Article

Culture

Psychology

10 November 2023

6 min read

When obsession shakes certainties and challenges beliefs

What happens when questions of belief are subject to obsessive behaviours? The impact of OCD on key life moments.

Paula Duncan

Paula Duncan is a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen, researching OCD and faith.

A close-up of a complex clock mechanism featuring small statues within it.

The Millennium clock tower.

National Museum of Scotland.

I’m eleven years old and I’ve been given a New Testament in our school assembly. This is the first time I’ve owned a copy of the Bible. So far, I’ve only heard it read to me in school or the few times I’ve gone to church with my family. I flick through it that evening, taken by the table at the front that directs you to different verses that speak to how you might be feeling. I find myself reading Revelation. The imagery frightens me. The tone, the threat, the fear, and the condemnation… would this be me if I didn’t believe in the right way? If I didn’t believe enough? I’m terrified of this book, these words, terrified of God, even. Mostly, I’m terrified by my own doubt and uncertainty about all things religious, despite wanting to believe. What if God isn’t real? What if God is and I just don’t believe enough? God will know I’m not sure. I tell myself not to think about it. If I’m to avoid thinking about it, I can never read the Bible again. I accept this as a rule.

I’m twelve years old and I’m standing in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, listening to one of Bach’s minor key concertos playing from the Millennium Clock. To me, it looks like it depicts some sort of hellscape straight from the book of Revelation. Death, suffering, and evil are everywhere in this model with its eerie red glow at the bottom. It brings up all the thoughts I’ve been trying to avoid – “you don’t believe enough” and “this is what hell looks like.” I tell myself to forget about it. If I’m to forget about it, I need to make sure that I never talk about it and don’t tell anyone how afraid of it I am. Talking about it makes it real, I think. I accept this, too, as a rule.

I’m thirteen years old and I’m sitting in a church trying to concentrate on the service. I can’t because I keep having the thought that I don’t believe enough. I’m worrying about what the reading might be – I’m still too scared to read the Bible and I can’t prevent myself from hearing it in this space. I’m afraid of thinking that I don’t believe enough, and that God will know because this is God’s church after all. I tell myself that I do not belong in this place if I cannot control my thoughts. If I can’t do that, I can never go to church again. This too, becomes a rule.

I’m fourteen years old and I’ve started praying every evening. I’m not sure what prompted this, but I also know that I must do it correctly. If I pray and forget to conclude with “amen”, then it seems obvious that God will continue to listen to my thoughts as if I’ve forgotten to hang up the phone. I try to keep my thoughts corralled and pure when I pray. If I don’t end my prayer, God will hear all my worst thoughts – the ones I am ashamed of, the ones that scare me, the ones that fill me with doubt. I tell myself that I can no longer run that risk. If I’m to prevent this, I shouldn’t pray. Another rule.

I was scared to say these things aloud – to voice my fears or doubts in case they somehow became worse if I acknowledged them.

I’m now in my late twenties, and I have been diagnosed with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and I’m slowly unlearning the rules I’ve created for myself over the years. Each of them, in their own way, was designed to keep me safe from harm, safe from thinking about something that frightened me, or acknowledging difficult emotions like doubt and uncertainty.

It has been a long road to reach that diagnosis. OCD is regularly misunderstood and presented as punchline of jokes – “I’m so OCD!” is one that I’ve heard far too many times when someone simply means that they’re organised. The problem with these jokes is that it disguises the reality and makes it that bit harder for people to recognise what it is they’re really dealing with. OCD-UK, a charity to whom I owe a great deal, describe OCD as follows: “Obsessions are very distressing and result in a person carrying out repetitive behaviours or rituals in order to prevent a perceived harm and/or worry that preceding obsessions have focused their attention on.”

Obsessions could cover virtually any topic, and everyone will experience compulsions in slightly different ways. I didn’t recognise that I was living with OCD because almost all of my compulsions were mental rituals or avoidance behaviour. I would try and avoid thinking about things, check whether thoughts upset me, avoid reading the Bible… Layers and layers of compulsive behaviour in response to frightening intrusive thoughts that became associated with faith. I was scared to say these things aloud – to voice my fears or doubts in case they somehow became worse if I acknowledged them. I now know to call this “magical thinking” but I still find it difficult at times to accept that I cannot cause something to happen simply by saying it.

It can be particularly difficult for people with OCD to cope with uncertainty. I can see why anxiety and doubt about the existence of God has been hard for me to tolerate. I also know that I can never achieve absolute certainty and part of learning to live with OCD is learning to accept that and make choices despite it. Last year I attended the International OCD Foundation (IOCDF) Faith and OCD conference and was overwhelmed by the sheer number of people there. So many people with the same worries and doubts as me, and many more who had found that OCD impacted them in different ways.

But it was hard for a doctor to diagnose me until I could find the words to articulate what I was experiencing. It wasn’t until I started reading books about other people’s experiences with OCD that I started to recognise my own thought patterns, my own fears and doubts in other people’s words. Author and video creator John Green shares a very powerful video titled “What OCD is like (for me)” where he shares what his experience of having OCD and says:

“I can say what it is like more than what it is.”

This gives me a little more courage to tell people what living with OCD can be like and represent some of the diverse experiences of the condition. For someone who was too frightened to open a Bible, I think it’s a little ironic that I am now a theologian. My doctoral research project is focusing on faith and OCD, and in particular, how it might affect someone’s relationship with God. I hope to make use of some of my own experience along the way – examining my fear of not being sure enough, my worries that my intrusive thoughts would somehow offend God… I hope that by sharing this, I can raise a little more awareness of an experience that so many of us try to keep secret or just aren’t ready to speak about.

