- Jan 19, 2020
- 47
- 36
- 23
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Gender
- Male
- Faith
- Protestant
- Marital Status
- Private
I have OCD - it's quite mild currently although in the past I was severely tormented by thoughts about judgement, hell and certain sinful acts. I was looking through this forum and I saw some posts from well-meaning Christians who are unwittingly giving harmful advice.
The wrong advice tends to go along these lines - the thoughts are Satanic in origin so you need to resist them with the name of Jesus and scripture, or else replace them with positive thoughts of thankfulness to God. I've tried these myself and it didn't work - and in fact I'm backed up by medical science in this. The major problem with this thinking is that OCD is not a spiritual problem - it is caused by the brain!
Thankfully scientists are one step ahead on this issue and have developed a technique that works, which is known as Exposure Response Prevention (ERP). To illustrate how this works, let's take an example. Somebody with OCD suffers from thoughts of murdering a child and whenever the thoughts come up he tried to dispel them through prayer and thinking about God. In ERP, this man would be given a task of allowing himself to think about the thoughts of murder without trying to block them by thinking about God or prayer. Doing this regularly reduces the anxiety associated with these thoughts, so over time he will simply learn to be able to ignore them without having to resort to rituals.
This sounds very different to what we expect to hear as Christians, but I would point out that it is in fact in line with the Bible. For example 1 Peter 5:7 - "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you." I would venture to suggest most people treat this as a meaningless inspirational quote along the lines of "Be the change you wish to see in the world". However, the practice of ERP is a very practical way of casting our cares to God - letting go of our pride in having control of all our thoughts, but instead trusting God to take care of our sanctification. In case this seems worrying to other OCD sufferers, we can be reassured by John 6:39 - "And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them up at the last day." God is not petty - he will not punish you for following an established medical treatment for a legitimate illness! In fact he cares more about you and your sufferings than even you yourself and loves you more than you could possibly imagine.
I hope this is helpful to somebody - I don't claim to be an expert and you should test what I said by doing your own research from reliable sources and checking what the Bible says so you can know whether what I am saying is truth.
EDIT: in case someone brings up Philippians 4:8 - the entire issue is that OCD prevents people from being able to do this! Ephesians 5:19 exhorts us to speak to one another - what about people who cannot speak? God is very intelligent and I'm sure he expected us to use common sense when interpreting scripture.
The wrong advice tends to go along these lines - the thoughts are Satanic in origin so you need to resist them with the name of Jesus and scripture, or else replace them with positive thoughts of thankfulness to God. I've tried these myself and it didn't work - and in fact I'm backed up by medical science in this. The major problem with this thinking is that OCD is not a spiritual problem - it is caused by the brain!
Thankfully scientists are one step ahead on this issue and have developed a technique that works, which is known as Exposure Response Prevention (ERP). To illustrate how this works, let's take an example. Somebody with OCD suffers from thoughts of murdering a child and whenever the thoughts come up he tried to dispel them through prayer and thinking about God. In ERP, this man would be given a task of allowing himself to think about the thoughts of murder without trying to block them by thinking about God or prayer. Doing this regularly reduces the anxiety associated with these thoughts, so over time he will simply learn to be able to ignore them without having to resort to rituals.
This sounds very different to what we expect to hear as Christians, but I would point out that it is in fact in line with the Bible. For example 1 Peter 5:7 - "Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you." I would venture to suggest most people treat this as a meaningless inspirational quote along the lines of "Be the change you wish to see in the world". However, the practice of ERP is a very practical way of casting our cares to God - letting go of our pride in having control of all our thoughts, but instead trusting God to take care of our sanctification. In case this seems worrying to other OCD sufferers, we can be reassured by John 6:39 - "And this is the will of God, that I should not lose even one of all those he has given me, but that I should raise them up at the last day." God is not petty - he will not punish you for following an established medical treatment for a legitimate illness! In fact he cares more about you and your sufferings than even you yourself and loves you more than you could possibly imagine.
I hope this is helpful to somebody - I don't claim to be an expert and you should test what I said by doing your own research from reliable sources and checking what the Bible says so you can know whether what I am saying is truth.
EDIT: in case someone brings up Philippians 4:8 - the entire issue is that OCD prevents people from being able to do this! Ephesians 5:19 exhorts us to speak to one another - what about people who cannot speak? God is very intelligent and I'm sure he expected us to use common sense when interpreting scripture.
Last edited:
