I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with religion, and I’ve never felt truly spiritual. Religion always made me crave a connection I never really felt (the same with spirituality), no matter how hard I tried. There was also the depression that never went away, and later on my identity and morals and values took a hit that made me only feel guilt and shame by going to church.
I still feel this conflict today, though I do desire to return to church to see if that is somehow a key to my diminished happiness, though I have a feeling it’s more about solidifying my identity and returning fully to my original morals and values (or just accepting that over the years my needs and wants have changed). Or it’s the simple matter of fully treating my depression, which might encompass guilt, shame and my conflict with morals, values and religion.
Thinking through all of this, I figured it would be insightful to gain the perspectives of a few psychologists who had some opinions in the area of religion, spirituality, guilt, shame, happiness and the self.
Joseph Ferrari, a psychology professor at DePaul University and a deacon candidate, said that if people are feeling guilt and shame in religion and spirituality, they might be missing the whole meaning, since God is about forgiveness.
He said in the last 60 years, at least in Catholicism, there has been a change in focus from a condemning, punishing God to a loving and forgiving God.
“We celebrate the beauty of humanness and being people,” Ferrari said. “Yes, we make mistakes but that’s why we have a forgiving God, a God of second chances.”
He said in spirituality, it is important to understand your relationship with God and how to enhance it, including if you’ve turned away by sinning.
There are some people struggling with guilt and shame because they sin and are in conflict with their religion, but he said he tells those people to look at God in a different view.
“The view of a shameful, punishing, punitive God…is really not the image that spiritual leaders follow today,” Ferrari said, and that view was mainly held years ago.
He said if we trust God, even if we don’t understand his purpose for us, we would be better off.
It’s always been a challenge to follow religion and to be spiritual, but there needs to be trust in God to help us handle those difficult situations.
Religion and spirituality can be rewarding by making us happier, healthier and more successful in areas like marriage, according to research, Ferrari said.
“It gives people a purpose, it gives people a goal, and it’s a recognition that I’m not on this journey alone, I’m here with someone else,” he said.
John Rhead, a psychologist in Maryland, said guilt and shame do occur in religion.
He said there can be a significant struggle when people are trying to “find their own inner values, inner truths…[and] inner moral gyroscope.”
He said religion, social custom and laws can sometimes replace peoples’ own morals and values, so they follow other systems and not their own.
“Reconnecting with inner truly felt…moral values is the thing that most helpfully liberates a person from an externally imposed one,” Rhead said.
He said it’s important for people to “awaken more deeply to their own inner values.”
In an e-mail, he said that “religion can lead to more guilt than spirituality” in his opinion, due to the different rules and regulations in religion that people can violate (diet and dress code for example in some religions) and even “thinking about certain things” that can lead to guilt and shame.
“The only guilt that spirituality brings is what I would call essential or existential guilt --the guilt that comes from violating some basic or innate law,” Rhead said.
Sometimes members of a church can also harm others in the church by shunning them if they violate any rules, he said, which I’m guessing would also bring guilt and shame to whoever is the violator.
He said that there have been studies that link happiness and health to religion and spirituality.
“I attribute this primarily to the way that such connections can foster a sense of being loved by God,” Rhead said. “Unfortunately many religions propagate the belief that God only loves those who are a member, so that lots of hatred and even warfare gets justified toward non-members.”
My conclusion for myself is that I think the love-hate relationship I have still is due to my own developing personal identity and possibly straying away from God, as well as my ongoing depression. The church I went to could also just be a wrong fit. It also bugs me that many religious people don’t believe women can have as high a role as men in the church, or possibly in everyday life.
I do recall some feelings of happiness when attempting to connect with God and feel a purpose in life, and by following rules of the church, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to try that again. Maybe focusing on God’s forgiveness is key. Besides, maybe there is something to improved health.
Does anyone else have similar concerns or experiences regarding religion and spirituality and a whole wide range of emotions and feelings?
For more information:
Article on guilt and shame I wrote: https://www.empowher.com/mental-health/content/how-guilt-and-shame-can-work-and-against-us