Christianity: Religious psychosis, Religious trauma & Religious devotion.

 

Something I have noticed, dear reader, is that every time a Christian is explaining something or pointing out something or narrating their experiences, people are so quick to label it psychosis. Why is it that we are so quick to label Christianity psychosis? And it makes me wonder, why this religion, specifically? Why does Christianity, more than any other faith, become the easiest one to pathologize? Dear reader, this is what I would like us to ask ourselves today and cover bases, and maybe you can find an answer within, and maybe we can see our prejudices. Not to defend extremists or to attack any other religion, but to understand the cultural psychology behind our reactions. And perhaps to gently ask: What are we really responding to?

Christianity is the religion most of us grew up around. We know it deeply, sometimes too deeply. And to this, I ask, is it easier to call Christianity “psychotic” simply because it’s familiar? Because its symbols and stories are the ones we understand well enough to critique?
Because we grew up inside its imagination? It’s always easier to diagnose the environment you were raised in. Is it a question of familiarity? As most of us know, Christianity is a major religion around the world and has shaped most countries' laws, politics, morality, family dynamics, and understanding of good and bad. Which makes me ask, do people feel safe to critique a dominant faith, like punching up, not attacking a vulnerable group? Is it a question of power? If so, then that says more about us.

Is it visibility? Because Christianity is loud in a public way. Public declarations of faith, street preachers and evangelists, missionaries, and testimonies, you get where I am heading with this. And for this the extremes are loud too, which led me to ask, do we love the spectacle too much? Is it because the extremes in Christianity are loud too? But other religions have extremes too. This is a delicate one. Most people speaking on it are former believers, deconstructing believers, or people hurt by some Christian extremists or strict Christian households. And maybe the language of religious trauma becomes the language of critique: "brainwashed," "delusional," "gaslit," and "fear-based." This isn’t judgment; it’s simply naming the emotional layer beneath the intellectual one. Colonization, now let's not pretend this is not a major issue. Christianity in Africa carries the weight of missionary agendas, colonial assimilation, cultural erasure, moral disciplining, and stolen languages and identities. But we also don't want to address the issue that colonization is not Christianity but works of men. If we are going to criticize this religion, let's also point out how other religions were used to colonize Africa. So here’s the harder question: Are people calling out Christianity, or are they actually calling out the historical violence attached to its arrival?

In psychology, there’s a rule: we fear in others what we don’t understand in ourselves.

Christianity speaks openly about hearing God, visions, spiritual encounters, and supernatural intervention. These things make secular, rational, and postmodern minds uncomfortable. Are we projecting our discomfort with the supernatural onto Christianity because it’s the religion closest to us? Maybe the issue isn’t Christianity; maybe it’s our relationship with mysticism itself. If we grew up in a Buddhist or Sufi context, would we be calling those expressions “psychosis” too? As with most things these days, the internet. In the algorithm, nuance doesn’t travel. Extremes do.
And extremes paint the whole house. So ask yourself: Has social media trained us to associate Christianity with its loudest, strangest performances instead of its everyday, grounded practitioners? So then, dear reader, the bigger question at hand is, what really is religious psychosis? Religious trauma? Religious devotion? How did we originally get to the point of all agreeing that most of Christianity is psychosis?

For decades, psychiatry in Western psychology treated visions, prophecy, and religious ecstasy as signs of mental illness. This bias still influenced and still influences how society talks about Christian experiences. Dear reader, religious devotion in simple terms is healthy faith, grounded and functional. Brings peace, stability, hope, and meaning. Beliefs don't override reality or harm others or themselves, and the practices are voluntary and not fear-driven. In short, your life expands, not shrinks. As for religious trauma, it is emotional or psychological harm caused by religious environments. Religion becomes a source of distress instead of comfort. And finally, religious psychosis is a clinical mental state and not a belief problem. Mostly accompanied by hallucinations or delusions with religious content. It is key to remember loss of reality-testing, not just intense belief. So what are we really reacting to? There is no single answer. But there is value in pausing before we label a faith tradition, one that billions of people find grounding, meaningful, and stabilizing, as collective psychosis.