Here a sin, there a sin, everywhere a sin, sin!

Try to imagine, for a moment, that you lived with the constant fear that everything you did was an offense to God.  Think of what it would feel like to fret that merely by living your life--a life that seemed, at first glance, to be perfectly in line with your religious convictions and the teachings of your scriptures and Church--you were somehow disappointing God.  Picture a scenario where these fears snowballed into the ultimate fear:  That you would one day reach those proverbial pearly gates, only to be told:  "Depart from me, you worker of iniquity!" and then off you would go into eternal Hell fire.

Surely no one feels that way!  Surely this is only a caricature of Christians made up by atheists, who want to paint us all as timid, brainwashed cowards, trembling in fear of a vengeful deity so that we never have a moment's peace, in spite of all our insistence that Christ brings us joy.

J-Jesus loves me, this I kn-know!

I wish that were true.  I wish that no genuine Christian lived under the shadow of such fear!  I wish that it only ever happened in cults, or in anti-Christian political cartoons or the like.  The reality, however, is that many legitimate Christians do deal with these fears, on a greater or lesser scale.  And, at least sometimes, I'm one of them.

You see, there's a condition called "Scrupulosity."  It's sort of like having a type of spiritual OCD, specifically the OCD where you think everything is filled with deadly germs.  Only instead of germs it's sin, and instead of disease it's hell.  At its worst, scrupulosity makes you see sin everywhere you turn.  I'll give a personal example:  There have been times when I thought that, just by having material possessions beyond the bare minimum needed to survive, I might be sinning.  And in the  most extreme moments of scrupulosity, I have feared that this would land me not even in Purgatory, but in Hell itself.  That's right:  For the heinous, unthinkable sin of having a nice home and several luxuries that most Americans (even those in poverty!) have, I feared I would roast for all eternity.  That sort of thing is the power that scrupulosity can have, at its worst.

It's not always that bad.  Most of the time, even when I suffer from scrupulosity, I'm able to keep the fear of hell on the back burner, but I still have the irrational fear that, even if I make it to Heaven, there will be some everlasting consequence I'll face for not eradicating some (quite probably imagined) sin out of my life.  Even if it's only that, in Heaven, I'll be like one of those servants from the parable of the ten coins in Luke 19, who was not given charge over as many cities because he didn't earn as many coins as his fellow servants.  And somehow, despite knowing that in Heaven everyone is happy, despite that in the parable itself these are all  portrayed as happy outcomes except for the servant who literally did nothing with his original coin, I still worry that I'll be in distress over not having tried for "more cities" while I was here below.

It's like a Cosmic board game!
(But no rematch and the results are eternal...no pressure)

The main thing is that, when scrupulosity asserts itself, I second guess myself at every turn.  Something I thought I'd finally reasoned was morally acceptable suddenly seems not so much.  I begin to distrust my motives.  Those arguments that once offered me freedom from thinking some minor thing is sinful start to look like transparent attempts at self-justification.  Going to confession over anything but obvious mortal sin becomes far too much a hassle, because I'll begin to make a sin out of anything and everything, and then grow scrupulous about even confessing things (like owning material luxuries) that I obviously don't firmly intend to "amend."

So that's a glance at scrupulosity, for those of you who do not experience it yourselves.  For those of you who do experience it, I don't have any enlightening answers.  I hear that getting a wise spiritual director and obeying him in everything is a huge help for scrupulosity.  I still have to do that, as of my writing this entry.  I do know that Jesus, and by extension the Catholic Church, does not want us to be so petrified.  This is not the "easy yoke and light burden" Jesus promised.  So whatever else can be said, our scrupulosity is not just "part of being religious."  Other than that, I have no advice.  Just know that you're not the only one who is plagued by such fears, fears that you know must look ridiculous, but that you just can't seem to shake.  I feel, and know, your pain.

The Terrifying Bliss of Being Vulnerable

We've all got things that make us ashamed; things that make us feel especially rotten compared to other people, and that isolate us.  There are things that make us think that our friends and families will treat us differently.  We're terrified of letting anyone find out, yet at the same time some part of us wants someone to know.  And why?  Because the only way to calm our fears that we would be abandoned or mistreated by anyone who knew our secrets is to prove our fears false by revealing those secrets and being treated just as well by our loved ones as we always were.

That's vulnerability.  It's one of the most terrifying things we'll ever do, yet it's the key to feeling fully loved.  After all, isn't God the ultimate model of love?  Who can imagine believing that God Himself only loved us because He "didn't know all our secrets?!"  That's a pretty depressing thought!  As if the Creator of all the universe was only one shocking revelation away from giving us the cosmic cold shoulder!

Whatever He found out about Antarctica must have been scandalous!

But if we know that Love Himself loves us even in the knowledge of all our faults, then the ultimate expression of human love is to have relationships where we can trust our loved ones to do the same.

I'm not gonna lie:  I am no good at this.  Oh, I've been blessed with a few incredible people who have never batted an eyelash at any secret regret or struggle I've shared with them.  But even with these people, I continue to find that whenever I open up a little bit more, I stress and obsess over what the response is going to be.  I end up in a sort of limbo, not knowing if I'll be rejected, or if this amazing person in my life will start treating me differently.  Maybe they won't reject me.  But maybe they'll pity me, start to act differently around me.  Let's say I had just opened up about my same sex attraction to a guy:  What if he starts pulling back from me, constantly afraid that every little thing he does will be a temptation to me?

Terrifying.

But the rewards are amazing.  That moment when you realize that your being vulnerable has changed nothing, or has actually changed things for the better, is a bliss like few other things in the world.  To know that you can really be known, and still be loved.  It's beautiful.  I'm definitely not saying that you should rush out and publish all your deepest secrets to the world.  And I'm not saying you shouldn't use your own judgment when deciding who and how to tell about the things you hide the most.  I'm just saying that, although the risks are great, the rewards--when things go well--are much greater.