Persons of faith often have one religious belief system that is conscious and another one that is unconscious. The conscious system usually consists of what we learn in Sunday school, how we understand scripture and our own idiosyncratic perceptions of how other people, especially those in authority, live the Christian life. This belief system, however, may or may not be the one that actually guides our behaviors and informs our attitudes.
In addition to our stated beliefs, we also have unstated beliefs that are sometimes out of our conscious awareness. For example, most Christians believe that we are to forgive those who have sinned against us. We repeat the Lord’s prayer on a regular basis and in doing so we ask God to forgive us our trespasses (or debts) as we forgive those who trespass against us (or who are debtors) (Matthew 6:12). If asked, we would no doubt state that forgiveness of others is a requirement of the Christian life. But…
We live in a world in which forgiveness is not part of our everyday thinking. It is not a part of our everyday experience. To forgive may even imply weakness or to some, a “holier than thou” attitude. Our conscious belief system, which requires forgiveness, is not the one that guides our Christian life. We are more likely to behave in ways that are influenced by cultural values. The basic teachings of Christianity come into conflict with the attitudes of the world with which we interact on a regular basis. And for too many (if not most) of us the tenets of religion become empty words while the unspoken requirements of the secular world become the beliefs that we live by.
The great advantage of cognitive therapy is that it can reveal these two competing belief systems so that the hypocrisy that results from them can be avoided. When someone tells you that she is a Christian, and then repeats nothing but vitriol about a neighbor, the cognitive therapist is able to contrast her two belief systems, one explicit (conscious) and the other implicit (unconscious). In so doing, this angry Christian is faced with a decision, either forgive her neighbor or recognize her own hypocrisy.
