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Subject and Expectation:

In this second part of our series, we will be discussing how religion breeds traumatic levels of fear-based guilt and shame. The proven psychological damage that is done by living fearfully with feelings of guilt and shame is monumental. This has been proven by psychology and we are now seeing the severe effects it has had on humanity. If you are inside of religion, please read the following information with an open mind to examine yourself, with courage enough to question whether or not you are allowing yourself to be damaged by religious views. We will be considering these questions and it is our hope that the reader walks away with at least a more realistic view of religion and faith in today’s world.

Introduction

Our article analyzing The Business of Religion was the first in this series on how religion is toxic and harmful to us individually and as a human race, stunting our growth and evolution. The feature of religion that we have chosen to highlight in this article is at the root of what I believe to be the most harmful aspect of the system of religious teaching. It raises its followers to accept that it is normal to live their lives based on guilt and shame, being driven by psychological fear. What exactly do I mean?

Fear-based Guilt and Shame

In religion, you spend the precious minutes of your life worrying that God is watching everything you do. Your entire thought process revolves around toeing the line in order to make it to heaven, to make it through Armageddon, or to avoid being tortured for all of eternity in a fiery hell. If you do happen to commit a sin, then there is a deep element of shame and guilt that has been ingrained in you by religion that simply can overwhelm your mental and emotional wellness.

Even the smallest worry that you may have disappointed God can be catastrophic to your consciousness and to your level of happiness. This is one of the worst elements of religion. Anyone that preaches this philosophy or encourages belief in it simply does not have true empathy and compassion for humankind. This use of fear in leading or teaching is disgusting and detrimental to our continuing evolution as a race. How does this break down in regards to the different demographics?

In Children

I was a faithful god-fearing Christian from birth until my early thirties. At the current age of 46, I can rightfully say that never before in my entire life was I more miserable than my years spent as a Christian. The fear of disappointing God in any way and therefore risking not making it through Armageddon defined every moment of every day for me.

I missed out on so much of what life is supposed to be like for a child and for a teenager. I legitimately missed out on my youth because I was afraid to do anything that might risk my future with God. I can speak from first-hand experience that this is psychologically unhealthy for a child’s emotional growth and the effects can be traumatically lifelong.

This is no way to live, especially as a child. Youth is so precious and life is relatively short in the grand scheme of things. You only get one chance to be a child and it should be not it should not be governed and dictated by deep feelings of guilt, shame, or fear.

In Young Adults

I was married at the ridiculously young age of twenty-one. So many adults that were in my life questioned me as to whether I was ready for the gigantic lifelong commitment. I had so many reasons to justify my decision. I wanted to be a married couple working for God…I wanted to marry my best friend…I wanted to have a family…I wanted to do it the “right way” according to God and my religion…BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Looking back now at my age I can tell you the real reason that I got married. I was an insatiably horny twenty-one-year-old young man that was still a virgin and I wanted to have sex. Religion had programmed me thoroughly to believe that the only option that God gave us was to have sexual relations in a legal marriage. Therefore, I got married based on the fact that I didn’t want to live with the enormous guilt and shame if I were to have sex outside of marriage.

This is not a sufficient reason for one to bind their life forever with another person. A twenty-one-year-old knows nothing about real life yet, let alone enough to make a decision that will more than likely affect the rest of their life. And yet, this is what religion expects of young people, even in today’s day and age.

This decision absolutely ruined six years of my young adulthood because of the fear I had of doing anything that would cause me guilt or shame. Our marriage was horrible. We were not meant for each other at all and we ended in divorce. All of that preaching I received my whole life and the preaching that I did to other people (like I had any life experience or authority at my age to be instructing anyone else) about heeding the Bible’s command to not become “unevenly yoked” with another person, meant nothing and caused me only sadness and turmoil.

Think about all of the times people have gotten married over the years because their religion taught that it is “living in sin” if two people live together without their union being ordained religiously or legally by the local courts. I myself was one of those victims. I belonged to a religion that would literally excommunicate you for having sex before marriage, causing every single friend and family member to turn their backs on you as if you were dead, no matter what. While it is a given that not every religion is as strict as the one I grew up in, religion has generally used fear-based dogma that breeds guilt and shame in anyone that goes against what the bible says in regards to marriage and sex for centuries.

This is the epitome of leading followers with harmful fear-based guilt and shame in our marvelously evolved human race that thrives on love, not fear.

