OCD: The Leaven of the Psychological Pharisees: The Stingy Man (Proverbs 23:6-8)

"Do not eat the food of a stingy man, do not crave his delicacies; for he is the kind of man who is always thinking about the cost. "Eat and drink," he says to you, but his heart is not with you. You will vomit up the little you have eaten and will have wasted your compliments."

In his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul describes the 'fruit of the Spirit' i.e.: the evidence of the Holy Spirit's indwelling presence in the life of the believer. Paul also describes the opposite: the works of the sinful nature.

Ministering to the Obsessive-Compulsive (or 'Psychological Pharisee' (PP). Not too flatteringly has the Obsessive been labeled as 'anal retentive." The PP's concerns focus on Time, Money, Dirt, Control and Order. Ritualistic washing or 'checking' may be his compulsive modus operandi. The psyche of the PP lives and operates 'under the Law'...in the self-imposed (and imposing upon others) iron grip of a soulish legalism.

Living with the obsessive PP (as life with a Paranoid) is a waiting game: it's only a matter of time until you're caught in his grid, until you've messed up or shown your humanness a little too overtly. The PP is watching for color to go outside the lines, controlling for sloppiness or dirt, subtracting the minutes, counting the pennies.

On the other hand, the suspicious Paranoid is different. He is hyper-vigilant--idealizing you, at first, but only for the purpose of eventually kicking you off his artificial, idealized pedestal--playing the cat-n-mouse game described in Eric Berne's classic book, Games People Play, as, "I caught You, You Son of a Bitch." The Paranoid, watching vigilantly and waiting patiently, will inevitably turn against you in one hostile confrontation--while the Obsessive PP will gradually incarcerate you in his thought-policing system.

Sometimes the Paranoid and Obsessive styles combine. Study the cultic leadership style of Jim Jones of Peoples Temple mass suicide notoriety, the criminal behaviors of mafiosi, the hounding officer in Les Miserables, Eco-terrorism, or even harrassment-history of the IRS.

The Paranoid--with his Ideas of Reference, Suspiciousness, Jealousy, Grandiosity, and Persecutory distortions of perception--operates more as active and mobile surveillance--sweeping the guarded territory with floodlights, sensitive dogs, and circulating security.

The Obsessive PP, both prisoner and warden in his own system, acts as more of a passive-but-activated 'digitalized alarm system' in a locked building. You forget to lock a door or shut a window, or cross an alarm-sensor beam--and sirens will scream, horns will blow, and industrial-strength buzzers will whine.

The PP (Psychological Pharisee), as all personality disorders do, gives us a niche-glimpse of that which oppresses and imprisons the human self--of goblins and ghoulies, and long-legged beasties, and things that go bump in the night--and of the worms-that-die-not...in hell.

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty..." But, the PP (Obsessive-Compulsive) lives in mental anguish--a soulish tension between Rage and Fear. The Fear causes dogged Compliance to ritual and convergent thinking--until rage occasionally tips the scales the other way into Defiance.

The Defiance of the PP manifests itself in teeth-gritting control-freaking, hoarding, and resistance: resistance to appropriate change, innovation, creativity, artistic beauty, divergent thinking, and healthy humor.

A primary personality characteristic of the PP is stinginess. This is usually a pathological and extreme brand of stinginess--often acted out (to the embarrassment of others) in public settings: business transactions, purchases, and adding up (and quibbling over) restaurant tabs.

The thought content, style, and cognitive process of the PP reveals a mulling, repetitive rumination--awash in tedious detail and superfluous facts. All non-Christian world religions are obsessively and psychosocially pharisaical. Eastern and Western mystical and metaphysical religions are populated by PP. All occult mysticism courts and produces PP.

Over the years I've become convinced that spiritually sick 'personality disorders' like the Obsessive-Compulsive (PP) may only respond to sound Pneumatology in Christian orthopraxy.

"Have you received the Holy Spirit since you believed?" If the human personality is 'pneumatic' and created by God to function properly as an 'open system' and not a 'closed system' it must receive the Heavenly Father's gift of the Holy Spirit in order to function according to the Master Designer's schema and morphe.

"Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free." Consider this hypothesis: the Book of Acts, Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, First Corinthians, Joel, Zechariah, and other biblical portions were written especially to emphasize the importance of sound, practical Pneumatology among the people of God.

