Please, Please Forgive Me! Where Religion Meets Mental Illness

During my adolescence and young adult years, I found myself on my knees
 begging for forgiveness hundreds, if not thousands of times.

I was in my teens when it first happened. In previous years I had been able to leaf through the new Sears catalogues without any duress. I looked at the bicycles and toys and other things that little boys look at. But then on one ordinary day I found myself leafing through the swimsuit and lingerie sections of the latest catalogue that my parents kept in their bedroom, and I was mesmerized. What had I been missing all of my life? Yes, puberty had arrived.

Now, puberty and everything that comes with it are of course natural progressions of life, but growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household meant that it also came with a major caveat. Sex and sexual expression outside of marriage was forbidden, and those who engaged in either before saying "I do" were in danger of being in God's bad books.

Along with striving to be a faithful Christian teenager - I attended church gatherings 3 days a week - I also had developed extraordinary checking and washing rituals which only later would I be able to describe as OCD. These rituals were particularly strong at night, when I would repeatedly check that my curtains weren't touching the electric heater for fear that I would burn the house down, getting out of bed to check that the downstairs oven was shut off, and checking numerous times a night that the front door was locked, lest any intruders gain access to the house and hurt my family members.

When puberty, adolescence, and young adulthood hit, my OCD collided with my sexuality and religious life in a way that was embarrassing and exhausting.

Just like millions of other boys my age, I was fixated on the female body, and strange feelings began to crop up in my body that at first I didn't know how to deal with. I found myself touching myself in places that previously had never intrigued me very much. I had heard the word masturbation before somewhere, and when I had asked one of my parents about it, they reassured me (in a way) that it was normal, "just don't do it too much." As well meaning as that parent was, it didn't help me very much as an adolescent. But the real problem with looking at the pretty women in the Sears catalogues, which eventually turned into pornographic images, was that this involved a four-letter word: lust. Lust, I had been taught, was an egregious sin. To me, someone who already suffered from OCD, it was like I was committing an abominable sin against God simply by lusting after women's bodies. One such verse in the Bible that addressed lust was Matthew 5:28, which said, "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." You can imagine how much that scared me, because committing adultery was one of the acts condemned in the Ten Commandments.

This is where religious OCD, otherwise known as scrupulosity, came into full-blown presence in my young life. As a teenager and then young adult, I would view a provocative image, subsequently masturbate, then would inevitably end up on my knees at my bedside pleading with God to forgive me for my lustful actions. Ten minutes later I was back doing the same thing. This sequence of events occurred at least hundreds, if not thousands of times in my adolescence and young adulthood. It also included intense, repeated washing rituals in order to cleanse myself from my "dirty" actions. I judged myself for being a "bad Christian" and constantly worried that God was looking down on me with a disapproving countenance. I didn't realize that puberty and all that came with it was normal.

I also made an effort to read my Bible and pray every day, and felt guilt anytime I failed to do so.

Yet another aspect of religious OCD, or scrupulosity, is asking others if you are behaving correctly, and unnecessarily asking for their forgiveness. So, not only does one have to to worry about what God is thinking of them, but they worry about what others are thinking of them.

I continued this religious scrupulosity well into my days at a fundamentalist Bible college, where I continued to view pornography. I came to a crisis point where I believed that I had committed an unpardonable sin against God, and that he had kicked me out of his family. I was guilt-ridden and panicked.

Two things happened that freed me from my religious scrupulosity. One day I had had enough of the intense feelings of guilt and decided to try to drop them and let the chips fall where they may, and I also started to question the major tenets of the fundamentalist Christianity which I had grown up with. This led to my rejection of the faith and an embrace of a more liberal and authentic personal faith.

Today I realize that my former form of religion fed my mental illness, and I am glad that I am free from those days of constantly worrying that I was in danger of hell-fire just because I was a sexual being.

Religious OCD is real. Have you experienced it?

Mark Andrew Nouwen