and feelings are the Devil’s playthings – his way to entice us to get our eyes off the cross and the integrity of your character. He cannot touch spiritual truth but he can toy with signs and feelings. Faith is our only shield; our sole protection against his trickery.

So I commit myself to start honoring you by stubbornly clinging to you, no matter how many doubts, fears, worries, guilt feelings and unwanted thoughts scream within me.

I cease right now from insulting you by wanting signs, feelings or assurances as proof that you love and forgive everyone – including me – who comes to you in the name of Jesus Christ. I renounce all attempts to get such things. The integrity of your character is all that I need. I resolve from now on to live as you have called all your children to live – by sheer faith, and nothing else.

Remember:

Scrupulosity (Religious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is the product of an oversensitive heart and a yearning to please God and yet the sufferer typically feels the exact opposite, worrying about having a hardened heart and fearing he/she is not godly enough.

This Next Page is Important For Everyone with Guilt Problems:

Treating Religious Obsessive Compulsive Disorder





Not to be sold. © Copyright, 2007, 2012, 2013 Grantley Morris. Not to be copied in whole or in part without citing this entire paragraph. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings by Grantley Morris available free at the following internet site www.net-burst.net Freely you have received, freely give.