"Be filled with the Spirit," Paul wrote in Ephesians 5:18.

It was the Central Event in the Human Race, when God incarnated into human flesh--Jesus, the Christ--in the authentic form of God and authentic form of Man. And for too long had the obsessives been placing a yoke upon the necks of others they themselves could not wear.

God had long shown His displeasure at Israel's 'new moons, sabbaths, feast days, tithing of mint and cumin, and legalistic talmudic observance--while their hearts were far from Him.

Jesus appreared at a time of theological and psychosocial crisis--a horrific scene of moneychangers in the Temple of God, and people (for whom the Sabbath was actually made) being forced into an obsessive-compulsive sabbath-binding grid.

Jesus had to come and break the obsessive-compulsive 'religiossification' (my term) of calcified totems, taboos, folkways, pastimes, and tribal customs which could strangle the Human Race's opportunity to hear the message of God's love and redemptive plan in history.

The Lord of the Sabbath walked on the scene, the Master, who had to put His house in order, "...Yes, you whited sepulchres, not only can you yank your ox out of the ditch on a holy day, I can heal a man on the Sabbath...My disciples can eat the shewbread of the Temple, and they don't have to be ritualistic handwashers, rhetorical fasters, and public alms-givers...or bleeding hearts with a faux concern for 'the poor'..."

Jesus, at His ascension, bequeathed to His disciples and to us, the (Acts 1:8) empowerment of God, the Holy Spirit. The Upper Room, perhaps the 'delivery room' of Christ's Church, and the experiential-knowledge of Christ there, was crucially important.

Otherwise, the community of the redeemed in the Early Church would have been too critically victimized by personality-disordered 'crazymakers': Schizotypals, Paranoids, Narcissists, Borderlines, Schizoids--and the Obsessive-Compulsives (PP).

Obviously (according to the New Testament narrative) some of the toxic, non-'Spirit-filled', like Diotrephes, Simon the Sorcerer, and Alexander the Coppersmith slipped through the lines and did cause harm.

Today, faux 'pneumaticians' may be like psychosocial viruses in Christendom causing glitches to frustrate sound orthopractic Pneumatology--and understandably have caused thoughtful dispensationalists and cessationists to look with jaundiced eye at any form of Pentecostal belief and practice. Pseudo-charismatic and faux pentecostals who elbowed their way into televangelism poisoned the well of the agora ministry pool.

(In the future we can address 'charismysticsm,' 'charismania,' and 'charismagic' (my terms) and attempt to see where B.B. Warfield and other cessationists may have had legitimate "wildfire" anxiety--even with their skewed research, cessationist dispensationalism, superficial "blink" impressions (cf. the book, BLINK), and an anemic understanding of the critical importance of a sound doctrine of the Holy Spirit.).

The theology, hamartiology, soteriology, and epistemology of the First Century Ecclesia, Marturia, Diaconia, and Koinonia had to be, of necessity, Pneumatic--empowered and guided by God, the Holy Spirit.

Jesus instructed, "Wait...until you receive power."

So many bemoan the awful truth that today's evangelicalism is in reality a '30-story orange juice machine that gives one pint a month'. High-powered marketers are hired to write soulish motivational books that so many 'sheeple' rush out and purchase--or sheeple pastors buy by the truck load and hand out to their congregations.

"...But all the king's horse's and all the king's men..."

B.B. Warfield and The Conspiracy of Silence. I think Dr. B.B. Warfield was 'theologically stingy' and abused his ecclesiastical clout as he sat in the Chair of Theology at Princeton circa 1900.

Warfield wrote his reactionary tome, 'Counterfeit Miracles' and, in my opinion, sabotaged the Evan Roberts Revival in Wales circa 1904, and what even worldwide could have been the spread (without over-emphasis on Azusa Street) of a sane Classical Pentecostalism that avoided Latter Rain excessess and the 'holy roller' image.

Of course, Satan loves a powerless Church. Psychological Phariseeism (PP) must be at the very least dual-diagnosed by the Spirit-guided pastor-teacher.

In its most toxic form, PP requres a triple diagnosis (1. carnality and the works of the sinful nature; 2. obsessive-compulsive personality disorder; 3. and spiritually viral occult-mystical influence.)

