I’ve been thinking lately about God, assuming He exists. Mainly, I’ve been thinking about the Judeo-Christian biblical conception of God, and asking myself, crazy as this sounds, if He exists, Is God a sociopath?
I pose this question seriously, and apologize in advance for offending anyone by probing this idea. But consider:
You are expected to worship Him.
You are expected to acknowledge His perfection.
You are expected to live by His standards.
You are expected to fear His Judgement.
You are expected to please, not disappoint Him.
You are expected to do penance when you’ve strayed from His rules.
You are expected to be in awe of, and fear, His omniscience.
You are expected to be in awe of, and fear, His omnipotence.
You are expected to prize His love, and fear His wrath.
You are expected to seek, and follow, His guidance.
When He feels unheeded, He licenses Himself to unleash cruel, violent, devastating rages (see the Flood, among countless other examples).
He is a punisher.
He is perfect.
He has no guilt; yet He instills guilt.
He “made,” and he “works,” the world and universe from “above,” sitting in Judgement of all who deviate from Him.
He is infallible.
He is unaccountable.
He is callous—a cause of, and silent witness to, untold violence and suffering in the history of humanity.
He is “entitled—”to judge, and punish, as He likes.
He is controlling to a highly pathological degree, for all the reasons stated above.
He is merciful, so long as you heed Him. Otherwise, He can be merciless.
He expects to be idealized and treated like a God.
He rages, and inflicts the cruelest of punishments, when He feels defied.
His word is the bible.
Now you tell me: If I were describing a human being in these terms, what conclusion would you draw? I suspect, if you weren’t feeling defensive, that you’d conclude that we’re talking about someone with a case of seriously malignant narcissism edging, perhaps, into the realm of sociopathy?
But, of course, I’m describing the Judeo-Christian God.
Think about this: from the earliest age, this is your almighty Father figure. You are taught to worship Him, seek His love, His mercy, accept His perfection and infallibility.
You are taught that His word is final; His wrath is justified; to feel shame before His eyes.
You are taught to have to work hard to earn your way back into His good graces, and to be grateful for His forgiveness.
His judgement is final, and even terrifying.
Now if this is the Father figure we’ve been raised to heed and idealize from birth, is it not fair to wonder how much this relationship—with God—might predispose us to end up with a sociopath?
Does one’s adult relationship with a sociopath not replicate, in certain ways, one’s relationship with God?
I pose this as food for thought, nothing else. But I will follow-up this post in the next several weeks, to further flesh out my thoughts, factoring in, as well, your initial feedback.
(This article is copyrighted (c) 2010 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
I am not going to read this one.
I have to pick my battles and my stressors.
What I can say is, although I have strong Christian beliefs, I don’t try to impose my beliefs on others, and I don’t think anyone here has felt that I have, nor do I feel any one here has belittled my beliefs or tried to impose their own beliefs on me.
This has been a good site, and one of the most important things is that, because we CAN feel safe sharing our beliefs that we can seek out others with similar beliefs to bond with. It strengthens the Lovefraud “Tribe”, if you will.
Oh, and might I add, that many of us here are dealing with SO much in the REAL world right now, that we don’t need any animosity here.
FightAnotherDay, as a Christian, I love the spiritual teachings of Jesus. I also believe that it is the first book of psychology, explaining every type of personality life has to offer. I see similarities in Freud’s writing versus what is in the Torah, or in our case, the Old Testament.
It is my opinion, many writings over the year are a direct rip off of the Bible.
I would rather go directly to the source and pick up the Bible and compare what other writers have stolen from His word.
Peace.
Hens-I am so with you on that my friend. I may just have to skip over certain people’s posts. I think Oxy has run off for the evening.
“But, of course, I’m describing the Judeo-Christian God.”
No, you are not!!! There are many in the Bible who did not heed God’s word, and he showed them mercy, did you not read the book before you wrote your review? No mention of God’s love or grace. Amazing.
“DO NOT CREATE A GOD IN ONE”S IMAGE. THERE IS ONE AND ONLY TRUE GOD”.
I did worship the evil one. I remember wondering how come we started out both being so spiritual and I became UN-able to connect with GOD for awhile. It is only with time that I realized, that my P took the place of emotional comfort for me. Enough to push aside my prior relationships, my beliefs and my spirituality. Why seek some UNKNOWN if he was there, loving, kind, GOD-like. It was years later that I realized all these were methods of control. Yes, I dared to create and believe a false profit. If you will, God is all you all had said. One and Only. It is the devil that had always tried for God’s throne. it figures then, the good old truth: God is one. Anything pretending to be is an Antichrist.
How is that for logic?
