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.

Review

Books

Culture

Digital

Leading

11 August 2025

5 min read

How a card game, going off-grid, and a great teacher, shaped Bill Gates

A new biography explores the man who shaped the digital decades

Krish Kandiah

Krish is a social entrepreneur partnering across civil society, faith communities, government and philanthropy. He founded The Sanctuary Foundation.

Bill Gates.

European Parliament, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It is hard to find Bill Gates the man behind Bill Gates the tech billionaire. The founder of Microsoft is consistently portrayed in the media solely through the lens of wealth, influence and innovation, and with good reason. For decades he has ranked one of the richest men in the world with a net worth of around $113 billion, and his most recent operating system running on over 400 million devices around the world.

But in the first instalment of his planned three-volume biography Bill Gates reveals something of his personal story - of the rituals, coincidences and relationships that have shaped the man who, like it or not, is shaping all our lives

As someone who grew up riding the wave of the technological revolution of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, I found Bill Gates’ deeply personal portrait particularly fascinating. But the themes of his book resonate even wider - the way he talks about relationship and risk, inclusion and inspiration, memory and morals, are poignant however much time you spend on your computer and however much money you have in your pocket.

Hearts with Grandma shaped Gates’ childhood

The powerful influence of Gates’ family, particularly his grandmother, is unmistakable. The biography opens and closes with the woman who called him “Trey,” recognizing his place as the third William Henry Gates in the family. Their close bond developed over the card table, where Gates sat in awe of her mental sharpness. Even into old age she regularly beat him at her favourite game, Hearts. It’s likely not a coincidence that this game made it into Microsoft’s early operating systems: Gates’ way of sharing something of his grandmother with the world. But Hearts was more than a card game. It symbolises the space Gates was offered to learn strategy, logic and focus. It was a levelling of the playing field across generations and an opportunity to discover and refine his sense of identity, competition and connection.

I found myself reflecting on my own childhood, and those long dark evenings playing Carrom and Rummikub with my mum, at least until I was seduced by Pacman and Elite on my microcomputer. Then I thought about how that played out with my own children who I once taught to play Uno and Connect 4 and who have subsequently introduced me to the challenges of Catan, Carcassonne, Codenames, Ganz Schon Clever, and so on. Card and table games have had their own mini-revolution since the days of Hearts and Patience: they continue to be the school where early learners develop strategy, connection, and identity.

Off-grid and online life shaped Gates’ young adult life

Gates’ childhood, as portrayed in his biography, feels like it belongs to a completely different era. It makes me feel uncomfortable as he describes the way he used to disappear as a teenager on a nine-day hike through the Cascade Mountains in Washington State with friends—no mobile phones, no contact with home. In one remarkable story, his parents managed to reach him by phoning a random stranger in a town along his route. That stranger successfully relayed the message that his family’s planned rendezvous had changed. It’s an image from a different world, one of off-grid trust, risk, and adventure—far from the always-on, hyper-connected digital culture Gates would go on to help create. How ironic that the skills Gates needed to become one of the central architects of digital transformation were formed in the middle of nowhere. The infrastructure of today’s information age—its fluidity, reach, and depth—was birthed in mountain walks, wild camping and lake swimming.

The image of a young Bill Gates forging resilience and perspective far from the digital world is both nostalgic and instructive. Perhaps the next great innovators won’t emerge from the data diet or coding camps but from tents under the stars and homes where screens are conspicuously absent.

Gates’ neurodiversity is his superpower

One of the most important influences that emerges during Gates’ school education was Mrs Blanche Caffiere, the school librarian at View Ridge Elementary in Seattle. She not only managed the library but also invited young Gates to work as her assistant—a role that empowered him, nurtured his curiosity, and profoundly shaped his sense of belonging at school. Socially awkward but intellectually gifted, Gates was given a position of responsibility, and that act of trust and inclusion gave structure to his experience of school as well as a place where he could flourish. It’s a powerful reminder of the transformative role teachers can play—especially those who go beyond the curriculum to draw out the unique gifts of each student.

In the book’s epilogue, Gates reflects on his neurodiversity:

“If I were growing up today, I probably would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum… During my childhood, the fact that some people’s brains process information differently from others wasn’t widely understood.”

His parents seemed to respond to his difference with patience and ingenuity. While they clearly struggled, they also invested in his education and in supporting his mental health. Instead of framing neurodiversity as a deficit, Gates’ family recognised it as a form of untapped potential. And, on reflection, Gates agrees. Seeing the world differently, he has said, is something he wouldn’t trade.

These three themes come together in one story that really struck home to me. As a child Bill Gates attended church with his sister, and on one occasion this church issued a challenge: any young person who could memorize the entire Sermon on the Mount would earn a meal at the city’s iconic Space Needle in its lofty rotating restaurant. With his agile brain, his family relationships and his growing resilience Gates memorized the entire passage verbatim, passed the test, and earned his reward.

Memorising 150 verses is no mean feat, but it wasn’t the end of the story. That challenge sparked a deeper interest, and Gates went on to read the entire Bible from cover to cover. He recognized that discovery as a vital part of his journey toward adulthood, forming part of the moral and intellectual foundation that would shape his later life.

Gate’s story, as told in this first volume, isn’t just a biography of a tech mogul - it is a window into the formation of a complex human being. What emerges is not just a tale of one success, but a testament to the quiet, often overlooked forces that shape a life, a community, and a moral framework. The time spent with a grandmother, the vision of a school librarian, the stillness of a night spent under the stars, the power of a sacred text: perhaps here is the true source of the man who is Bill Gates.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Pledge now