John Bunyan og OCD

John Bunyan er en annen åndelig kjempe som hadde OCD. John Bunyan begynte å slite med tvangstanker da han var rundt 21-22 år. Han hadde tvangsmessige tanker i form av tvil på Guds eksistens. Etter hvert ble han i tillegg plaget med blasfemiske tanker så fæle at han ikke våget å ytre dem. Bibelvers ble etter hvert til de mest vanskelige tvangstankene han slet med. Bibelvers som «Det er forferdelig å falle i den levende Guds hender” Hebr,10.31 skapte frykt som torturerte ham innvendig 

.Ian Osborn skriver i boka “Can christianity cure obsessive compulsive disorder”: “Of all the Bible-based obsessions that Bunyan suffered, the worst was a tormenting thought to “sell Christ.” This obsession struck when Bunyan was reading the Old Testament passage about a man named Esau who had chosen to sell his inheritance…In Bunyans interpretation, what Esau had actually sold was his salvation. The thought suddenly burst into Bunyans mind that he himself should “sell Christ. This thought drove him to conclude that he had finally committed an unforgivable sin

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I could neither eat my food, stoop chop a stick, or cast mine eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come. “Sell Christ for this, or sell Christ for that, sell him sell him.” Sometimes it would run in my thoughts not so little as a hundred times together: sell him, sell him, sell him…

In response, Bunyan performed equally endless compulsions. Each time sell Christ would come to his , mind, he would frantically repeat as a sort of mantra, “I will not, I will not, I will not, I will not, for thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds.

Det er ingen tvil om at John Bunyan slet, men som Luther kom også Bunyan seg ut av tvangshelvete som han befant seg i. Ian Osborn sier at « Bunyan experienced a string of therapeutic visions. In the first, he received what he took to be a reassurance that Jesus himself would intercede on his behalf an take his place on the judgment seat.

One day as I was passing in a field, with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not yet right, I saw with the eyes of my soul Jesus Christ at Gods right hand, as my righteousness. My righteousness was Jesus Christ himself…now I could look from myself to him.

No longer did Bunyan feel cut off from Christ. “I was loosed from my affliction and irons” Bunyan writes. “My temptations also fled away…those dreadful scriptures of God left off to trouble me.”

Bunyan som Luther så at Jesus var hans rettferdighet og det var med på å løse ham fra hans plager, selv om Bunyan aldri helt ble kvitt tvangen, ble den i hvert fall håndterbar for ham.