Religious OCD

[Hermit7]

Recently, I was in charge of writing devotionals for a church. I’ve already written four. I then had this temptation in my mind about the “attention” I would get from writing these devotionals and how it would “funny” if these devotionals were not published. So then a “wager” was made in my mind--“What if you had a choice between ensuring that your devotionals get published and having your salvation, which would you choose?”

I think I might have chose the latter. Well, when it happened and I realized it, I prayed to God and asked for His forgiveness and I told him that I wouldn’t trade in my salvation for such a thing.
I honestly don’t really know why I chose what I chose at the time. But I’ve been really worried about it. Is my salvation at stake? Do I now have to withdraw the devotionals to “make up” for what I did?
-Hermit

 

[canamer]

The key words here are 'what if'? Ask yourself then 'what if' I don't have to make a choice at all here about trading anything for something else?

'What if' is OCD in a nutshell. 'What if' I decide to throw my glass through the TV? 'What if' I decide to run somebody over today? 'What if' I don't check if the door is locked?

Go ahead with this project. You're doing just fine!

 

[Hermit7]

i

 

[Hermit7]

BTW, I just had an OCD moment after writing my original post.
It was about me posting what I just posted will be me dealing away my salvation for some reason. I also had one for posting this post as me somehow dealing away my salvation. And another for posting the false post.
Is any of this real?
-Hermit

 

[OCD=Owie]

(My reply is below. I accidentally double-posted)

 

[OCD=Owie]

I think you can guess what our answer would be to that.

I've had symptoms similar to this in the past, and I know how real they feel. The fact of the matter is though that these obsessive thoughts and feelings you have don't determine the rules for salvation.

If you really had to choose between your salvation and something trivial like making a post on this forum, you would choose your salvation. (Not that you would ever have to make such a choice like that. Salvation has nothing to do with works, or, in this case, the way you think.)

Naturally, you want to move on with your life by writing those devotionals, and posting on this forum and such. So you go ahead with your plans, but our prefrontal cortexes like to give us grief about evrything. "What if I would rather write this devotional than be saved?" You might think. Well, you really want to make sure that it gets done since not doing so would make some people upset with you. So you begin to mistake that desire to get it done as being greater than your desire to be saved.

Our OCD makes our feelings go nuts, and then we try to use our "logic" to assess what those feelings mean (i.e., "do I like these devotionals more than my salvation?"). This is an impossible system for us. We always assume the worst-case scenario. (Sometimes these "worst case scenarios" aren't even possible).

Your mind is playing tricks on you. It feels VERY real, but once you start to get better at combatting your OCD, that feeling starts to go away.I know that, for me, the best way to fight thoughts like these is to not pass judgements on them. When the thought comes into your head, "do I love this more than my salvation? If so, have I given up my salvation?" then you don't wrack your brain trying to determine whether the thought and feelings are true or false. You just let the thought occur. You let it be, without giving it any kind of analyzation.

You might ask, "but what if I lose my salvation if I do that?" Well, you won't, but, again, just don't think very hard about it. Try to let this thought simply "occur" as well. You gotta just accept an attitude of "indifference," I suppose. Accept the attitude of, if any of these fears are revealed to be valid, you'll deal with it when it manifests itself. Don't try to think a million steps ahead of yourself.

Sorry about this being long, BTW...