WHEN RELIGION IS A MASK FOR AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOUR
Avoidance behaviour happens when you sense something is not as it should be and
you make it look like it is not a problem. It is unhealthy and stops growth.
Praying for a person is saying that it is ultimately up to God to help and not
you. If you really can do nothing for a person but pray for them it follows that
God is the only one who really helps. If people help it is not really them but
God. This is the perfect rationale for avoidance behaviour. If God is meant to
help a sick person and you don't then the responsibility is not yours.
Avoidance is based on the fear of failure, a refusal to admit that it is better
to try than not to, a refusal to admit that not trying is in fact the worst
failure of all. The person is trying to avoid the criticism and disapproval and
hurt and rejection that she thinks will follow if she fails. But doing nothing
will bring these things on her head far faster than trying and failing would.
This is encouraging to the person who likes to avoid having to deal with things
that really should not be swept under the carpet. It gives them a new excuse on
top of the usual excuse - "It's none of my business", or, "I could make it worse
if I say anything." If God helps or if prayer helps, then it does not matter if
you decide to neglect other people.
Some say that avoidance is protective behaviour and is not about neglecting. But
neglect is a reality. People do it. Avoidance may at times be about being
protective but not always. It is stupid to say that if you see an old man being
beaten up in public that you can walk away from the scene without saying a word
or looking for help that you are being protective. To say you are being
protective is really just going to make you feel good about your walking away.
People will walk away more if excuses are made for them.
Avoidance means you have a bad attitude to others. For example, if your new
secretary is a disaster you may avoid telling her for it causes her
embarrassment and she may hold a grudge. You don't trust that she really cares
about doing the right thing and appreciating some guidance. You are not to be
trusted when you take that view of her. You are judging her when you are not
qualified to. You cannot see what is in her heart. Avoidance is not helpful in
any sense.
Avoidance leads to you failing to learn how to speak up for your needs and
rights, bottling up your feelings, saying yes all the time and being used by
people, keeping away from the company of others, being passive when abused by
others, fearing change, standing by while others are treated badly. To sum up,
it is about refusing to take risks even to do the best thing and refusing to
admit that you helped bring about the harm that resulted from your avoidance of
the issue.
The number one way for people to engage in avoidance behaviour is the fear of
people nursing grudges against them. Avoidance behaviour is rife in the
communities that enjoy picking at the alleged mistakes a person has made like a
scab and keeping the pain alive. It is certain that the worse cases of nursing
grudges are to be found among religious people. The grudges between Catholics
and Protestants in Ireland being a classic example. People who think their
religion is the best and that God is their chum and their rock against the big
bad enemy religions of the world are going to nurse grudges easily.
If a wife cannot criticise her husband's mother, who is demanding and selfish
and arrogant, without him going into a rage and refusing to hear it then he has
a childish dependence on his mother. He feels he cannot be much of a person
without her. Thus he sees any critical evaluation of his mother as a criticism
of him for he has judged that he needs her and she makes him a better person.
The wife will be blamed by him for her attitude and he will reject her for a
time. Religion wants to make people dependent on God in a stronger way that this
man is on his mother. Thus it is intrinsically dangerous.
The person with avoidance issues will suffer and deal with that suffering by
seeking out a person who does not have such issues. For example, the passive
timid woman may seek a no-nonsense assertive husband. She knows that he will
stand up for her. She finds him protective. Passive timid people like nasty
aggressive religions. That is the reason why violent religions find it
impossible to get all the members to co-operate in its intolerance.
Avoidance is the ultimate way to help society collapse and to increase
suffering. It is the ultimate way to stop learning the best ways to help others
and yourself. It is the worst thing a person can do. Avoidance is an action - it
takes work to avoid doing things.
#Here is another. "I was born and raised in this religion. I would not consider
changing."
This is protecting yourself from the knowledge that maybe you should change.
This is protecting yourself from truth - if you cared about truth you would test
and compare religions to see what one was the best.
This is protecting you from your lack of confidence that you can change and be
yourself.
This is protecting you from your fear of the repercussions when bigots hear of
your plans to convert to another faith if you find you need to go. You are
enabling the bigots by refusing to search for truth.
#Here is another, "Dear St Anthony, please ask God to help me."
God already knows what you want so Anthony cannot ask him even if he wanted to.
If he does then he is not asking but only wasting time and energy and words.
You are protecting yourself from your feeling that you are not good enough for
God to help. You are trying to fool God. You think that somebody else asking
masks your unworthiness from him.
Asking a saint to intercede implies that you fear not getting what you ask.
Interceding is not interceding unless God has the option and the power to ignore
the request. The Church says that God may not answer a prayer as you asked but
in another way. You can get an apple when you asked for a banana. But that is
not ignoring your prayer but merely God doing what he can based on what the
circumstances allow.
Catholicism pretends that the Bible saying that Christians must pray for one
another allows us to ask the saints to intercede for us. But the Church lies for
it knows that praying for a person and interceding with God for them are two
different things. Praying for God to do his will for the person is not
interceding which is, "God you are wrong to let harm befall this person, I know
better. Listen to me and protect her".
You are protecting yourself from God by using the saint as a false god. And you
compound the idolatry by refusing to admit the idolatry.
#Here is another. "I am close to God at Mass when I eat his body and drink his
blood."
You don't want to value God's presence and accessibility wherever you are. His
presence in the toilet is just as holy as the alleged presence at Mass.
You are protecting yourself by setting up a lot of distance between yourself and
God. It is as nasty as refusing to be with your lover except in Starbucks.
You feel you will fail in valuing so you indicate that you do not trust in his
guidance and are protecting yourself from the consequences of such mistrust.
#Here is another, "I will not cope with bereavement or illness or death without
God".
