Psychoanalyzing god based on christian prayer
So, while trying to further dismantle religion I've remembered the prayer that was taught to me, when I was a toddler, and I had to look it up, I forgot it completely except that it starts with 'our father' and I thought, hey, what was that about, lets analyze that.
It starts with 'our father' and immediately I am taking issue. We know god is not our biological father, so we are already doing a little roleplay, we are playing pretend, for whose sake I wonder? Is any child out there pining for a second father? Mother, sure, but a father? That sounds like a double statistical chance of domestic violence in the home, so I think not. So it's for god's sake we must play this game of pretend, which means he likes us to call him father, and umm. I won't go into that but, I'm having concerns, I don't think this is emotionally very healthy of god, maybe he needs some therapy.
Next lines are 'who art in heaven' and 'hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done', and this to me sounds like a list of daily affirmations for god, which makes me believe he is very insecure about his whereabouts and his goals. If he needs every person on the planet to repeat to him 'yes, you are in heaven for sure, your name matters, you will have a kingdom, everything will go your way forever' he sounds like a kind of a demanding toddler who not only needs to be assured that he is the only one who matters but will believe anything. I'm getting even stronger 'needs therapy' vibes from that.
Next we have 'give us our daily bread' which I find very interesting because once you've called the toddler dad and given him his daily therapy session, you proceed with a list of demands, like we have a deal going on. I stroke your insecure ego and then you give me food. Which, hmmm, sounds familiar for some reason, like some kind of male-female sort of setup. Is this why they call themselves the 'breadwinners'? Anyway.
Next we have 'forgive us our tresspasses' which is the classic christian guilt, you have to remember that you are guilty at any second even if you're in the middle of prayer. You're already asking for forgiveness, so you are now roleplaying as a misbehaving child asking to be tolerated, and you're supposed to be cool with that, reliquinshing authority over your life to be like 'obviously I've tresspassed so forgive mee' and this is after you've asked to be fed, again some weird family play-pretend dynamics is going on, you just keep fluctuating between a fake child, a therapist, wife, and now we're back to child, but bad child this time.
Next line is even more wild because now you're saying 'as we forgive those who tresspass us' so we are operating on a system of constant tresspassing, but we only deserve to be forgiven if we too have forgiven, which means you are counting on people to slight you and then if you want to be a good person you need to tolerate all of that, which, hmm. It feels weirdly.. targeted. Have you seen a m*n forgive anyone who slighted him? They're not even expected to. But a woman is, she is a bad person if she doesn't forgive massive slights against her. I'm feeling a double standard here, and also why does god want you to think that you have to forgive everyone if you want to go to heaven, is it a 'children stop fighting' move from him? Because he does not care who started it, he just wants it to be over with or the one who fails to forgive is out of heaven forever. Very lazy parenting vibes, and let's remember he's just roleplaying as a father, so he's saying 'yes call me dad but I will not do the work, continue stroking my ego'.
Next line is very funny to me because it's 'don't lead us into temptation', and this is literally all god loves to do based on the bible, so at this point in prayer we're just going 'please stop it, we can't handle this anymore', which is the first sign that believers also agree he needs therapy, which is very validating for this analysis. We don't seem to expect god to actually stop playing his little games but we repeat it every day just in case, like maybe this time it works and he realizes it is not nice to test people for fun. It is a strong contender for a diagnosis, if we assume he's an adult and his main form of entertainment is provoking people to see if they'll do evil, that's some sort of disordered behaviour, and I would say we should not leave that guy in charge.
'Deliver us from evil' we are going further into roleplay but now he has graduated into hero who fights evil, very male fantasy of him! Do we remember god ever actually doing anything to fight evil? Of course not, he just judges people and tests them over and over, I think he sends a kid to fight evil at one point but his kid just gets killed and he is cool with that, doesn't ruin his fatherly reputation. So based on actions, he's not doing anything, but likes to feel like a superhero, and wants people to come to him begging to be saved, so he can feel all good inside. I've been thinking it from the start but now I'm getting strong narcissistic vibes, I don't think therapy would help at this point.
The last two lines I found are actually cut from the our version of the prayer, and I saw them first time when I looked this up in english! This is very funny to me because the lines are 'for thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever' which is the same as the first bit, we're just giving him another set of daily affirmations so he doesn't forget he actually has it all, but needs us to say it twice for some reason. I do feel like only a toddler could listen to this and be reassured and pleased; I think if you said this to an adult they would feel very condescended to and ridiculed.
From what I can gather from here, god is emotionally at the level of a small child, cognitively also at the level of a small child, he will believe anything you tell him. Strong need for reassurance, attention, validation and importance signifies deep rooted insecurity and self delusion. There's a demand for undeserved praise and begging to stop doing evil things, as well as superhero worship and implication of everyone being somehow dependant on him. I have to diagnose him with mediocre narcissistic male, potentially with signs of psychopathy based on his entertainment being provocation and testing others. I would not advise indulging him.
The prayer, however, can be analyzed a different way; it's repetitive, instilling fictional scenarios where you are fluctuating between talking to a father, husband, toddler, and affirming your dependence and security that he does exist. You are repeating that he is real, is feeding you, is giving you all the rules, could potentially protect you from evil. You are not convincing god of this, you are convincing yourself. You need to repeat the prayer over and over so the power of repetition would keep you convinced, as all of this easily dissolves into nonsense if you are not feeding it to your brain regularly. If any aspect of it was real, it would not need to be repeated or turned into prayer, reality would support it without anything being said.
And it is very reflective of the societal status males have given to themselves! Having women endlessly care for them and praise them as toddlers, having them believe they're the most important and valuable person when they're growing up, then give them therapy and endless forgiveness when they become husbands, to be reassured women are dependent on them for food to eliminate a chance of abandonment. They require to be indulged in their superhero fantasies even though they do absolutely nothing but cause pain and suffering on the planet, women begging them to stop but having no actual consequences if they don't, so women ultimately are left helpless but to hope and pray it will get better, which it doesn't. And on top of all that, treating women like misbehaving kids who have to beg for forgiveness; and to demand if they want to be forgiven for any imaginary slight (not pleasing m*n enough) they have to forgive all the crimes against them (violation, rape, exploitation of labour, forced childbirth, abuse, harassment, slavery, etc). The entire prayer is an expression of misogyny and models the male-desired dynamics in a male-female relationship, in which women are greatly disadvantaged and expected to cater to males endlessly, with a threat of not going to heaven if they don't.
