Hello! I'm a 25-year-old man. The post will be long and confusing... I don't even know where to start. I have Religious OCD. People who experience this form of OCD suffer from obsessive religious doubts and fears, unwanted blasphemous thoughts and images. I don't want to take antidepressants because I had an anxiety disorder as a child and took them, and I don't know if it's related, but I had a headache for 2 years and the doctors couldn't find a reason. I keep thinking it's because of the antidepressants, and I'm scared. I never want to take antidepressants. ERP therapy is difficult to undergo. Otherwise, I'm ready for psychotherapy, but it might not be effective. Sometimes I really want to give up because I don't want to defile the religion. I've read about many people that when they give up their faith, these thoughts disappear. It's just that I don't want to give up. I really don't know what to do. Every time I start to go to church or something, more thoughts start to appear, and it gets worse. I know that blasphemy is unforgivable. Will I really be forgiven? How can I continue with my faith and remove these thoughts? The more I devote myself to faith, the more bad thoughts come.
You know, God actually addresses your problem really directly and plainly in His word, the Bible. You don't need therapy, or drugs, you need to be confident that God loves you.
1 John 4:16-19
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
17 By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.
19 We love, because He first loved us.
God isn't out to get you; He's not eager to wallop you if you disobey. What He wants is for you to be sure He loves you so that you can fully enjoy fellowship with Him.
1 John 1:3
3 ...indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. (See also:
1 Corinthians 1:9; 2 Corinthians 13:14)
What do I mean by fellowship? Intimate relational communion. Do you know the Story of the Prodigal Son that Jesus told? You can read the story in the Bible in the
Gospel of Luke, chapter
15, verses
11-32. In the story, a son takes his inheritance and goes off into a far country and wastes it all. He ends up in a pigpen eating pig food. There, he looks up from the degradation of the mire and determines to return to his father. He hopes merely to be a servant in his father's house, which would be far better than digging in the filth of the pigpen for scraps.
The father's watching for his son and when he sees the Prodigal afar off, the father runs out, embraces his boy, kisses him and calls for his household to throw a party. All the while the Prodigal was off being an idiot, his fellowship with his father was impossible. His Dad couldn't hug him, kiss him on the cheek, and enjoy the presence of his son, giving him gifts and feasting with him. But
this is what the father of the Prodigal wanted. He didn't demand his son return his inheritance, or work to pay it back; he didn't penalize his boy, extracting penance from him through a series of punishments; he didn't shout and beat his wayward child, scolding him for his foolishness. What the father wanted was his son back, safe and sound, so they could fellowship together as father and son.
Jesus' Prodigal Son story is, among other things, a picture of God's attitude toward His own children. God loves them dearly - wayward and wandering though they may be - and wants to shower them with the goods things that He is. And He's proved His enormous love for them by sending His only Son to earth to "be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be the righteous of God in him." (
2 Corinthians 5:21) In love, God became flesh and dwelt among us so that He might free us of the penalty and power of Sin and bring us into fellowship with Himself (
John 3:16; Romans 5:6-8). Do you believe it? Will you believe it?
What's really crazy is that God did all this when we were His enemies, when we were in rebellion to Him, seeking our own way rather than His. He didn't love us as He did through Jesus only when we were good enough to be so loved; God didn't demand we earn His loving sacrifice before He made it; God didn't wait for sinners to clean themselves up before He'd love them. No, in love He sent His Son to die for wicked people, for rebels, and haters, people bound in darkness and Sin. (
Titus 3:3-8; Colossians 1:20-22; Ephesians 2:1-10) Can you trust a God who loves you like this? Absolutely! Will you?
1 John 4:16
16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
It's one thing to know God loves you; it's another to really believe it. This is where I think you're having a problem that's reflected in your religious OCD. With God, you don't have to be afraid in a craven, cowering way, the way of a slave under a cruel and brutal Master, but can "come boldly unto the throne of grace," knowing that your acceptance by God doesn't rest on you but on the One in whom you have believed - Jesus Christ (
Romans 10:9-10; John 3:16; Ephesians 1:6; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20).
Only because of Jesus does God accept any sinner. When sinners trust in Christ as their Savior and yield themselves to him as Lord (
Romans 10:9-10), they are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ (
Romans 8:9), and by the Spirit are placed "in Christ." So, God sees all of His children in him, clothed in his
perfect righteousness, not their own righteousness, and thus are perfectly acceptable to Him. And because Jesus' righteousness is perfect and never changes, God's acceptance of those clothed in such righteousness never changes, either. As a result, we have promises of God like the following:
John 10:27-29
27 "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;
28 and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.
29 "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.
Romans 8:31-39
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
33 Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies;
34 who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.
35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
36 Just as it is written, "For your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Hebrews 13:5
5 Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have; for He Himself has said, "I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you."
As the apostle John wrote, when you not only know but believe, really believe, that God loves you, your fear will dissolve and with it all the OCD stuff that plagues you.
"There is no fear in love but perfect (complete, matured) love casts out fear." This is part of God's way to freedom from your fear. Will you settle confident in His love?
My father had minor alcohol problems. They weren't that big. He and my mother constantly fought. I took my mother's side and argued with him. I often insulted him and treated him badly. This was during the Covid crisis, and everything was very difficult. We had other problems separately. My father committed suicide over a year ago. I can't forgive myself to this day. I am guilty. I am truly a bad person.
You can be sure when your Dad stands before God on Judgment Day that your Dad won't be able to point at you and say, "My suicide was his fault!" No, your Dad made choices and
he is entirely responsible for them, not you.
Anyway, we are all "truly bad." That's why we all of us need Jesus so desperately. As far as God is concerned, without Jesus, without being covered by his atoning sacrifice for our sins, we are all so awful we all deserve to go to hell. Dwelling on this fact won't make you a better person, though; no one ever became more like Christ by focusing on their sin. God commands us instead to "look unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith," to "consider him," and let his perfection, his love, holiness, and grace, his glory, fill our minds and hearts every day. As it does, the Holy Spirit conforms us, bit by bit, to our focus so that, in time, we are like him. (
Hebrews 12:2-3; 2 Corinthians 3:18)
