My guest this week is Dr. Mark Karris, author of the new book, The Diabolical Trinity: Healing Religious Trauma From a Wrathful God, Tormenting Hell, and a Sinful Self (affiliate link). Mark shared about the damaging effects this trio of doctrines can have on people, himself included, and how to heal.

Topics we discussed included:

• How certain religious beliefs themselves can be traumatic, apart from abusive, authoritarian leaders
• Differing effects of indoctrination in these beliefs early in life vs. later
• My guest’s own traumatic religious experiences
• Anxiety related to the belief in hell and “eternal conscious torment”
• The question of why some people have trauma reactions to these beliefs and other don’t
• Possible effects of the family or church environment in which diabolical beliefs were taught
• The similarities between some depictions of God and abusive partners
• A wrathful god as a possible vengeful projection of believers
• Seeing through persistent gut-level beliefs from harmful religious doctrines
• The practices Mark offers for healing from religious trauma
• The opportunity cost of not learning about a loving divine presence
• People who don’t want anything to do with even a benevolent deity
• The doctrine of universalism, that “love wins in the end”
• Different ways of understanding hell within the Christian tradition
• What my guest believes about God now

Mark Gregory Karris, PsyD, is a licensed marriage and family therapist in full-time practice in San Diego, California.

Mark specializes in religious trauma, men’s issues, and couples therapy.

He is the author of the best-selling books Divine Echoes: Reconciling Prayer with the Uncontrolling Love of God and Religious Refugees: (De)Constructing Toward Spiritual and Emotional Healing (affiliate links).

Find Mark online at his website.