Religious Guilt

[JulietEcho]

I'm not sure if this is common among ex-fundamentalists, but I'm guessing it is. Every now and then, usually after an encounter with someone from my childhood or an unexpected experience with something Christian, I'll get hit with an emotional sucker punch. I'll start to feel hauntingly guilty and afraid, thinking about all the "sins" I've been committing, and my brain kind of surrenders to the limbic system/amygdala for a few minutes (at best) or hours (at worst).

Then, eventually, my rationality kicks in and I feel relieved and pretty much instantly better. Sometimes I have to forcibly remind myself of the observations and arguments that led me away from those beliefs. Still, it's an extremely unpleasant experience, consisting of a heady mixture of fear (of hell), panic (that it's too late to fix things), guilt (over leaving the faith, "sinning") and just general anxiety. It feels horrible.

I think it's a natural, unfortunate kind of scarring from being brought up from infancy to believe in a literal hell, consider almost everything a sin (that's an exaggeration, but sometimes it doesn't feel like one), and know nothing but Christianity when it came to friendship/community/safety. My transition away from my fundamentalist roots was long and slow because my beliefs were so deeply rooted psychologically.

I've been reconnecting with some friends from almost ten years ago, when I went on a summer-long mission trip (which I've written about previously here in a thread about missions in general), and their reaction to my atheism, as well as the fact that everyone else from the trip has continued to "serve the Lord" (many going to seminary or on other mission trips) threw me into a particularly bad bout of religious guilt a few nights ago. I eventually recovered, remembering that it was partially that mission trip that led to the reasoning that something was ethically and intellectually wrong with my religious beliefs.

Anyway, does anyone else with similar backgrounds (brought up very religious/fundamentalist) feel these pangs of religious guilt? How do you deal with it? Do you think it ever stops completely?

[mojo2501]

I found a book very helpful to me about 3 years ago when I was experiencing the breakdown of my marriage because I felt guilty and ashamed that I couldn't "fix it". The book is "Healing the Shame that Binds You" by John Bradshaw. Shame isn't exactly on par with "religious" guilt but so much of what is covered in the book applies to the feelings of self doubt and feelings of being "defective" and "flawed" that many people experience when a long term relationship withers and dies. A long painful death for some....and a grieving period goes with it. Inevitable.

In some ways, the relationship you once had with religion, religious people, the entire experience of belonging and being accepted in that world has been dissolving over time...and residual guilt sounds perfectly normal to me in a situation like that. Like you hinted at in your comment, so much of what is religious is emotional...taps into emotional areas of the brain. And think of how much it defined you as a person. Maybe you are experiencing a type of grief.

I wrote down notes/quotes from the book mentioned above and maybe they will strike a chord with you....as they did with me (I never wrote down the page numbers because I never thought I'd share this info..never intended to plagiarize...sorry Mr.Bradshaw) :

Stresses "the importance of expansion and growth...ultimate human need for love, truth, goodness, beauty, giving and caring...we seek wholeness and completion".

Important to have "the willingness and capacity to suffer continual self-examination".

"Curiosity and wonder are at the heart of learning...righteousness causes us to stop seeking and stop learning".

To me, those statements define what it means to be an athiest: a "naturalist" rather than a "supernaturalist", a "seeker" rather than a "true believer". It seems a much more active role to play on this earth...knowing it's a struggle but struggling anyway. Many of us have residual religious cravings...for lack of a better word...that feeling of missing something we used to have...like reminiscing about past events or being reminded of the past in our memories/dreams.

I wish you well...this time of year can be difficult on so many levels. Like everything religious gets super concentrated...not diluted like the rest of the year.

[Neon Genesis]

One thing that helps me deal with religious guilt is to remind myself that even if God exists, if God is so petty that he would send people to hell for something as insignificant as not believing in him when it's God's fault for not providing enough evidence, then it wasn't worth it to worship that god in the first place, and I would rather go to hell than worship a being like that. I also remind myself of what's called the Atheist's Wager as a response to the infamous Pascal's Wager. What if we die and find out God is real, but God favors skeptics who honestly seek the truth over Christians who blindly accept whatever their church leaders tell them to believe? In this case, if we're wrong and there is no God, the atheist will have lost nothing. But if we're right, then the Christians will have lost everything, so then it would be better to be a skeptic that honestly seeks the truth over a Christian that just blindly accepts whatever they're told. I also remind myself that even if God does exist, all you need to keep you from going to hell is an iron chariot, because Judges 1:19 says God loses to iron chariots

Now the LORD was with Judah, and they took possession of the hill country; but they could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley because they had (P)iron chariots.

[mojo2501]

IRON CHARIOTS...that's ALL? Geeessh. All this time and we didn't realize how easy it would be to stay out of hell.

[happycynic]

I wonder if a car would count?

[mojo2501]

If a car works, we're all going to be A- O K ! No hell for us. Weren't the first trains called iron horses? I can't recall. Cars were "horseless carriages", right?? That's pretty close to iron chariot, if you ask me! We'll be fine.

[JulietEcho]

Hee... thanks, guys. There's actually a site I like called Iron Chariots that's sort of a wiki for logical/rational arguments and apologetics, debunking, etc.

[Jasen777]

Strangely I haven't had such pangs. I think it's because of my deconversion process, all the guilt I had as a Christian. Maybe also because I had already rejected the idea of hell for annihilation when I was a Christian.

[JulietEcho]

I thought I'd bump this, because I've been reading "The Scarlet Letter" and I stumbled across a quote that really resonated with my thoughts about overcoming religious guilt:

And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded; so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there is still the ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph.

My "ruined wall" is riddled with holes, and they exist on a level so primal and emotional, having been empty since childhood, that all the sunshine and reason and pragmatism in the world can't fully patch them.

My husband recently remarked, "I don't believe ghosts exist, but I'm still sometimes afraid of them." I don't believe in Hell anymore, but I'm still sometimes afraid of it.

[hoverFrog]

I don't believe in Hell anymore, but I'm still sometimes afraid of it.

I'm sorry that your religious upbringing has done such harm to you that even after you've shaken off the faith you are still troubled by the nightmares of indoctrination. It is no wonder that many people cannot even entertain the idea that there are no gods. It says much for your character that you are brave enough to step away from it.

[happycynic]

*sends a hug through the interwebs*