As a dual-diagnosis, PP presents as a combination of the Galatians 5 "works of the sinful nature", and obsessive-compulsive pathology of the human personality--melded together.

I wrote much of this Blog a year and a half ago while observing a16-17 year-old young man--over a three-month period--who was going through obsessive washing rituals).

This aritcle is getting more and more attention--some friendly and some upset (because, of course, the 'truth hurt's--ha!)

I actually had applied this article to pastors whom I had observed over the years--to be as obssessive and petty, as compulsive, ritualistic, small-minded, and stingy--as the ancient Pharisees I'd read about in the Bible.
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No person, who has OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) should be in any kind of pastoral ministry--or business, for that matter. The (OCD sufferer) stingy, 'anal retentive,' type should not only--not be in business--but no one should do business with him--or her.

(OCD--along with the other 'personality disorders'-- is a systemic aspect of the unredeemed, non-transformed-in-Christ-by the-Holy Spirit, sinful human nature. So--having a personality disorder--or psychopathology--or especially any form of 'demonization' is a contradictory premise--like trying to serve two masters--God and mammon.)

The OCD is self-absorbed, resistant, (un-'potty-trained' spiritully--ha!!) and emotionally infantile. S/he may blame it on cultural background: "We (Scots, Arabs, italians, etc...fill in the blank) are selfish shylocks--we're crafty, that's just the way God made us..." Yeah, right...!

Read the Old Testament accounts where God was angry as hell and fed up with the Israelites' 'new moons, sabbaths, tithing of mint and cumin--ad nauseum'... and rightly so!

Look at Jesus' righteous anger--the Son of God--turning over the moneychangers' tables in the temple--satirizing the compulsive washings of the pharisees--all their stupid rituals, the pharisees' legalistic, control-freaking, sabbatarian anger at Jesus' healing of the lame man on the sabbath--and petty stinginess.

The pharisees were showing the same poor mental and spiritual ill-health as today's pets-over-people types--"Oh, you poor ox down there in that awful ditch--I know it like be the Sabbath 'n all that--but who care--honey!...daddy be gonna rescue y'all outta that there ditch right now...yeah baby...but, Jesus,...now doncha be healin' up fo-yo self no lame types now y'hear?!!... like it be the Sabbath and all that...like yo know the rules...don't gimme that Son-a-God divine stuff--ain't buyin' it now y-hear..?!"

Spiritually speaking these OCD pharisee-types, of course, were savages--faux-religionists--disgusting to God--and a hindrance to godly people, of no help to the suffering and afflicted, and worthless to the Kingdom of God.

Modern-day Judaizers are failing God--just like the Apostle Peter was momentarily doing in the First Century. (Remember when the Apostle Paul had to rebuke him and set him straight.) But, Peter received Paul's correction--demonstrating that he was teachable--and that he had ears to hear.

(I wish I'd been there to hear Paul, "Peter--get a clue--you're regressing into neurotic, legalistic 'Peter-ville' again--earth to Peter....duh...what're you gonna do next--start cuttin' off ears again too, Peter..? Hey--get a grip--no, that's probably the wrong way to put it--get real, Peter...!")

Today, Paul would say the same (good humor--good pun!) thing to the 'Concision Party' of Judaizers, "I wish they would slice themsleves off (in a certain key place--ha!).

I praise God when I read in the Gospel accounts how Jesus rebuked the pharisees--instructing them that "the sabbath was made for man--not man for the sabbath!"

Thankfully, the Holy Spirit of God--in today's community of the redeemed--is marginalizing, squelching, neutering--ha!--OCD types--and kicking them to the curb..!

Of course, OCD is again--one of the 'works of the sinful nature'...sin...one of the manifestations of the fallenness of Human Nature--and, of course, another reason why every human being must respond to the wooing, calling, conviction--of the Holy Spirit of Truth (John 16)--and be transformed (Romans 12:1-2) by the Holy Spirit--by God's renewing of the mind.

There is no other hope for personality disorders like OCD.

"Let God arise and His enemies be scattered!" --Psalm 68:1

(Excerpt: unpublished mss):
"OCD: the Psychological Leaven of the Pharisees"
Copyright 2008 by Philip C. Brewer (part B) All Rights Reserved