Religious Sexual Shame and The Repercussions

Much of our world has been guided for centuries by religious views and rules about how people should view and act on their natural sexual urges and desires. Only just recently over the last few decades have we begun to open up and talk about or explore our natural desires publicly. With the onset of the LGBTQ movement and its community of extremely fast growth, we have seen how millions of people are no longer hiding or repressing their true sexual desires or feelings of attraction.

Despite what religion says, this is a wonderful thing. There is a tremendous amount of psychological damage that comes from repressing or hiding how we really feel inside. In doing my research I stumbled across an amazing article written by David J. Ley Ph.D. for psychologytoday.com entitled Overcoming Religious Sexual Shame. The article was published in 2017 and this is what he had to say in regards to what therapists are seeing on an extraordinary level…

“Across the country, therapists are now seeing a tide of young people, feeling immense shame and pain about their sexual urges, desires and behaviors, as these young people encounter the wide world of sexuality available outside the confines of these moral fantasies.”

This was disturbing to read and certainly should make any reasonable and empathetic person stop to think twice about how religion has been handling the topic of sex for centuries and what it has left in its wake.

Are You a Heterosexual?

I would like you to try something. Stop and think about yourself for a second. Are you a heterosexual person? If you are then you would admit that you don’t even think about it, you’re just simply attracted to the opposite sex and you have been your whole life. How lucky you are because you just happened to have been born with the one and only sexual orientation that is permitted by God, the Bible, and most religious people on this planet. Now try to imagine the exact opposite, that the only ‘banned’ sexual orientation in God’s eyes was a heterosexual lifestyle. How easy would it be for you to deny yourself the only thing that you were attracted to? To deny yourself of what gave you true sexual pleasure…for your entire life, because God and Religion defined it as wrong? How would your life be? Go ahead and answer yourself in your mind.

There are so many people in this world that have modified their life to an extreme extent because of a religious belief. Just think of the thousands or millions of human beings in our history that were closet homosexuals; people that modified and changed their entire life because of fear of the repercussions from the religious community or the world.

Just think of having to live like that, denying who you truly are inside, denying yourself the true love that you seek in another person simply because a religious book tells you that you’re going to be destroyed and suffer eternal torment if you live your life in accord with those natural feelings that you have inside.

If you are truly an empathetic person with a good heart, then you should have feelings of overwhelming sorrow for what people have had to endure, denying who they really are and what they want to be. Could you have done it if you were born with a different sexual orientation? Maybe that thought should be on your mind the next time you choose to judge or hate another person simply for being who they are?

The Psychology of Shame vs The Psychology of Guilt

What is the psychology behind the institution of sacramental confession in the Catholic Church? Psychologists and pastors have traditionally been skeptical of each other in their stand that they take either for or against the custom of confession on a religious level. In a publication by The Humanistic Psychologist entitled Shame and guilt: The psychology of sacramental confession, Author Amber Martinez-Pilkington states in regards to the subject:

“It is well known that psychologists have not always looked favorably on the practice of Sacramental Confession, claiming that it breeds unnecessary guilt from which their patients must recover. It is important to begin by establishing definitions for psychological phenomena such as shame and guilt that both psychologists and pastors can recognize. The psychology of shame differs from the psychology of guilt in that shame focus is more on the totality of the person’s self-concept rather than the action done. Shame also has important social and interpersonal consequences that should be examined since a person never lives outside of relationships.”

You can look further into this manuscript to do your own research by clicking here. I choose not to expound too much more on this subject simply because I do not have a degree or education in Psychology. I only know how I feel growing up as a victim of these horrible religious tactics. I choose to look to the experts on these subjects, as opposed to looking to a group of people that are not educated in such matters, nor by any stretch of the imagination proved to be an authority or expert on such things.

I encourage you to do the same research that I have done and continue to do on a regular basis, enlisting the advice given by trained experts in fields you are seeking advice or help.

Question Everything

In short, religion has placed far too many restrictions on the personal happiness of millions and millions of people over time. We have evolved intellectually past such things and we now know that these tactics can be harmful and cause devastatingly severe psychological damage.

The Small Town Humanist Patreon Page

As always, we set out to inform readers and to encourage questioning everything in our lives, as to its validity and overall benefit or detriment to our happiness and evolution. We are remarkable creatures and simply have to resist anything that holds us back from moving forward and growing towards true freedom and happiness in this wonderful chance at life we have been given.

Click Here for Reason Number Three Why Religion is Toxic and Harmful – It Encourages Helplessness: Does Prayer Really Work?

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