Love you all!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eswsrd3-Xw
GOD IS LOVE…
WOW…
I haven’t been reading enough here lately obviously…
Shabby-BRAVO…Wini, Oxy, Healing Fast thank you!!!
I majored in Religious History with an emphasis on early Christianity and how it developed. I went to a world famous university with an amazing library full of rare and original source documents. Whether you believe Jesus was simply a carpenter, a holy man and wise teacher or the Son of God – the fact is He existed. There is too much irrefutable data. There is also much data that verifies many of the events told in the Bible.
I agree very much Healing Fast – when it comes to matters of spirituality I believe those that would force their view and denigrate others – those that claim some intellectual superiority are acting in a manner reminiscent of our S/N/P’s- Since this was my area of concentration / study under some world renown researchers I can in fact say without hesitation that there has been quite a bit of nonsense posted here regarding Christianity – and the most important point is to differentiate between that which is human error and that which is divine for oneself.
All religions have to one degree or another hangers on who have used the language of God/Nirvana/Dharma to manipulate and abuse others – to grow their own power. This happens in politics, large corporations and yes religious institutions.
None of that has any bearing on the Truth which is unchanging and constant – when you divorce yourself from that which is being crammed down your throats whether it is God as someone else understands God or athieism (I so get it Oxy!) one can find God.
The fulfillment of God’s laws is love. We do not achieve grace or redemption by following the letter of the law – that is Old Testament, (which is what it seems you have described Steve…) the New Testament reveals that it is by faith, NOT WORKS, that we are redeemed. That loving God and our neighbors as ourselves are the two greatest commandments.
I could go on but won’t. I think everyone here gets it. I believe that promotion of my ideas will do nothing for anyone else and may in fact drive them away from discovering God. It is by demonstrating through how I live my life that others may come to know God themselves.
Edited to add this – (a huge digression for some of you but it actually has a point)… The same can be said of the whole Global Warming shenanigans – (sorry for those of you still believing in this stuff bear with me here for a second…)
The fact is that our government and big business and high finance act in collusion with each other – they find some unsolvable problem and proceed with commissions and studies (which have been proven to be faked ) to try and control the rest of us and tax and fee us to death for their own benefit. This is sociopathy writ large. It is sickening and it is destroying the world. The MSM colludes as well because they are owned by the same large multinational companies that benefit from scaring the public with wars and faked science… Instead of solving real problems that have workable solutions they focus our attention elsewhere and it is just the same as when your N/S/P diverts your attention from something they have done by accusing you of something else completely random of which you are innocent. BTW – If you own a large dog – the carbon footprint of that dog is far greater than a super sized SUV and – well I digress but the research debunking it is available to anyone that wants to see it. The same goes for the financial crisis – look at what happened in the early 1920’s – one of the worst depressions ever – but we were out of it in no time – because the President at the time understood CUTTING spending and lowering taxes is how you solve a financial problem… The current administration is full of narcissists – nothing worse than a do gooder who knows how you should live your life and wants to enact laws to change how you behave – ugh.
Goodbye.
Some of the most personal and potentially difficult things to discus are religion/ spirituality. it is intimate and personal and one of the three things that ‘you are never supposed to discuss at a dinner party.’ 😉 there are reasons for that.
religion is not only intensely personal/ intimate, but it is also political. what we say we believe ties us to countries, tribes, culture…and all of these things are political. we are often so ‘in’ these things that we have no air or space within which to view ourselves our beliefs or the context for them.
i understand steve’s line of questioning as addressing a patriarchal/ hierarchical system of religion – a system that says ‘do not question, do obey, and watch it, because you can be cast out.’ this model exists in many of our societies in ALL sectors of our lives, not just religion. i see the fear it generates alive and well in me.
if this is not your understanding of god, then no matter. dismiss it. But I would posit that it has been the understanding of enough people over a long enough period that this system of fear is ingrained in our secular societies, and in many of the churches of the world.
re Buddhism – many atrocities committed by sectarian violence. the animosity continues to this day. and their are hierarchical systems well in place there also. also much potential for abuse by unscrupulous teachers – for example, within the Tibetan Vajrayana system the connection to the teacher is exceedingly important. it is also a system that houses many ‘crazy yogi’ teachers – people who will act in wild ways to help others reach enlightenment. how exactly do you tell, within this system if the behavior of the teacher is positive to you or negative? not so easy for sure.
to me, this article is about the whole question of familial/cultural and religious models in childhood and how they form the trauma bonds that set us up for ppaths. how does one learn to use there good sense when they have been taught from early years to ignore there good sense?
Sadly, I don’t know anyone who is Christian, who had a Christian upbringing that nurtured them – they have all had to work hard to claim a loving god for themselves, have grown and nurtured those relationships as adults.