The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (13 page)

From the time I was 11 years old through early adulthood, I prayed fervently for god to take away my urge to masturbate. Parents, church, Sunday School teachers, even gym teachers, implied that masturbation was sinful and that you would go to hell for doing it. As much as I prayed, I did it even more. Even at church camp! God surely would send me to hell, if not kill me outright for masturbating at church camp! What is more, I was masturbating to the thought of the sexy preacher’s daughter at the camp. That had to be a deadly sin.

Not until I came across Masters and Johnson’s
Human Sexual Response
(1966) and later Alex Comfort’s
The Joy of Sex
(1972) did I realize that my religion was totally wrong about masturbation. As I quickly lost my guilt, I soon began asking, “What else could be wrong in my religion?”

You may have had similar experiences with religious guilt if you were raised in a religious environment. Religious guilt is generally negative and something to be closely examined in your journey to break free of the god virus. The problem is that programming can be so deep you don’t realize you are functioning out of religious guilt.

One of the challenges of adulthood is dealing constructively with past viral programming. Religious indoctrination is extremely confusing, with hundreds of mixed messages received throughout a lifetime. Many people carry the remnants of childhood programming in their day-to-day adult lives. Here are some of the beliefs people are exposed to in their early training.

• God loves you, but he will send you to hell if you don't do exactly as he says.

• God loves you and gave you an intelligent brain to see and understand his creation, but you will be condemned for asking prohibited questions.

• God loves you and gave you incredibly pleasurable sex, but you dare not use it except within strict limitations.

• God loves you and your children. If you do anything to lead them astray, he will punish you. (Mark 9:42)

• Allah loves you and created women as beautiful creatures that you are forbidden to enjoy, except in marriage and behind closed doors.

• Allah loves you, but you may not see heaven if you don’t obey your husband and get along with his other wives.

• God loves you and wants you to prosper. If you are poor or hungry, you must be doing something wrong in his eyes.

• God loves you; he causes you pain, grief, disasters, floods, hurricanes, and much more so you will see his will, repent and do as you are commanded.

• God loves you, he created Satan to tempt and test you.

• God loves you. That is why he makes it so hard to resist temptation and stay on the straight and narrow.

• God loves you. He loves all Christians. He hates Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and all those who deny him.

• God loves you, so you should reject your parents, children, neighbors, relatives or anyone who is a hopeless non-believer.
¹

• God loves you, but if you get divorced, you are unclean. (Matt 5:31-32)

• God loves you. That is why he sent his son to die. Millions of other people have died in his name and you should be willing to as well.
²

• God loves you, but you were born unclean and can never be clean without god.

1
“If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).

These kinds of messages create a double bind. A feeling that you are never good enough and that it is your own fault no matter how hard you try. That is why you need Jesus, Allah, or some other god to lean on. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god” (Rom. 3:23 NIV). This is a great god virus quote. It sets up every believer for ultimate failure. God made you imperfect and the only way to feel good about yourself is through him.

Listen to just a few minutes of preachers like Paul Washer, a popular youth preacher with dozens of YouTube™ videos. Virtually every minute of his videos is about guilt, damnation and apostasy. The only path that will save you is to follow exactly his prescription.
³

The religious life is one of constant circles and backtracking. You were born a sinner and always are a sinner. You must seek forgiveness from the god that made you unclean from birth. Get forgiven. Be born again, but don’t sin again.

When you sin, it starts all over. You must seek forgiveness. The virus implants a constant sense of guilt and unworthiness that cannot be eradicated. Much as Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth wandered the halls of Dunsinane Castle washing her hands and saying, “Out damned spot,” religion creates an indelible emotional spot that cannot be washed away.

Many children are taught to feel guilt from parents, relatives or authority figures. Such childhood guilt is often more related to parental insecurity or emotional problems than any bad behavior on the part of the child. Consider a mother who makes her child feel guilty for not kissing her good night or a
grandparent who chides a child for not calling him every day. These kinds of behaviors can create guilt in a child that is carried into adulthood.

2
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:34-35 (NIV)).

3
Search for any Paul Washer video to get a similar message. You Tube™,
Shocking Youth Message Stuns Hearers
[video on-line] (accessed 21 November 2008); available from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IR-25FpnOk0&feature=related
; Internet.

