Having a mental illness makes practicing any kind of faith or religion stupid hard.

What’s weird is that I’ve always considered myself fairly cerebral, a thinker, sometimes too much of a thinker. But a thinker nonetheless. So I live in this weird bubble where I both live and die by both my thoughts and my feelings. Each one spurs the other on.

Nowhere has this been more visible in my life than in two places: romantic relationships and religion. Romantic relationships is for another time, so I’ll tackle religion today. I’ve written about it a few times, but this is the latest update. The most recent thing, because it’s on my mind today and I need to get it all out. I need to get it all out before my thoughts turn my feelings into mush I can’t interpret.

Pure O

A few years ago, my therapist told me that she thinks I deal with something called “scrupulosity.” The International OCD Foundation calls scrupulosity “a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) involving religious or moral obsessions. Scrupulous individuals are overly concerned that something they thought or did might be a sin or other violation of religious or moral doctrine.” Oh man, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been there.

It’s a form of what’s called Pure O — just the obsessional part of OCD.

For a long time, I thought what eventually I understood to be Pure O was just being a normal Christian. It was being concerned and aware of what I was doing and measuring it against “God’s standard,” the Bible. It was making sure I was always “good with God.” There was salvation, yeah, some kind of forgiveness and absolution of sin. Heaven was a given. I never doubted that, for some reason, not for any length of time, anyway.

But actually being good enough of a Christian was a different story.

And it’s only gotten worse.

Measuring Up

The Christian community I grew up in and was around for most of my life often used “faithfulness” as a measuring stick for people. Do they deserve leadership roles? Can they be trusted to pray a prayer during Sunday mornings? Should they be allowed to teach young kids?

I got the harshest realization of this when I was rejected for a college ministry position during my senior year because of a personal issue.

Part of me is pissed at this. Part of me is pissed that I was honest about a struggle and because of that honesty I was rejected. Part of me understands — that was the M.O. of this organization in this culture. Part of me is grateful — I wouldn’t have lasted long in that world.

But it only reinforced in my mind the message that to be deemed worthy is to be “good enough” as a person. Never mind that God used people who had shitty personal lives — David slept around, Abraham lied and let his wife get married to someone else, Paul had his “thorn in the flesh”— both before and after their “faith conversions.” That didn’t matter — only that God used people who weren’t perfect. Note that the conversation was not about “God used people tried their best but still made bad decisions and sinned.”

There’s a significant difference in the perception between “imperfect” and “bad decision-maker.” But aren’t they both the same? Isn’t being “imperfect” mean that you make bad decisions? Making bad decisions makes you imperfect, right?

What that rejection taught me — again, a rejection that I’m both fine with (in good moments) and traumatized by (in bad moments, like right now) — is that in that culture, I was never going to be good enough for others or for myself.

Religion Is Hard

The International OCD Foundation says that “OCD makes it harder to practice one’s faith. However, there is no evidence that the moral or religious character of scrupulosity sufferers is any different from that of other people.”

That’s gospel truth to me. That’s healing and reassuring, because OCD does make it harder to practice your faith. OCD is not something you bring on yourself, I don’t think. From my friends at the new-acronymed IOCDF: “The exact cause of scrupulosity is not known. Like other forms of OCD, scrupulosity may be the result of several factors including genetic and environmental influences.”

But I just want to scream it from the rooftops! Having a mental illness makes practicing any kind of faith or religion stupid hard. For the longest time, even while I’ve known I suffer with scrupulosity, I thought that meant I was just a bad Christian. I still think that.

Faith is hard for me.

If You’re Out There

I’m not writing this for your sympathy comments. I’m not writing this so you can share your faith trick or favorite Bible verse to try to convince me. I’m beyond that.

I’m at the point where I want to get real with this. I want to get real. Is there anyone else out there who feels this way? Is there anybody else who struggles with their faith in this way?

Let me know. Let’s talk.