Forms and Variations of Toxic Faith.

Compulsive Religious Activity

Compulsive religious addicts are driven by guilt and a desire to earn favour from God. They work hard in hopes of a day when God will look down on their efforts and change reality for them. They hope He will see their hard work and decide to relieve their pain or magically make life easier for them.

Laziness

Some people with toxic faith are lazy. Laziness is the most common form of self-defeating behaviour. Their faith dumps responsibility for everything that happens on God. Rather than work to heal a marriage, for example, they want God to fix it instantly. Rather than go for counseling, they pray for a miracle, asking God to do for them what God probably wants them to do for themselves. They want a servant God; they don’t want to serve God. They want a god-drug that will wipe out consequences and quickly ease all hurts.

That view of God is toxic and addictive. It is irresponsible and leaves believers stagnant, full of false hope, and unrealistic expectations.

Giving to Get

Many give out of a belief that the more they give, the more they will get. Their giving is more like a materialistic investment than a spiritual act of worship. Such believers hope their affluence will increase as they give more to a ministry.

Of course, God does promise to bless his people for faithful stewardship – but that blessing is not necessarily in the form of cold, hard cash. Some fund-raisers ask people to “claim” their material blessings. Supporters are told to claim the Rolls-Royce they want, to trust God to provide it, to give money to secure it, and it will come. Some charlatains arrange for the unsuspecting to receive the automobile they “claimed”. These hucksters go out and buy a car, deliver it, and then write-up the “miracle” in a newsletter to inform all the other faithful (whose automobiles have not yet arrived). They are told that if they have more faith and give more money, they will receive the material possessions they want. With this “proof” before them, the duped shell out more money, hoping God will give them what they believe they deserve.

God cannot be bribed or bought, but the actions of many individuals appear to be attempts to do just that. This form of religious addict has more in common with a compulsive gambler than with a faithful follower of God.

Self-Obsession

Self-obsession leads to the practice of toxic faith, religious addiction, and all other addictions. Poisoned by their constant focus on their own needs, hurts, and desire for relief, the self-obsessed have little room left for worshiping God or meeting the needs of others. It is no wonder that people living in such a selfish state have sky-high expectations of God.

Of course, God does relieve burdens, He does bless. He meets needs in miraculous ways. He brings babies to infertile couples. At times, He will heal or reverse a terminal disease. Evidences of divine intervention abound; we call them miracles. But the reason they are called miracles is that they rarely happen. To have faith in God because He is bound to perform miracles is to have faith in miracles more than in God. More often today people proclaim faith in God as long as that faith will increase the bottom line and make life better. There is no greater sin than self-obsession, and no greater poison of faith.

Extreme Intolerance

Religious addicts are extremely intolerant of varying opinions or expressions of faith. Either walk their way or be out of step. Rather than accept other believers, their rigidity rejects them. They routinely judge others and find the negative in everyone else’s life. From a position of superiority, they put down others for what they believe and how they manifest their faith. They want to control the lives of others, especially what they believe.

Extreme intolerance is common among those with toxic faith. They will sacrifice relationships with family and friends to uphold a standard or ideal of their own faith. As long as they believe they are doing what God would have them do, they won’t hesitate to push their ideas on others and judge them as less faithful and less in touch with the way things should be done.

Addiction to a Religious High

But there is another kind of relief, an emotional frenzy that becomes an addiction and robs the individual of real faith. Many strange incidents develop when faith becomes unbalanced. A story is told of a woman on a trip to the Holy Land who each time she visited a site, worked herself into a frenzy, chanted loudly, then passed out, claiming to be slain in the Spirit. Although most people on the tour were charismatic Christians, they were not impressed with her performance. Her repeated frenzies showed that she was addicted to the self-manufactured highs that were supposed to be religious experience. Often the toxic faithful become so enthralled with the religious experience that they reduce God to secondary importance.

Some people cannot or will not handle the downs after a marvelous spiritual experience. Rather than deal with reality, they manufacture a pseudo-religious experience or a spiritual frenzy. The adrenaline rush energizes and stimulates them, alters their mood, and provides relief from real pain. The hysteria is repeated anytime they need to escape or feel differently. These “instant religious experience” practitioners might as well take a drink, swallow a pill, or inject a drug. The intent is not to worship God but to alter their perception of reality. They are religious junkies, obsessed with mood alterations and a quick fix to face life.

These variations of toxic faith and religious addictions never bring people to God. In fact, they form barriers between individuals and God, which allow the deceived to stay busy and active in every way except for a true worship experience. With barriers to God and others in place, the toxic faithful are left with many more painful feelings to compound the original pain at the core of their toxic faith.

Every addiction ultimately destroys intimacy with family, friends, and God. The addicted loathe placing themselves in a vulnerable position of trust with another. Toxic faith is no different. Those with toxic faith cannot or will not trust God. Faith has been eroded, and as individuals place distance between themselves and God, the chasm formed is filled with compulsion, activity, addiction, manipulation, control, and extreme effort. The work is never done and the heart is never at rest. Faith has become toxic.

Once faith is poisoned, it is a complex process to detoxify the individual and restore a pure faith. Identifying the toxic elements is the beginning of hope. To look within one’s self and find the elements of toxic faith and remove them is the most formidable challenge. Some people are so self-obsessed, so sold on faith in themselves, that it is difficult for them to break through denial and see what is sick at their core and how that sickness has damaged their relationships, including the one with God. By making the effort to detoxify faith, one will go through some difficult times before finding what God designed for a relationship with Himself. But in the end, a relationship based on pure faith leads to complete contentment and joy.



(from the book "Toxic Faith")