The drive to reduce or eliminate guilt is very strong. As a result, people may do any number of things. They may call their grandparent every day well into adulthood. They may never miss an opportunity to kiss their mother. They may find themselves going out of their way to get parental approval well into adulthood. Many an adult has discovered that some of the guilt they feel came from inappropriate childhood training. Any psychotherapist’s practice is full of people learning to deal with childhood guilt. Guilt is a powerful psychological force, and the drive to reduce guilt can motivate behavior for years, if not an entire lifetime. Understanding the drive to reduce guilt will help us understand the power of religion.

Martin Luther himself struggled with this guilt cycle. His solution, while creative, did little to assuage the guilt of the millions of Lutherans who have followed him over the centuries. Luther’s solution was to see salvation through faith, not works. His was a response to the Catholic tendency to believe one could purchase indulgences or do good works to achieve salvation. Luther’s focus on faith made things worse since faith is so difficult to assess. It is easy to keep a ledger of good works or to believe that some god has an accounting department. But what does faith mean? How do you know Christ has bestowed his grace upon you? Luther’s doctrine of justification, while designed to assuage his own guilt and provide a pathway to god, was just as much an uncertain morass. His certainty in salvation allowed him to condemn the Jews and encourage their persecution and to suppress the peasants' rebellion of 1524-25. He seemed to feel no guilt about that. Unfortunately for his followers, Luther’s solution provided only more uncertainty about salvation and the commensurate guilt at falling short.

For a contemporary example, we need look no further than Mother Theresa. While alive, she was held up as a standard for faith and religious piety. In death, her letters reveal a very uncertain woman, torn by guilt. If even a future saint is not free of guilt, where does that leave an ordinary follower?

Have you ever noticed that the addict, alcoholic, smoker and/or religious addict generally feels guilty over his or her behavior but then goes right on doing it? They might say:

• “I promised my kids I would stop smoking. Now I am smoking even more.”

• “I told myself I wouldn't drink last night, then I closed the bar down.”

• “I promised god I would spend more time with my kids; now I find myself working overtime every week.”

• “When they passed the offering plate, I felt guilty when I only put $10 in.”

• “I promised god I would not masturbate again, but then I did it twice this week.”

• “I promised god I wouldn't have sex with my girlfriend until we were married, but she tempted me, and we did it last night.”

Rather than change the behaviors that caused the guilt in the first place, guilt often drives people to do more of the same. The guiltier you feel, the more you seek to assuage your guilt with the very thing that induced it in the first place. This creates a perfect feedback loop from which you cannot escape without outside help. Much like a computer that gets into a loop and freezes, your brain gets caught in a guilt loop that only gets worse.

As you are bearing this emotional burden of guilt, along comes the priest, rabbi or minister with the promise of help. He or she accomplishes
this by breaking the loop and running it through the religion and back to you. It goes like this:

You can’t conquer this by yourself. Give yourself to god and he will help you conquer it. You will overcome your weakness and get forgiven for your sins. You will no longer have to live with this burden of guilt.

The effect is some relief but at a high cost. Each guilt-forgiveness cycle imbeds the virus deeper and deeper, making it harder and harder to get relief.

It is difficult to see guilt as independent of religion. To better understand this, let's look at two different kinds of guilt: socialized guilt and religious guilt.

You feel socialized guilt because of socialization in a given culture. Many people feel guilty if they accidentally run a stop sign. My grandmother could feel guilty for days about forgetting to call someone on his or her birthday. I have felt great guilt over forgetting an important anniversary or event. This is the guilt we feel for violating a social norm – socialized guilt.

In many cases, socialized guilt is no better than religious guilt, but there are times when socialized guilt is good. Guilt is appropriate when you
violate someone else. An example would be if you cheated or intentionally hurt someone. I would hope that you feel guilt. The inability to feel guilt in this situation is a sign of a sociopathic personality.

Lesser things may evoke appropriate guilt. Any act that hurts another person, such as malicious gossip, cheating or stealing from someone are all things that should create appropriate guilt and a desire to not do it again. I don’t want to have a relationship with a person who does not feel guilty about that kind of behavior. It has nothing to do with religion but everything to do with good socialization in our culture.

Some things are only guilt-inducing in the context of religion; indeed of a certain religion. Thus, you wouldn’t feel guilty if you weren’t a believer or you might not feel guilty if you believed a different religion. Masturbation is a clear example of how religion uses a normal human behavior to induce guilt. Catholic doctrine condemns masturbation, and most fundamentalist Protestant groups subtly condemn it, as does Islam. On the other hand, if you were a Wiccan, Quaker or Unitarian, you would think nothing of it.