When Protestantism tore down the medieval scaffolding—the priests, the sacraments, the Church as guarantor of salvation—it left the individual standing alone before an infinite, absolute God.

Suddenly there was no one to tell you whether you were truly saved. No ritual could automatically wash away doubt. No institution could certify your election.

You had to know, with terrifying certainty, two impossible things:

1. That you loved God completely.
2. That God loved you back.

This is the Protestant “crisis of faith”—a psychological torment so intense that entire civilizations have spent the last five centuries inventing ways to escape it.

History records three major solutions. All three are still with us, usually in secular disguise.

1. Wealth Accumulation (The Calvinist Answer)

If outward signs are all we have, then let the outward sign be money.

John Calvin and his Puritan followers argued that material success was the only reliable evidence of divine favor. The elect are blessed in this life; the damned are not. Work hard, live frugally, reinvest every penny—your growing bank balance becomes visible proof that God has chosen you.

This is not greed disguised as piety. This is terror transformed into accounting.

The psychological payoff is immediate: every new zero on the balance sheet is a whispered “Yes, you are saved.” Capitalism, consumerism, the 80-hour work week, the worship of billionaires—all trace their emotional DNA back to this desperate attempt to purchase certainty from a silent heaven.

2. Jihad / Martyrdom (The Warrior-Saint Answer)

If wealth can be faked and feelings can deceive, then offer the one thing no hypocrite would ever give: your life.

Die for the faith—preferably in spectacular fashion—and you remove all doubt. The martyr does not need to wait for Judgment Day; paradise is guaranteed instantly. The bomb belt, the suicide charge, the willingness to burn at the stake—these are not political tactics in origin.

They are theological solutions to the terror of possible damnation.

In its purest form, this path says: “Let my blood be the signature on the contract of my salvation.”

We usually see only the violent modern versions, but the emotional logic is ancient: absolute risk equals absolute proof.

3. Transgression (The Hidden, Darkest Path)

The most disturbing solution—and the one Freud would later secularize.

If ordinary obedience can always be pretended, then the truest proof of devotion is to do the exact opposite of what human law, morality, and instinct demand. Break the ultimate taboo—incest, blasphemy, murder, sacrilege—and if you can still feel God’s love on the other side, then your election is beyond question.

This is not atheism or rebellion against God. This is fanaticism so extreme that it treats human morality as an obstacle to be deliberately shattered in order to reach divine certainty.

Historical examples exist—obscure medieval sects, certain antinomian heretics, fringe occult groups—but they are always suppressed because civilization cannot admit that one legitimate answer to “How do I know I’m saved?” is “Because I just did the unforgivable and God still spoke to me.”

The exhilaration the transgressor feels is not mere adrenaline. It is the electric conviction of having touched the absolute. The shoplifter in the lecturer’s example comes back buzzing with energy—not because he got away with it, but because he violated the social order and the heavens did not strike him down.

The Modern Inheritance

Look closely and you can still see all three solutions operating today:

1. The workaholic billionaire chasing another billion “just to be sure.”
2. The ideological martyr livestreaming his final testament.
3. The quiet, well-adjusted professional who keeps a secret life of calculated taboo-breaking because only the rush of the forbidden still feels real.

Protestantism asked an impossible question. We have spent five hundred years answering it with money, blood, or blasphemy.

Choose your poison.