I’m about to get a bunch of edgelords roasting me in the comments. Oh well.
For those of you who may not know: I’m a Christian. Supposedly, anyway. I’m not a very good one, and I haven’t been particularly devout for a long time. But I’ve been trying to reconnect with my faith over the past few months, thinking that a little bit of spirituality might help me with things.
Well, unfortunately, it hasn’t gone very well. My scrupulosity came back, and it came back pretty hard. And for those of you who don’t know what scrupulosity is, I’m going to give you Google’s definition, since I’m too tired to put it in my own words:
“Scrupulosity is characterized by pathological guilt about moral or religious issues. It is personally distressing, objectively dysfunctional, and often accompanied by significant impairment in social functioning.”
Basically, my conscience is torturing the fuck out of me, and it’s using my religion to do so. And I say my scrupulosity “came back” because this isn’t the first time I’ve experienced it. Some of you who have read my older posts may remember that I used to be really worried about burning in Hell. Well, now you know why.
I should’ve known this would happen. It serves me right for trying to have a normal and fulfilling relationship with my God, and be happy.
I hate my brain so much. It poisons everything it touches. Why can’t I just go to church and say my prayers like a normal person? Why do I have to take on the personality of a fourteenth-century Flagellant? Fuck me.
I feel so alone right now.
28 comments
Well, FWIW, I am a Christian too. Sorry to hear false guilt is gripping you. The pathological guilt of scrupulosity obviously ignores your completely and utterly forgiven state as a Christain. That surely sucks.
That’s a variant of OCD. Hey, I know that inclination. It’s probably even worse when you realize the irrationality of the underlying urge. It’s like obsessing over right angles and straight lines, only to find that some wooden boards aren’t symmetrical. It should be obvious beforehand, but there are no accounting for knots. Nature and life are very knobby. Morality, doubly so.
What moral / religious points are you feeling guilty about, in particular?
I think it’s nice that you’re taking on the personality of a 14th century flagellant, rather then a modern day Christian. My main issue with the everyday Christian is exactly that they think being a Christian and “accepting Jesus” absolves them of every and any sin they commit or have committed. I happened to actually kind of like Saints like John of the Cross. Thought they were a much better class of people then the Christians of the modern day.
I have a great respect for Dietrich Bonhoeffer, personally.
Didn’t know who that was, but I googled his quotes and…yeah, he seems to be my type of guy!
The guy was executed by the Nazis for resisting the Reich, and trying to help Jewish people. I guess he considered it an extension of his faith to do what he did, and he had no complaints about the outcome. That alone sets him apart from the crowd in my book.
I googled Dietrich Bonhoeffer too. very brave.
Never mind, I can answer this one.
I agree that most modern Christians are complacent and lukewarm, but I don’t think my constant guilt makes me any better than they are. I’m still lukewarm just like them, I just know that being lukewarm is wrong. And, doing something even though you know it’s bad is even worse than doing it with no knowledge that it’s bad. So I’d say I’m worse than most Christians, actually.
For example, I have a little brother. We’re really close. He’s my favorite person in the entire world. But he also happens to not be a Christian.
I know I’m supposed to do *something* for him. Try to warn him, try to help him, try to help steer him onto the right path. Try to be a good ambassador of my faith to him, at least. But I just…can’t seem to fucking do anything. It’s because I’m a selfish coward. I care more about my brother liking me and respecting me than I care about his soul. And that’s, well, disgusting. I won’t sugarcoat it. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusted with myself.
Just my advice, but don’t you think leading by example is better then preaching at him? At least, that’s what i aimed to do when I had others that i wanted to guide down a path that I thought was right.
If you think about it, that’s essentially what Christianity is all about. Leading by example. God made man in his image, the New Testament is more or less an biography of Jesus’s life, and that’s really all that was needed for people to go off and do their best to be the best Christians they could be. So leading by example seems to be the best way to go.
Small steps in the right direction is what gets you to the end goal. Not flying too fast and too high.
It seems like all my brain ever does is ruin everything for me, too. But if I were you, I’d try to take a small measure of pride. Think of it this way- scrupulosity may be annoying as fuck, but it shows you have the ability to care and reflect on your actions. It shows you’re not some unthinking asshole wandering through life causing havoc and never regretting any of it
So that’s what it’s called! Thanks. I beat myself up too, but we’re not supposed to live guilty and condemned. I think maybe it comes from thinking we have to do everything just right, but that’s not the case at all. God is still molding us. We are not a finished product yet so try not to be too hard on yourself!
Joel Osteen had a sermon recently about this exact same thing. It’s called “It Is Finished”:
You need to announce, “It is finished! I’m done beating myself up, living condemned. God’s mercy is bigger than my mistakes. I’m redeemed. I’m forgiven. I am a child of the Most High God, and I’m excited about my future.”
I’m going to post the link to this sermon, but it might take a minute to get approved…if it gets approved. All you have to do is look up Joel Osteen “It Is Finished” on YouTube. He talks all about this. You’ll feel better.
I like Joel Osteen. He’s living proof that a camel can fit through the eye of a needle.
