Martin Luther employed and recommended several different approaches to curing religious fears, what we would call today religious obsessions. First, there is his “trust in God” strategy which I described in the book, Can Christianity Cure OCD? Then there are the two strategies described in the present book. They are “accuse and condemn yourself” and “stand alone and endure the hand of God.” The question of the relationship between these somewhat different approaches, and how they fit together, has been the focus of recent comments on this blog. It’s an excellent question.
IMO, we must start first with the fact that Luther’s understanding of faith evolved over a period of about six years of intensive Bible study. This occurred as he was suffering and working through his terrifying fears. Luther himself said, “I didn’t learn my theology all at once, I had to ponder over it ever more deeply, and my spiritual trials were of help to me in this.” As Luther progressed in overcoming his OCD symptoms, his “spiritual trials,” he learned more and more about the nature of faith. In his final understanding of what is means to have faith, Luther stressed that faith is inseparably linked to trust in God’s promises to us in scripture. He writes in “Personal Prayer Book,” written in 1523, several years after his full scale rebellion against Rome:
“Faith means that I put my trust in [God], that I make the venture and take the risk to deal with him, believing beyond doubt that what he will be toward me or do with me will be just as they [the promises in scripture] say.”
Luther’s first big breakthrough in his understanding of faith was, as explained in the book, achieved through a process that we can recognize as “ERP.” It was to “accuse and condemn yourself” in order to receive faith. At this early time, Luther tied faith inseparably to a very severe form of humility. His second big breakthrough was to “stand alone and endure.” This strategy did not involve accusing or condemning, or doing anything actively at all; but it did involve willingly exposing himself to his worst fears. It was only after he had learned important lessons from these two experiences that Luther experienced his Reformation breakthrough and came to his final conclusion about faith—that it is given to us by God out of sheer mercy.
So, where does that leave us in dealing with our own obsessional fears? Luther’s final formulation was simply trust God with your fears. He puts this beautifully in the letter he wrote to a woman suffering predestination fears in 1531. Luther tells her to say,
“Begone, wretched devil! You are trying to make me worry about myself. But God declares everywhere that I should let him care for me. He says, “I am thy God.” This means, I take care of you.”
And Luther adds, “This is what Saint Peter taught, “Cast all thy care upon him, for he careth for you.” And David taught, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee.”
So, I think that for some OCDers it works to simply apply Luther’s final formulation: to transfer responsibility to God for the outcome of the fear. As one client of mine put it, “It’s like handing someone a letter. I just give to God the responsibility for my concern.” And that worked for this client, and it works for lots of OCDers.
But for others of us, we need to realize true faith step by step. We’re like Luther. We need to be taught. We need to do ERP-type exercises and deliberate exposure to our fears.
What do you think?
6 Response Comments
Thank you. Your blog posts are very helpful in keeping things in perspective; every single one.
I just finished the book and it was truly amazing. So helpful for someone like myself who has suffered incredibly at the hands of OCD. I’m a little confused though on one point – are you advising not to deliberately bring up the obsession in order to do ERP as this goes against conventional ERP advice from my knowledge? I have obsessions over John Pipers work on the glory of God and get so afraid that if I don’t like the image of God he is saying is biblical, I’m not a true Christian and going to hell – I was always taught you need to read his material to deliberately trigger the OCD in an ERP experiment then resist any compulsions. Did Luther not do this and are you advising against this in the book?
I would be insterested in reading your response to this question also. I specially am trying to understand what is the best course of treatment; whether CBT, ICBT, ERP or the Therapy of Trust, or medication, or a combination of some of these.
The idea here is that for some people, full scale ERP, which may involve strongly accusing oneself or deliberately triggering the obsessional fears by other means, is necessary. For other people it is not. By God’s grace they can by force of will simply put their trust in God. Presumably for most people with tough cases of OCD, such as Luther had, deliberately triggering the obsession and enduring the fear is necessary as a preliminary to the gift of pure faith. Luther advanced from using what we call ERP (from our clinical point of view) to receiving the gift of trust, or faith, alone as sufficient for his fears. Not sure I can explain it any clearer than this, yet I know that for a bad case of OCD more questions may yet arise. There are not necessarily answers for these. That is the Lord teaching us patience and humility. What do you think?
What I get hung up on is that if I could transfer all responsibility to God that is one thing, but I cannot transfer my responsibility for my sin to Him. Scripture affirms human responsibility while maintaining God’s sovereignty and it is a matter I don’t think the human brain can answer in a satisfactory way. At least I haven’t been able to. When do I put the flesh to death and be holy as He is holy; and when do I allow an obsessional fear or blasphemous thought to be present if I cannot tell the difference between my true sin and my fear? Clearly sin still does enter my life and even true sin can cause a Christian to mourn over it but that is different from an obsessional fear … and I cannot tell the difference . OCD feels so very real. I have to add, my faith has never grown like it has since suffering with OCD and other ailments. And I never tasted Gods glory like I have since profound suffering entered my life. Deep calls to deep. So much so that I wouldn’t trade it. Suffering… I think probably one of Gods greatest mercies . I should also add, if a gun was held to my head I probably could identify what is OCD, I just don’t trust myself to be right.
You certainly have a point about suffering leading to a taste of God’s glory. In my book on Luther, he develops his Theology of the Cross which deals with that. But the suffering he refers to is exactly that of not addressing the (what we would call) OCD fear…in other words what we would call ERP. You need to resist compulsions, which often represent vain attempts to attain God’s mercy, and rather willingly suffer the obsessional fear. Suffer the fear of God’s abandonment along with Jesus. Yes, of course we must take a risk in labelling a fear as an OCD fear. Get as close to God as you can, pray on it, get advice on it, and then play make the call. Make the call it’s OCD. Might be wise to see a good therapist. What do other people think? This is a key question.