Using God as a tool to punish ourselves.

When we want to feel bad, we do.

I thought about stopping right there, but that would make for a very short blog. 

When we want to feel bad, though we may not know it, we do feel bad.

Not enough explanation?   How about:

When we want to feel bad, though we may not know we want to feel bad, and when we also rationalize, deny, and repress our way out of it, we do manage to make ourselves feel bad.

Yah.  That's more like it.

Some situations come up where we do something, or think something and feel bad about what we just did.  Perhaps you just don't want to go to our relative's house for dinner, but you would rather not tell yourself this.  Because, everyone knows that you need to get along with your relatives.  Something must be wrong with you if you just don't want to show up, right?

So what do we do?

Suddenly our stomachs don't feel that good, or we just got too tired, or we suddenly have a headache coming on.  Any excuse rather than the one that we just don't want to go.

It is funny that many times, when I made these rationalizations, I ended up feeling bad.  If I used the excuse, "gosh I'm too tired!" I would realize later that indeed, I was too tired.  If I felt a migraine coming on (which I have felt before but one has not developed ) then later a real migraine did come on.

It seemed that whatever rationalization became true, and I felt physically worse.  What was happening is that I was punishing myself for feeling that I didn't want to go or do something.

Most of the time, I was unaware that this self-deception and shame was causing these physical problems.  The initial lie I told my friends or relatives, and the rationalization so I wouldn't have to know that I lied to them caused me to lie to myself.

Now I want to change the phrase, "When we want to feel bad, we do." to:

When we want to feel that God feels we are bad, we make God in our own image, and thus we feel bad."


First, we don't do something that we feel we should have, but just didn't want to do it.  A service project came up with a church I used to belong to.  The day of the project, I just didn't want to go.  Of course I rationalized this so that I had some excuse.  Like always, I found I felt worse for the lie in combination for not doing this than I did if I just told them that I really did not want to come.

But since God was involved, and this was a project for others in the Name of God, then part of me felt like punishing myself.  And there is no better punishment to yourself that to make God into the image and tool of your own punishment. 

I felt that God felt deeply disappointed in me.  This caused me to feel shame.  Because I felt shame, I made sure that the next couple of projects for that church, I was there, regardless of how I felt, or how much I didn't want to do it.

This is a small and somewhat insignificant example, but it applies to much larger issues.   I made God into a God of shame.   I used God as a reason to punish myself.  In my opinion, this is just as bad as blasphemy.  It is misrepresenting God, and using God's image in a manner that it was never meant to be used.

Luckily I have never caused a person so much harm that it affected the rest of their lives.  At least I hope not.  However, some people feel that they have.  Some word, some fight, some struggle caused a permanent separation, or a deep abiding pain in another.    Some may then use that as an excuse for saying that God could not forgive such a thing.  Again, this is misrepresenting God and using God as our own tool for punishment.

If we feel that God cannot forgive us, then there is no impetus for us to forgive ourselves.  In fact, without this self-forgiveness, there is no motivation to ask another for forgiveness for our actions.   We are stuck.  We are stuck feeling shame and guilt, because we feel like we deserve such shame and guilt.  We deserve to feel bad, to have a broken relationship. 

I have used God as a tool of my own punishment.  Too many times to count.

God does not respond to the things I do in the same ways that I respond.  God does not want me to feel shame or guilt.  Nor does God want me to use God as an excuse to punish myself.

God does not say, "You have sinned.  Now feel bad for a long time about it!  Only by feeling bad for a long time will you prove to me that you realize that it is a sin, and that you did Bad!"

Plaah-eeeze!

God would rather we make a mistake, realize it for what it is, make amends, make changes, and move on.