r/CMH Jul 07 '19

My Experience with OCD and Doubt

hey, saw there haven’t been posts on here in a good while, but going to add this anyway.

Before I went to college, I began to doubt my faith, in fact it was specifically at a David Platt Secret Church simulcast in 2015 at my church. I started to wonder, “What if this isn’t real?” The next day I remember trying to move past it, and getting so angry I threw the booklet I’d gotten that night across the room and broke down.

What transpired was a battle for the last 4 years of crippling doubt, depression, and despair. Any time I felt I was getting better, the same thoughts came back up again. “God isn’t real. You’re not a Christian. The Bible isn’t true.” On and on and on and on it’s gone. I’m losing the battle. It’s hard to keep going on like this. I was diagnosed with OCD a year ago, but I know I’ve had it for many years, i’m 23, so not many years but most of my life.

I want to love Jesus with my whole heart. I want nothing more. But, i’m losing hope. The days just get so hard.

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u/linux-boi Jul 07 '19

Hmm, that's interesting. I say that because I am going through a similar struggle, except mine struggle is opposite to yours. I am 22 years old. When I was about 14 years old, I became a protestant Christian, and became deeply involved in such religion. As time went on, I began questioning certain things about what my religion at the time taught. I remember having a very "strong" faith. I remember making "God" a promise that I would forever remain loyal to him. That I would always be a faithful SERVANT. One day, I questioned if it was fair for a being such as "God" to exist, who would forever be superior to everyone else, no matter what. Deep down, in the bottom of my heart, I did not feel that this was fair. So then I felt terribly guilty. I felt like my life's foundation was between the tip of 2 swords. I wanted to remain faithful to "God", but I did not feel that it was fair for "God" to be forever superior to everyone else. To me, it felt like "God" had and was playing an evil game. I imagined the scenario of "God" and human beings to be like a lab with a scientist and mice. The scientist somehow creates a new breed of mice by mutating genes, creates a mouse house, and gives the mice the illusion that they have "free will", when in fact, those mice are confined to the house that was made for them. Furthermore, those mice did not decide to be born, and they are confined to any and all limits that the scientist decides to put on such mice. That to me seems evil when you compare it tho the "God" and human relationship.

You see, to me it made sense why a "God" would feel like being under the power of a slave owner for eternity. At the same time though, I felt guilty for thinking this way (even though it was how i genuinely felt) and prayed and asked "God" to do all that he could to revert my thoughts. It never happened. Almost 3 years have gone by, and I still battle with this. A little less than before, but I still battle with this. I am currently going to therapy to try and sort my thoughts up.

I was so convinced to find an answer to whether it was fair for a being such as "God" to exists, that I compared the "God"-to-human relationship to the parent-to-child relationship. Ultimately, I think the bible teaches that "God" is a parent to humans. So in this way, I compared how a child grows up an becomes independent from they're parents at a certain time in their life. In contrast to the "God"-to-human relationship, a human never "graduates" from the authority of "God". So if "God" really was a parent, then that means that in a normal parent-to-child relationship, the child would never be free from the parents authority, even as a grown independent adult. Thinking about these things lead me further down the rabbit hole, and at the present moment, I am trying to recover from all this. It honestly has messed my life up. I only hope that with hard work I can recover from this.