Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.
The disturbed individual who believes himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have associated religiosity with neurosis and mental illness.
I am not writing to try and convert people to fundamental Christianity. I am just trying to share my experience, strength and hope, that someone who is as messed up and neurotic and scarred and scared can be fully accepted by our dear Lord, no questions asked.
Religious people... hold a kind and merciful view of life, the faith of the broken, the hounded, the hopeless. Yet too often, they will not extend that spirit to our fellow creatures.
Everything great in the world comes from neurotics. They alone have founded our religions and composed our masterpieces.
God, who knows our most secret thoughts and who sees all, is witness to the purity of my principles. They are not founded on this barbarous ferocity that takes pleasure in shedding human blood.
At their core, when things really matter, people see a need to turn to God for strength and protection.
Very few minds are strictly normal, and all religious fanatics are marked with abnormalities of various sorts.
Nothing but an imperious intellectual and moral necessity can drive into doubt a religious mind, for it is as though an earthquake shook the foundations of the soul, and the very being quivers and sways under the shock.
Oh, I may be devout, but I am human all the same.