Current mood:	my butt is very spiritual
Entry tags:	health, religion: christianity

For any evangelical Christian who wishes to take 1 Thessalonians 5:17 out of context and way too literally:

(and they are out there, I've read their blog posts about compulsively praying all day every day in response to this particular verse, and thought about my own OCD diagnosis and how glad I am that I have medication and therapy.)

Do you want this to be completely natural and unforced for you? Even if you're not an evangelical Christian, or indeed any flavour of theist at all?

Do your best to get irritable bowel syndrome.

Then go for a long walk somewhere where there aren't public toilets. When the spasms hit on your way home and you have at least twenty minutes of walking to get to your home and your toilet, and each spasm is worse than the last, and you remember all the people telling you that the gut is connected to the emotions and how this must mean you have IBS because you're emotionally volatile but no one talks about how it works in the other direction too and a wave of emotion hits you with each cramp... as you go cold and clammy and feel faint and are scared you'll collapse and faint before you get there (and yes, I've had that happen to me) you will pray without ceasing.

You will be fervently muttering "Oh God, oh God, oh God." Not just as a general profanity, no, it will be "Oh God, please just let me get home without shitting myself, please God, please don't let me shit myself in public again, not tonight." You will cease to think anything else.

Your "thank God" when you reach the toilet will be as fervent as any evangelical could want.

And it will not make you a better person or a better Christian or indeed a Christian at all. It will just mean that you can't concentrate on anything else right now. But that's what you wanted, isn't it?