Tag Archives: website review

Christianity and OCD

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Continuing the conversation from last Monday …

My friend Rachel is a college student who recently completed a major project during which she had to view obsessive-compulsive disorder through a Christian lens and present her findings in a medium other than the typical college paper.  She created a blog, which you can view at http://christianityandocd.wordpress.com.

The questions that she asked me during this project prompted me to again reconsider the relationship between OCD and Christianity, along with those thought-provoking questions such as “Did God give me OCD?” and “Is CBT enough?” and “What is the cause of OCD?”  Her blog explores some of these questions.

Rachel herself does not have OCD, so all of her research is outside of her own experience.  I invite you to check her blog out and let me and her know what you agree and disagree with!

medical or spiritual?

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Discovered a website this weekend that is very disturbing to me as a Christian obsessive-compulsive.

At GreatBibleStudy.com, you can read quotes like the following:

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, commonly referred to as OCD, is not a mental disorder or disease… it is a spiritually rooted bondage in the person’s mind that needs to be uprooted.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is basically demonic torment brought on by a person’s bondages to fear and shame.

These ‘voices’ or compulsive thoughts are NOT caused because of a chemical imbalance (which the secular world cannot explain anyways); they are there because of a spiritual bondage in the person’s life.

Now, don’t get me wrong!  I believe that obsessive-compulsive disorder has entered into this world due to SIN, yes, but to negate that OCD is caused by a chemical imbalance seems ridiculous to me.  As a Christian, I view ALL of life through a spiritual lens, but these quotes seem like the equivalent of saying, “Diabetes is not a problem with the pancreas– it’s a spiritual issue!!!”  To say that diabetes is not connected to the pancreas’s inability to produce insuliin would be silly, just as saying that OCD is not connected to a chemical inbalance (our bodies absorb serotonin too quickly … that’s why we take SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors … they SLOW DOWN the reuptake/reabsorbtion of serotonin]).


All issues are spiritual issues, but that does not mean that they are NOT also medical issues.  God is also the Author of Science and the Creator of our bodies.  To not combine the spiritual with the scientific is short-sighted, I believe.

What are your thoughts on these quotes?  I’d especially love to hear from obsessive-compulsive believers!