Summary:
This essay explores the idea that belief in God, for some individuals, [and potentially for all] may act as a psychological coping mechanism rooted in an unresolved Inferiority Complex. Drawing on Alfred Adler’s theory, it suggests that when people feel deeply inadequate, they may develop a Superiority Complex as compensation — and in some cases, project this need onto a divine figure. Rather than healing the root feelings of uselessness, religious belief may sometimes serve to mask them, allowing the person to feel valued or empowered through God while avoiding their own vulnerability. The essay argues that this dynamic, while it may feel like a safe or spiritual solution, can lead to emotional fragility, distorted self-perception, and even hostility toward others — including critics of religion. It concludes that this way of coping is ultimately unhealthy and insufficient for genuine self-worth.
THE ARGUMENT
Alfred Adler wrote that a person may have an exaggerated and excessive sense of their own weakness and uselessness. This is the Inferiority Complex. This can get so severe that the person develops feelings of superiority to stand in opposition to the negative feelings. In other words, the sense of uselessness unleashes suffering, isolation, pain, and fear — and to handle them, the person finds some good points about herself or himself and exaggerates them to try and cancel or balance out the sense of uselessness. The result is a Superiority Complex.
[Many persons actually manage to turn their sense of uselessness into something to get attention over, or to be proud about! That is why they revel in it and are not suicidal.]
The Inferiority Complex is still there. The person compensates for the sense of weakness and uselessness by having feelings that he is better than others. It is a case of the person feeling useless and invincible at the same time. They feel useless one way and useful another.
[Some take up this point to assert that imagining that there is a God so vast and powerful that the person is nothing can be a form of Inferiority Complex - psychologically. Others say it declares the person effectively nothing theologically or in principle. It is clear that such a doctrine is risking taking the first step towards the Inferiority Complex.]
Some think that the religious person who has a strong sense of being good for nothing deals with it by thinking God does good things through her. But she still thinks she is useless by herself. God has to take over and be useful for her and through her. She then is not dealing with it, but prolonging it. She seems to be coping, but she is not.
To develop a Superiority Complex means half of you knows the superiority is fragile and artificial. It will make you potentially dangerous. It will make your emotional and mental health fragile. You will fear threats to it. That is why the person with a Superiority Complex is bad at taking even constructive criticism. That is why he will hate anybody who does not "recognise" that he really is superior! He will imagine slights against him. He does this, for he seeks warnings when something might endanger his arrogance. When he is warned, he can try to protect it.
The person with a Superiority Complex expects others — sometimes everybody — to adore and like her. She expects the important people to do that. Deep down, you know you cannot make them like you — they like you or they don't. So you will demand then that God should love and like you. That is the function belief in God serves. You would not value God if you didn't think God should value you. It is really about you and not God. God is a tool with which you glorify yourself. God is a tool with which you make yourself the real God in your life.
A safer way is not to bombast what you think is your successful and useful side, but to pretend that God takes care of that useful side of you. You even tell yourself that your faith and your prayers, for example, are his work and not yours! But they are. By projecting them to God, you need not fear the person who sees through you. You see them as taking God down a peg or two, but not you. Thus, you are protected from the sense of rejection by them. You are putting the responsibility for your deceptive Superiority Complex on God. This protects you from a collapse in whatever self-esteem you have left, should you fail. You then lay the blame at his feet. You are using God to protect yourself from seeing your own vulnerability — and from your own vulnerability.
If you see people as bad and sinful, you are saying they deserve not your love, but to be left hopefully to divine retribution. This comes from your belief that you deserve rejection and will get it from them, so you reject them before they reject you. You are avoiding the risk of being hurt by their rejection. And if they reject you, you consider it confirmation that they are indeed bad. You are declaring yourself superior to them, for you judge them and declare them unworthy of you. You say you cannot expect anything worthwhile from them. Yet your doing that is rooted in your sense that you are too useless to bring the good out of them. This is a good example of the sick relationship between the Superiority Complex and the Inferiority Complex.
If there is a God, he does not always stop you from being hurt. Even faith in God cannot give you a real sense of safety. It gives you some, but it cannot be enough. Believers expect to feel that God is with them, supporting them when they are hurt and feeling low, but when it actually happens, they feel let down and alone. The placebo only works as long as the evil is ahead of you in time. If you experience evil and you attribute it to God, then you are telling yourself that the evil is somehow good. That will translate eventually into disregard for the suffering of others.
This safer way is still mentally and psychologically unhealthy. It is no substitute for a holistic sense of self-worth. The safer way can lead to hatred against critics of religion. And often does!
It is safer, but not the best.