This book is good for people who were also raised in this tryp of dysfunctional spiritual abuse.

Part 1

When God Becomes A Drug – pp 60-62 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0874777038/cultawareinforce 

EXPLORING THE SYMPTOMS

Let’s take a look at the symptoms of religious addiction to see how they fit the patterns and behaviors we have discussed so far.

Inability to think, doubt, or question information or authority. This is the primary symptom of any dysfunctional belief system, for if you cannot question or examine what you are taught, if you cannot doubt or challenge authority, you are in danger of being victimized and abused. You miss the messages and miracles God places in your life because you literally do not know how to recognize them. 1n refusing to think or question, you hand over responsibility For your beliefs, finances, relationships, employment, and destiny to a clergyman or other so-called master. You are usually told that not thinking, doubting, or questioning is a sign of faith — so you become a religious slave.

Often if you use your critical faculties, you are told that this is the devil at work in your life. Faith is said to mean unquestioning obedience. This is how religious abusers control; it is how ministers and leaders are able to financially or sexually abuse their followers. It leads to brainwashing and mind control, for when you have no choices or freedom to decide for yourself, you are not in control of your own mind. 1f you are not permitted to think for yourself, to question, you stop your spiritual growth because you do not know how to see the ways God is working with you and through you. When you use your critical faculties to analyze, interpret, explore, and question, you discover new shades of meaning and greater richness in God’s truth. Questioning and exploring is a means of having a dialogue with God. To refuse to doubt, think about, or question what you are told is to miss an opportunity to talk with God.

Black-and-white, simplistic thinking.

This is one of the predominant symptoms of religious addiction. You see life in terms of right or wrong, good or bad, saved or sinner. You never see the gray areas. Your need for order, perfection, or control is so strong that anything that is not clearly black or white confuses or perhaps frightens you. Those who turn to religion as a means to avoid error are no doubt attracted to the black-and-white aspects of a rigid dogmatism. The chief danger of this type of thinking is that real life is seldom black or white. Life constantly presents us with situations or choices that are ambiguous or problems that require complex solutions. If you are unable to cope with these gray areas, with complexities, your life is likely to feel forever out of control. People who think only in terms of black or white have difficulty making decisions. You frantically try to fit a difficult issue into a neat, tidy solution, and it just doesn’t work. You frequently feel you have no choices, or that God has not heard you because the answers aren’t simple. You are forever at the mercy of those who will give you the simple, black-or-white answer.

Spiritually, thinking in terms of such absolutes paralyzes you, for people who think this way are always waiting for the right answer — the clear signal, the burning bush. You sit and wait for the solution that fits your simplistic dogma, even though the answer is often right in front of you. Black-and-white thinking prevents you from being able to find effective solutions to problems and to see when you are being abused.

You limit and stunt your life by rejecting anyone or anything that does not fit into your narrow frame of reference. You become abusive of others who do not share your views because difference, variety, and change all fall into the ambiguous gray areas, with which you cannot cope. Such shades of gray become the uncontrollable elements in life that Nakken says all addicts are trying to master. You increase your pain, he says, by becoming more rigid, harsh, and dogmatic the more you are confronted with situations that fall outside your simplistic views.

Shame-based belief that you aren’t good enough or you aren’t “doing it right.” Like the inability to question and the black-and-white thinking, this is a fundamental symptom from which many of the other symptoms of religious addiction spring. As Matthew Fox observed, people who are taught from birth that they are worthless never have the resources to cope with the challenges of life. Religious addiction, as well as other addictions, is an attempt to escape this pervasive sense of shame and inadequacy.

Shame-based thinking reinforces the belief that you don’t make mistakes, but that you are the mistake. Thus it robs you of the ability to constructively and healthily examine your behavior or choices, to learn how you might do it differently. Your black-and-white thinking causes you to label all vour beliefs and behaviors as good or bad — mostly bad. So you constantly feel that you are a failure, who has not measured up. This symptom is the seed of codependency, leading to people-pleasing and approval-seeking as a means to assure yourself you’ve done — whatever the task is right. Ultimately, it creates a terror of what will happen to you if you don’t do things right, which makes you vulnerable to many of the other symptoms of religious addiction.

This type of thinking also cheats you of the opportunity to discover and nurture you own inner strength. You never recognize or credit the positive choices you make in your life, never see how you create changes — how you do, in fact, do many things right. I hear people say so often in Twelve Step meetings that “I didn’t get sober; God did it for me.” This kind of thinking fosters a total denial of self. I heard of a therapist who told a client, “My Higher Power does it; I’m just a channel,” thus discounting years of training, hard work and study, and invalidating the discipline and talent it took to become a therapist. This is how you miss yourself and how you perpetuate the belief that you aren’t good enough. Believing yourself a failure and inadequate, you can never see when and how you have used your own gifts healthily and creatively. Shame-based thinking robs you of power, self-respect, and dignity.

To be continued …..