Are OCD Intrusive Thoughts Sinful?

How OCD thoughts are noise

Photo by Alexandra Tran on Unsplash

I recently came across this article from an Association of Certified Biblical Counselors counselor on how to treat OCD “biblically,” which begins by rejecting the psychological label altogether. This isn’t the first time I have objected to some biblical counseling views of OCD. There are many objectionable things in the article, including recommended treatment, which amounts to a compulsion: stop thinking bad thoughts and replace them with good thoughts through the power of God:

One’s thoughts are real reflections of the heart, but dealing with thought itself is not going to bring about true freedom. A believer must identify the thought that arises from a heart that is not treasuring Christ in that moment, repent, and replace it with godly, fruitful, Christ-honoring thoughts. The biblical strategy is not a formula for instant victory. Sanctification is a process.

Yes, well, if it were only that simple I would have done it a long time ago, pal. I thank God that he provided the gift of methods like ERP and I-CBT to provide healing for me and so many others. But what I want to focus on is the author’s argument that intrusive thoughts are specifically sinful thoughts which are “real reflections of the heart”:

• “They are not random misfires or meaningless electro-chemical waves created by the brain. They are what the Apostle Paul calls ‘the law of sin’ dwelling within us.”

• “It is important for us to understand that these ‘intrusive’ thoughts still come from the flesh that remains in the corruption of sin and are an indication of a believer’s longing for glorification.”

• “What OCD describes as ‘out of nowhere’ or ‘unwanted, intrusive thoughts,’ the Bible explains as temptation that arises from one’s deceitful desires. Whether that is control, certainty, or pleasure, the heart is tempted by what it craves.”

For Statler, the author of the article, we must “mortify” these intrusive thoughts just as we mortify sinful desires because they are sinful desires. While I see how someone with a poor understanding of OCD could come to this conclusion if a client reported to them having sexual or blasphemous intrusive thoughts, I believe it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the disorder (which is a disorder) and what the experience is.

In Matthew 5:27-28, Jesus gives his famous teaching about committing adultery in your heart:

²⁷ “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ ²⁸ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

For someone who has sexual intrusive thoughts, this is not their experience. The thoughts that confront them are unwanted, undesired, not entertained, and not in the heart. They are the equivalent of saying, “Don’t think about a pink elephant.” When you suffer from OCD, your mind takes what you care about most, or what you most fear becoming, and turns that into a specific fear that it throws at you, repeatedly. Your intrusions are not (in my experience) random. So if you get sexual intrusive thoughts, you may deeply fear becoming someone who is sexually abusive—even though that is the last thing you would choose to become! You don’t fear becoming this kind of person because you are prone to that particular vice (although yes, we all are sinners), but because you hold the opposite virtue in such high regard! So your mind tells you, “Don’t think about this fear!” And you naturally think about it. This is categorically different from someone looking lustfully at a woman or even having deceitful desires. Your “heart” does not “crave” these images or sensations. You detest them. It is a cognitive trick of your mortal mind. That’s how OCD works.

Statler’s model presents these intrusive thoughts as “deceitful desires,” and while he claims the Bible as warrant for this interpretation, it’s not at all clear that James has intrusive thoughts in mind when he was writing James 1:14-15: “But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” Notice that James writes, “enticed by his own desire.” In OCD, the intrusive thoughts are not our own desires. They are the opposite of our desires.

There’s something insidious about Statler’s model, as if a secret, subconscious evil force lurks in us and inserts dirty and blasphemous thoughts into our mind at random. What a terrifying and disturbing way to understand intrusive thoughts. This model is perfect bait for someone with OCD to ruminate more!

Again, the more accurate way to understand OCD intrusive thoughts (which overlap but are not equivalent with all human intrusive thoughts) is that they are like your mind reacting to a feared self by telling you not to think about something, which only makes you think about it more. For example, in in-person interviews, I often get the intrusive urge to throw coffee in the face of the person interviewing me. Is this the sin of hate coming up from my heart? Is this a “deceitful desire”? The “law of sin”? A “craving” of the heart? No. It’s a weirdo thought that that action would be the worst possible thing I could do in this particular moment! So my mind thinks, bizarrely, “Whatever you do, don’t throw your coffee at him!—Oh shoot, are you going to throw your coffee at him?” And the answer is 100% of the time, NO! Because it’s not actually a “deceitful desire.” It’s a weirdo thought that my imagination dreamed up as the worst case scenario, as the thing I couldn’t think about, as the “Pink Elephant,” so of course I thought about it. We all have such aberrant thoughts. And they don’t tell us about our deepest desires.

In the same way, OCD sufferers who struggle with violent or blasphemous thoughts experience images and ideas that aren’t cravings from the heart or deceitful desires, but fears of who they may become. They are afraid of becoming violent people, or people who hate God. So their mind conjures up worst case scenarios that are against their desires and their hearts. And the way forward is not to focus on those thoughts, which just gives them more attention than they deserve, but to treat them as the mental noise that they are. Because God knows our hearts and intentions and desires. He knows our condition. And he knows that the path to healing comes through treating those violent and pseudo-blasphemous thoughts as the nonsense they are.

Now this is not to say that intrusive thoughts can never be sinful. The line between an intrusive thought and a sinful desire can be hard to disentangle, particularly for people without OCD or for people with OCD who are getting intrusive thoughts about subjects outside their theme. For example, my OCD theme has nothing to do with sexual intrusive thoughts, so when I do have sexual thoughts that are unbidden, unwanted, and undesired, I’m cautious to ask God to help me have a pure heart. I don’t dwell on the thoughts (that will make them stick). And I don’t fight the thoughts (that will also make them stick). I just pray something simple and quick like, “Make my heart and desires pure, and teach me to love your beauty.” To what extent am I in control of these thoughts? That is not clear to me. I’m still thinking that through. But what I do know is I desire God’s help to mortify my thoughts so that they are holy. And the same is true for thoughts of greed, envy, hate, and pride. For more on lust, see here.

My point in this article is that when we are talking about OCD intrusive thoughts we are talking about a different beast, something that is not motivated by “deceitful desires” but by a distortion of the mind and a fear about the self.¹

The treatment needs to address the faulty understanding of the logic of OCD and the faulty understanding of the self—the self that is actually a beloved child of God who is washed by the blood of Christ. Biblical counselors are right that a Christian understanding of the mind and heart are important for healing. But this article’s particular treatment of OCD is deeply harmful and misguided. The treatment emphasizes rumination and the conception of intrusive thoughts misunderstands the experience and its theological significance.

1. This is not to imply that the person struggling with an OCD theme can never have a sinful intrusive thought in the realm of that theme. For example, I could imagine someone who wrestles with sexual intrusive thoughts as their OCD theme who also gets a lustful intrusive thought about someone they see as attractive. The thought does come from a desire to be with that person sexually, it is an example of what Jesus talks about in Matthew 5:27-28. In this case, a quick, decisive repentance and shifting your thoughts to the present moment is needed. If it feels overwhelming to disentangle OCD intrusions from sinful intrusions, I would say a couple things: 1. Pray for wisdom from the Holy Spirit. 2. Watch for desire. 3. Be faithful to repent of what is clear sin above the surface and ask God to reveal what is beneath the surface. 4. Rest in grace.