Religious Brainwashing Is Destructive/​Not A Godly Force…

As a layper­son, it took me some time, mean­ing many years, to real­ize that it is one of the hard­est things for a brain­washed per­son to fig­ure out that they are brainwashed.
Brainwashing: to make (some­one) adopt rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent beliefs by using sys­tem­at­ic and often forcible pressure.
What does it mean when a per­son is brain­washed? A forcible indoc­tri­na­tion induces some­one to give up basic polit­i­cal, social, or reli­gious beliefs and atti­tudes and to accept con­trast­ing reg­i­ment­ed ideas.
How can you tell if some­one is brain­washed?

1. They Blatantly Lie. The abuser bla­tant­ly and habit­u­al­ly lies to change anoth­er per­son­’s reality. …
2. They Attack Things Important to You. …
3. They Project. …
4. They Manipulate Your Relationships. …
5. They Wear You Down. …
6. They Dangle Compliments as Weapons. 

What is an exam­ple of brainwashing?
To brain­wash is to change some­one’s beliefs or atti­tudes using intense teach­ing and indoc­tri­na­tion. An exam­ple of brain­wash­ing is to lock new reli­gious con­verts in a room and teach them the details of reli­gion with­out allow­ing access to the out­side world. To sub­ject to brainwashing.

To sub­ject to brainwashing.
(1)To indoc­tri­nate so inten­sive­ly and thor­ough­ly as to effect a rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of beliefs and men­tal attitudes.
(2) The process or an instance of brainwashing.
(3) To brain­wash is to change some­one’s beliefs or atti­tudes using intense teach­ing and indoctrination.
(4)To affect one’s mind using extreme men­tal pres­sure or any oth­er mind-affect­ing process. (i.e., hypnosis)
(5) An effect upon one’s mem­o­ry, belief, or ideas.

How does brain­wash­ing affect the brain?
Long-term effects of brain­wash­ing have been linked with com­plex PTSD, depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and sui­ci­dal thoughts. Withdrawal from life. Victims of brain­wash­ing often inter­nal­ize their anger, lead­ing to depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and some­times suicide.

Does Teaching Religion “Brainwash” Kids? Perhaps the best answer to this ques­tion I’ve seen is this expla­na­tion from wor​don​fire​.org.

Is teach­ing chil­dren reli­gion brain­wash­ing? The ques­tion was posed at Debate​.org, and an astound­ing 86% of respon­dents said yes. So why should Christian par­ents share the Gospel with their children?

The clear­est answer to this comes from St. John Paul II’s encycli­cal on the rela­tion­ship between faith and rea­son (fit­ting­ly, called Faith and Reason, or Fides et Ratio). The encycli­cal opens this way:

Faith and rea­son are like two wings on which the human spir­it ris­es to the con­tem­pla­tion of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth — in a word, to know him­self — so that, by know­ing and lov­ing God, men and women may also come to the full­ness of truth about them­selves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8 – 9; 63:2 – 3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

This is a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of reli­gion and intel­lec­tu­al­ism than many assume. He’s not say­ing, “watch out for sci­ence,” or “come to church, but leave your brain at the door.” He’s not say­ing, “you don’t need a rea­son any­more because you’ve got faith.” No, he’s say­ing that faith is a gift from God, but so is rea­son, and both faith and rea­son are giv­en to us to help us to respond to this hunger; we all have to know the truth. And in fact, this intel­lec­tu­al hunger is itself a gift from God. Maybe you haven’t noticed this, but man is the only ani­mal that has this yearn­ing to know the truth about God, the uni­verse, and him­self. That hunger can cause a lot of unhap­pi­ness when we’re lost and con­fused. But it’s pre­cise­ly in work­ing through this hunger faith­ful­ly and rea­son­ably that we come to know and love God and learn the deep­est truths about who we are. (wor​don​fire​.org)

As a per­son of faith, I have con­sis­tent­ly looked at how Christians usu­al­ly behave toward each oth­er; their behav­ior ebb and flows based on their likes and dis­likes. Indoctrinated Christians have absolute­ly no time or patience for any­thing some­one who dis­agrees with their the­ol­o­gy (what they were told) has to say.
The same is true for oth­er reli­gions that teach that any devi­a­tion from the ortho­doxy of what they teach is pun­ish­able by death.
For exam­ple, Salman Rushdie was forced into hid­ing because he wrote the book ( The Satanic Verses) which crit­i­cized Islam. Mister Rushdie was recent­ly stabbed repeat­ed­ly at a pub­lic event and has been con­va­lesc­ing at a hos­pi­tal after being in crit­i­cal condition.
The many facets of mod­ern Christianity tend to be less vis­cer­al in deal­ing with dis­sent; notwith­stand­ing, the con­tra­dic­tions of the faith as espoused by the com­pet­ing branch­es have been vast­ly crit­i­cized and even ridiculed by thinkers from the outside.
People with anti-reli­gious views would always have ammu­ni­tion to go up against faith-based religion.

Mahatma Gandhi was assas­si­nat­ed in New Delhi by a Hindu Nationalist at an inter­faith gath­er­ing for his legal and activist work on behalf of Muslims in 1948. Martin Luther King was assas­si­nat­ed by peo­ple in the United States who casu­al­ly refer to them­selves as Christians.
Dr. King was a Christian preach­er, but his vision of a nation where all peo­ple would have the same rights and priv­i­leges clashed with the views of oth­ers who want­ed those rights and priv­i­leges all to themselves.
Nowadays, we see mem­bers of the same church not speak­ing to each oth­er. We see mem­bers of the same small con­gre­ga­tion jock­ey­ing for atten­tion. Not for God’s atten­tion but for the pas­tor’s atten­tion and approval. Husband against wife, wife against hus­band, dea­con against dea­con. It is the very def­i­n­i­tion of brain­wash­ing. The very rea­son so many drank the cool-aid in Jim Jones Guyana cult.

Both my grand­fa­thers were men of the Christian faith. My mater­nal grand­dad was choir direc­tor in his church, and my pater­nal grand grand­fa­ther was a trained pas­tor and educator.
My father is, at best, an agnos­tic, vis­cer­al­ly opposed to any idea of reli­gion. I once asked him to explain his strained rela­tion­ship with his father, my grandad, he told me reli­gion made a rela­tion­ship with him impossible.
I thought how sad it was that some­thing that should be bring­ing peo­ple clos­er was tear­ing them apart.
My father pub­lished a book of poet­ry years ago; look­ing at the book, I often won­dered whether his strained rela­tion­ship with his dad may have influ­enced the title.
Some anti-reli­gious com­men­ta­tors have argued that reli­gion is harm­ful to humans. For exam­ple, hun­dreds of mil­lions have died in so-called “Holy Wars,” “Jihads, Crusades,” or any reli­gious quar­rel. It pro­motes extreme reac­tion­ism and the thought that the lives of peo­ple not list­ed as “okay” in the Bible, Torah, or Koran are not valu­able; and, there­fore, expendable.
There are black and white ver­sions of Christianity right here in the good old US of A. The white ver­sion believes that it is supe­ri­or to the black version.
Setting reli­gion aside, how can those who are faith lead­ers attract con­verts to the faith in light of these inconsistencies?
How do we explain being more con­cerned about what the pas­tor thinks than what God thinks as we jock­ey to demon­strate who loves the pas­tor more than who loves God more?
I am just ask­ing, do not shoot the mes­sen­ger; we need to self-exam­ine our­selves and deter­mine whether we are adher­ing to the dic­tates of the most high God or we are active­ly com­mit­ting idol­a­try in the open.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.