His heart is in the right place and he always lifts my spirits! He has a free app and you can get daily messages. It’s nice.
How does he justify that people are redeemed? Just because you’re a ‘child of God’? Isn’t that essentially just the same as a rich kid who murders another person, but isn’t convicted because his daddy bails him out?
To be honest, I don’t really like Osteen. Or any prosperity preachers, for that matter. They focus too much on the here-and-now, on money and success. We aren’t supposed to focus on the treasures of this world, but on the ones of the next. God doesn’t care about how rich and successful you are, and He doesn’t necessarily have a plan to make you “prosper.” Not in the way that prosperity preachers mean, anyway.
Christians really shouldn’t have a lot of money. And if they do, they should be throwing it at people every chance they get, not hoarding it away in their ivory towers and spending it on fancy mansions, boats, and jets. Which is exactly what televangelists do.
Not trying to sound all high and mighty or anything, although I know it sounds like it. I’m not good either, and I know I’m not.
Thank you anyway, though. I appreciate it.
No problem. I listen to him a lot and he is very helpful, but to each his own. He gets my mind focused on God and that is the most important thing to me. It gets me through the day. I do consider him more of a motivational speaker though cause he’s not all like “You will burn in hell if you don’t do this or that.” Those types make me feel worst, but I do watch other preachers.
https://youtu.be/paY53pos5-0
I will answer the other four comments tomorrow. Too afraid to answer them today.
Wouldn’t it be much more devout to see God as a being beyond description, truly omnipotent, and not at all concerned with judging humanity as if He has the same silly flaws of a bio-chemical brain?
This universe is undescribably infinite. Our fleck is so small it’s like we live our entire species total existence between flaps of a humming birds wings. God creating all of this, just to poke you with a pitchfork for being you, is like you (alone) coding every single piece of software ever made past, present, future (multiplied by the number of grains of sand in the world, and then again, and again, and again…) JUST for you to only ever measure your success with and provide tech support to Minesweeper.
Frankly, if God really is a being with a singular consciousness, it’s pretty insulting to minimize Him like that. I think you can keep your faith and honor him even better by worrying about being a good soul rather than not being a bad one.
Worrying about being a good soul and worrying about not being a bad soul are literally the exact same thing.
If that’s what you see, never mind then.
It’s not what I see. It’s what is true, according to the rules of basic English.
Ok, if you are going to put your foot in your mouth, you might as well be schooled. First, “literally the exact same thing” is used incorrectly, according to the rules of basic English. If they were “literally” the exact thing, they would be spelled with the same letters in the same order and actually be the exact same thing. Second, “worrying about being a good soul” means you focus only on GOOD deeds, which you have not been doing. “Rather than not being a bad one” means you are only focusing on your BAD deeds and punishing yourself for them, which is what you are doing. They are completely different unless you don’t think with any depth. But it doesn’t matter, you’ve already decided to focus on being an ass over minutiae you don’t even understand instead of opening your mind a bit. The church is the same dogma that damned people 400 years ago for saying the earth revolved around the sun. The same institution that tortured people to death for not following exactly and solely their religion of love and peace 500 years ago. The countless other embarrassing things they’ve gotten wrong – all of them. But they have it together now, eh? No point thinking when they can do it for you! Just like they want it.
Religions claim to believe in an all powerful God, and then go on to minimize that God to the point of insignificance. My God, the one I didn’t read in a book but came to know through my own journey, is too powerful to be described much less take notes on who I tried to spread the message of the day to. You need to make a choice man, is God a GOD, or is it a petty monarch getting its kicks out of burning ants with a magnifying glass like a 3 year old?
That’s literally silly. As in, it’s written on my screen and is also silly.
I’m glad you’re a Christian, I’m glad that you have something I believe in
You’re not alone. I took my religion seriously too. Religiously read the bible and actually followed its teachings to the letter. I would give without expecting anything back. I would loan out to friends down on their luck and build them up without expecting anything in return. I would forgive people and turm the other cheek when they tried to offend me. I would honor my parents wgen they deserved none. Basically, a goodie little two shoes.
What happened instead was people took it the wrong way and thought I was easy to take advantage of. They would borrow and never pay. My parents would make their abuse worse. I got picked on instead because I turned the other cheek and let bygones be bygones. Now that I’ve finally decided to act, I’m now the monster, the bad guy who has a black heart. Heh, funny how screwed up society is. You act all motal, goodand ethical and people outright take advantage of you and take no remorse in destroying you.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still Christian. Despite all the troubles and evil that has befallen my life, it just reinforced my faith further. This world is indeed a lost cause, an evil place indeed filled with sh*tty and sinful humans who destroy everything around them, whether thid planet or the lives of other people around them. It just reinforced my belief further that this world needs more of God’s guidance and light because whem we are left to our own devices, humanity makes the habit of making humanity more miserable and hopeless. When I see how God acted with Isrealites sternly in the Old Testament and why He did the things He did in being so strict with them, I finally understand why. Humans are just sh*t in general and without God’s guidance, we are doomed to failure because none are inherently good. Just look at the world around us. It’s hopelessly chaotic and destructive. No wonder many are depressed and suicidal nowadays.