On guilt and religion

There was something I postulated some years ago now when I noticed the number of people in my Christian congregation who were “depressed”: that there may be a positive correlation between Christian faith and depression. I know, correlation doesn’t imply cause and effect, but let’s explore it.

Mea culpa. It means, literally, “my fault” in Latin. It is one of the commonly recited orations in Catholic worship – but not only that, the concept of “confessing blame” is key to most Christian denominations. Briefly, the concept originates from the belief that Adam and Eve sinned against God and therefore inherited sin to all their progeny. Therefore we are all guilty of sin – and hence the need for a redeemer: the Messiah. Gradually the belief came to be that the greater the guilt expressed by a person, the greater his faith was seen to be. The expression of guilt came to take on the form of martyrising practices like self-flagellation, long pilgrimages, and the walking on bare knees to certain sacred places. In modern times these practices are no longer popular amongst Christians, but their roots may remain in the mental processing modes used by the faithful.

One of the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-IV, a medical text used for the diagnosis of mental illness, for depression includes “feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt”. Now if you consider what we said previously about how in Christian belief the greater the guilt, the greater the perceived faith, it isn’t hard to see how this characteristic of “faith” can easily become one of a mood disorder. We no longer self-flagellate, but we often torment ourselves with guilt, self-loathing, worthlessness, and eventually hopelessness (which can be thought of as a loss of faith in our own ability for self-efficacy). With the growing guilt and hopelessness, the road can be paved for an external source of hope: God, Jesus, or whatever deity you may choose to worship.

Am I trying to say that religion causes depression? No; in the same way I am not saying that religion can “cure” depression. What I am trying to point out here is the perhaps propensity of certain personality types (e.g. the self-sacrificial, perhaps charitable, nice folk that faithfully report to church regularly) to become both the ideal Christian and, unfortunately, perhaps also the person who struggles with depression in his everyday life. And I think this is how the higher rates of depression in faithful religious-abiding persons comes about. Like I said, maybe not cause and effect, but perhaps correlation by a common personality type.

It is interesting to note, however, that when Christ was asked what was the greatest commandment of God’s law, he mentioned nothing of guilt or sacrifice or of rendering homage. He summarised it all in two simple concepts: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37-40). Really, that was all the masses of laws Moses and others wrote down were about! So what makes a “good” Christian? Certainly not how much mental or physical anguish a person endures by his own means. Isn’t the Christian belief also that God created the heavens and the Earth with all their magnificent glory and beauty? Surely it can’t be a sin to worship God with gratitude and appreciation of all the blessings of creation.