Through advocacy and research, I’d like to share a little of, as John Green says, what OCD looks like (for me). I’d like to add my voice – now that I’ve found it – to the discussion in the hopes that someone might read this and recognise what they’re going through. And if that’s you? You’re not alone. There is help and there is hope.

Article

Culture

Film & TV

21 February 2025

5 min read

A tale of two Romes

The Gladiator sequel’s dream of equality is baloney but telling.

Matt Lewis

Matt is a songwriter and musician, currently completing an MA in theology at Trinity College, Bristol.

Chariots thunder into a Roman amphitheatre.

Scott Free Productions.

I left the theatre quite disappointed by what I had witnessed. The original Gladiator, the Ridley Scott masterpiece, remains one of the most captivating historical epics in cinema. Every time I watch it, I feel I am stepping into another time. The sequel, by contrast, baffled me by how out of time it was, jarring me out of the action by its historical inaccuracies.

Whether it was the sharks in the Coliseum or newspapers a thousand years or so before their invention, these moments reminded me I was not witnessing an entirely truthful representation of Roman society. Perhaps I am asking too much - a movie is after all, a representation, and may tell us more about ourselves than the era it portrays.

But Gladiator II’s biggest anachronism isn’t newspapers or sharks, but the presence of Christian values in a pre-Christianised Rome.

The backdrop for the film is that the evil and insane twin Emperors Geta and Caracalla, have spread chaos across the world, relentlessly conquering foreign lands, imposing their will on others - in other words, doing what Romans usually do.

Against the emperors are a group of Romans who are tired with all this conquering and violence and want to build a new Rome. Throughout the film, they remind the audience constantly of Marcus Aurelius, the historic Roman emperor from the first film, who had a dream - ‘the dream that was Rome’. Rome would be a republic. But not just any republic.

Lucius, the hero of the sequel, in his final speech to the Roman army, sets forth what this dream could look like: ‘A city for the many, and refuge to those in need.’ The entire legion lay down their arms and cheer triumphantly for the dawn of this new Rome.

All of this is starting to sound rather close to home. Perhaps Lucius should march to the US border next.

We can imagine offscreen, Lucius walks into the Roman equivalent of the World Humanist Congress, to write a charter to declare the worth and dignity of every individual, and their right to freedom.

Anyone watching who didn’t know their history might be forgiven for assuming that this would mean an end to all the conquering, and the beginning of a just and equal society for all, regardless of gender, social status and nationality.

Unfortunately, this was not the dream of the Roman republic, even before ‘tyrannical’ emperors started ruling. Many of Rome’s biggest conquests happened during the era of the Republic. Likewise, democracy in Rome did not extend to all people. Slavery was rife. The dream that was Rome, was to have a group of men subjugate the world, rather than just one or two.

To be fair to Ridley Scott, his Rome has a little bit more nuance than I give him credit. Denzel Washington’s character Macrinus, the gladiator master, stands as a reminder of the hypocrisy of Marcus Aurelius’ ‘dream’. Macrinus was made a slave under Aurelius’ rule, bearing the brand of Aurelius’ visage on his chest, a reminder that he was Roman property.

The only real equality Rome has – Macrinus points out – is that a slave can violently overthrow an emperor. If equality is going to happen in Rome, it won’t be through reasonable persuasion, but violent revolution. And even then, equality won’t have the final say, but rather the oppressed simply becomes the next oppressor. This is the true spirit of Rome: the survival of the strongest.

Gladiator II reminds us that the values we find self-evident today, that Ridley puts into the mouth of Lucius and the other protagonists, were not self-evident to Rome. The dream that was Rome is a dream that we have. But how did we come to have this dream?

We have been shaped by this history in more ways than we know.

There was another revolution, that Gladiator II does not portray (at least not explicitly). This revolution explains why we look back on history wanting to see ideals of equality and justice. The German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche, atheist and nihilist, writes about it in his work The Genealogy of Morality.

Nietzsche describes a war that happened between Judea and Rome. Rome was undoubtedly defeated, Nietzsche claims. Now, before we might accuse Nietzsche of further anachronism (the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in AD70 come to mind), Nietzsche is in fact speaking of a revolution in values.

He saw that the Roman ideal of ‘the prerogative of the few’: a small group of strong men imposing their will and subjugating others as the master race, was overthrown by the ‘prerogative of the many’ in the ‘slave revolution’. This revolution was brought about by a Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth, followed by his group of unlikely revolutionaries.

At the centre of this movement was one central image: a man dying on a Roman cross, a punishment meant for slaves and criminals.

God in human flesh dying as a victim of oppression, was an image that gave power to the powerless.

Nobility was no longer found in inflicting suffering, but in enduring it for the sake of others.

Historian Tom Holland writes in his book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind:

‘The spectacle of Christ being tortured to death had been bait for the powerful. It had persuaded them … that it was their natural inferiors, the hungry and the humble, who deserved to inherit the earth’.

Holland traces this revolution and the ways in which this counter-narrative slowly seeped into Western culture, implanting a concern for the powerless. The welfare state, universal human rights, movements like #MeToo all find their source in this world-rupturing event.

Holland writes elsewhere: ‘The wellspring of humanist values lay not in reason, not in evidence-based thinking, but in history.’

We have been shaped by this history in more ways than we know.

Our generation suffers from cultural amnesia. We forget the reason for how we reason today. Our desire to see Rome (and our own nation, for that matter) become a home for the many and refuge to those in need, is a desire that has been shaped by Christian values.

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