This is protecting yourself from yourself with a belief. It cannot work well in
the long-run because it is contradictory to protect yourself from yourself.
#Here is another. "God only loves me because he is good and not because I am
worth it."
This is protecting yourself from rejection by God. You actually do not love him
for benefiting you so you are rejecting him to save him the trouble of rejecting
you or maybe rejecting you.
Also, it shows you are projecting onto God your inability to see that if he
loves you, you are worth it. You protect yourself from the fact that nobody
should care if he is good as long as he loves you.
#Here is another. "People are naturally sinful and so should be punished."
This is about protecting yourself from taking the risk of trying to befriend
them. You fear rejection and being hurt. You make the mistake of thinking that
protecting yourself from these things is going to protect you emotionally. It
does not. You may protect yourself from rejection by avoiding people but by
avoiding them you are forcing them to ignore you. Ignoring is worse.
Some say that we should see violent and nasty and gossipy people not as being
motivated by the desire to hurt people but as being motivated by the wish to
protect themselves. For example, the person who thinks everybody is inherently
violent and likes violence will use violence to protect himself or herself.
A bad person hurts people. A sinful person hurts God. He may hurt people but
that is his way of hurting and offending God.
Another version goes, "People are naturally bad and so should be punished or
avoided."
Calling them sinful makes them out to be worse than what they are. It is
accusing them of a crime in the name of a being whose existence cannot be
proven. That is intrinsically bigoted and unfair. To wish punishment on people
for sin is worse than wishing it on them for having done harm.
This is an example of how belief in God and its corollary, sin, do emotional
harm or intensify such harm.
Another example is how once a person believes in God, his or her list of things
that are immoral gets longer. It is harmless to give somebody the fingers behind
their back. But not if God is watching and he is perfect and hates evil. Belief
in God demands that we lengthen the list of what people may be condemned for and
condemn themselves for.
#Here is another. "My religion is a hospital for sinners. I am in this religion
for it encourages me to do better and forgives my sins."
If you are like everybody else and commit the same wrongs over and over again
and have a pattern created where you do harm and repent and do it again and
repent ad infinitum then you are using your religion as a crutch. You treat it
as a crutch for a sinner. You don't really care how much you "sin" for you think
God will forgive you.
If a huge number of people are murderers, that makes you feel better about being
a killer. Being in a religion that generally judges everybody as a sinner makes
you feel part of a community of sinners. You feel better about your sin. Some
don't but most do or feel less bad than they would if they were not in the
religion. A religion of sinners encourages your sin when it makes you feel
better about it. It does not have much respect for those whom you hurt though it
will fake it!
Only those who assess what religion does the best good works and produces the
best people and join it have the right to claim, "My religion is the only one
authorised by God and is the one holy Church". If a Church is no better than a
pagan religion, then it is nothing special.
Religion should be assumed to be a crutch unless the believer presents sound
logic and good evidence that the religion is in fact true or probably true! But
even if the religion is not a crutch for that person, it could be for others.
#Here is another. "Those, perhaps including God, who act as though they hate me,
hate my sinful actions not me."
This is protecting yourself from the feeling of rejection and danger. It is
protecting you from the realisation that love has been withdrawn from you. It is
about protecting you from emotional abandonment and the treat to your
self-esteem that a rejection from others or God would pose.
This is protecting you from admitting that you hate the sin and the sinner for
the sinner is the sin. Sinner refers to a kind of person.
If you are rejected and cannot see it, you only make the dangers worse. You have
to realise that it is YOU who is being rejected not just your sin. You will stop
taking steps to avoid rejection if you fail to see it.
If you feel useless, you may blame God and others. This is a protective strategy
for you wish to relieve the pain by blaming somebody else. In the same way, you
avoid the pain of realising you hate others by projecting the hate on to the sin
as if it were not something that describes a person rather than an action. It
protects you from having to look at your own vulnerability. It protects you from
the knowledge that loving the sinner and hating the sin is nonsense.
The religious and the psychological crutches obscure and hide deep emotional
issues and turmoil. If you do not feel enough love for yourself, you will hide
this by blaming others for it or projecting it on to them. For example, if you
receive a nice gift from a neighbour you may think that they see how pathetic
you are and feel sorry for you. Or you may think they have a sinister motive for
giving the present for you are not worth it.
# I do not want to believe that instead of having free will, people are merely
acting according to their brain chemistry and only imagine they are free.
Therefore I believe in free will. I also need to accuse people of abusing free
will so that I can exonerate God from the blame for the awfulness of life.
No matter how good a person seems to be, is she really good if she believes in
free will just because she wants to? And if getting God off the hook is her
motive for believing in free will then she is a disgrace! She is accusing people
of abusing free will and of being able to abuse it for the sake of a religious
doctrine. If free will exists, we must honour it for it is free will and because
it is true and not be using it in an agenda to promote God. If one has free will
and abuses it then one must be criticised and punished. But you must not relish
doing so. Believing in free will to justify belief in God is saying people
should suffer for abusing their free will and that you believe in it not because
it is true but because of God. That is vindictive.
# If we tolerate sin or enable it, that will lead to great evil. So we must
judge actions. Correcting a person for doing evil does not amount to accusing
that person of being evil.
If you do evil unwittingly you are still doing evil and that is that. Nobody
would be happy to be told they have done great harm without knowing it
especially when they could have known better.
CHRISTIAN RESPONSE - IS CHRISTIAN FAITH A CRUTCH?
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
The Power of 'Negative Thinking', Tony Humphreys, Newleaf, Dublin, 1996
OTHER BOOKS
Freud, S (1927/1961) The Future of an Illusion. New York: Norton.
Vitz, P (1999) Faith of the Fatherless. Dallas: Spence.
Nagel, T (1997) The Last Word. Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R (1995) River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. Weidenfeld &
Nicolson: London.
