No One Is a Worm

O God you are my God

Have mercy on me for I am a miserable worm

I am guilty of being alive, brought into this world by an act of sin

And I am equally as guilty of breathing the air that is not mine for the taking

Forgive me for being a wretched piece of shit for I was born this way

I am guilty, I am guilty, I am guilty…

And if you are really a God of Love you will wipe away all of this guilt and shame

That I was taught as a child by people with good intentions

Who were brainwashed by people with evil intentions

People who wanted to control and manipulate others

To gain personal power, prestige and wealth in Your Name.

Amen.

This first stanza above is how I have often felt based in my religious upbringing. It’s how I feel whenever I read certain Psalms. It represents how my parents saw themselves and how they viewed sexuality. I don’t blame them for it. They were not bad people. They were simply taught the wrong things by well-intentioned people who had been equally as brainwashed. And they did the same thing to me. The sad things is that I think my parents took these beliefs to their graves. But I don’t have any intention of doing so.

It’s this negative, guilt and shame ridden mode of thinking that underlies the addictive behaviors of so many people in our society. Children are born into this world feeling beautiful. They feel the true love of the true God for them and they think they are perfect in every way—just as they are. They know they are lovable and they feel lovable. They feel worthy of all of the goodness and wonderment that this world has to offer them by the grace of God.

That is, until adults tell them otherwise. Until adults thrust original sin-- and every other impure way of envisioning themselves and the world-- upon them. Children believe in their inherent goodness until they are told that they are bad, unworthy, never good enough, shameful and guilty as sin. They also believe in the beauty of this world until they are told that it is a scary, wretched place filled with evil doers who are hated by God. And the great fear instilled in many of them then is that they too, through their evil compulsions, may become one of those people that God is salivating to throw into an even more horrible place called Hell.

Think today about the ways in which you morally or religiously condemn yourself. Do you feel guilty for existing? For being a person born with the stain of a great sin on your soul? Do you feel shame for not being perfect? Are you anxious when you make mistakes? Do you feel unworthy of love and proper respect as a human being? Do you feel lesser than other people whom you mistakenly see as being better than you are? Do you ever fear that God will get you for being you, an imperfect and sinful person?

If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you need to reexamine the things you were taught as a child about God, sin, good and evil. If your god is filled with anger, resentment and the dire need for revenge, then you need to find a new god—the REAL GOD. That’s what the second stanza above is all about.

Re-imaging yourself and God is necessary because it’s this old brainwashing that helps to keep you stuck in self-deprecating ways of thinking, which then keep you stuck in addictive patterns of behavior to medicate away all of the guilty, shameful bad feelings you are owning by choosing to project these very bad beliefs on yourself. Examining your old ingrained beliefs is the first step, dismantling and choosing to no longer believe them is the second step. The third step is building new beliefs about yourself and God—good, positive, healthy, loving beliefs that are life-giving.

Get started!