I am a secular therapist, so let me give you the professional picture first. Even in cases where I have a religious client who shares my own beliefs, I attempt to avoid religious themes unless directly brought in by the client themselves. Generally this is part of an ethical obligation in terms of informed consent — a person is consenting to address psychological processes, not a therapist’s political or religious opinions. Alternatively, in cases where someone wants to bring in influence from these sources, we’ll have a discussion of what values (political or religious) they want to try to develop in sessions and the crossover between that and their therapeutic goals.

It is at least a theoretical possibility that a therapist and client could have differences of belief so great that the two wouldn’t be able to make useful progress together, but I’ve never had this happen personally. Part of that is due to my commitment to read more things I don’t believe than things I do. I’ve read everything from the Bible to the Satanic Bible, from the Koran to the Gita and Rig Veda. From Buddhism to Sam Harris’ atheism, and I’m conversant enough in most of these to defend the belief systems at a relatively high level of philosophic sophistication. The same goes for political positions as well; I can argue for Marx, Kimberle Crenshaw, or bell hooks, as well as arguing for J.S. Mill, Karl Popper, or Jordan Peterson. I’ve read all of them.

Now let me make one comment on religion and one on politics. 

I will say that I believe it’s technically impossible not to have some kind of faith. Now, in this case as well as some others, I’m essentially taking a religiously loaded term and giving it a broader secular definition, allowing us to see how religious ideas function as descriptions of psychological processes. Here I’m describing “faith” as what we use to “fill in the blanks” of our finite understanding. I can’t fully grasp the complete complexity of the pen on my desk at the molecular level, much less the laptop I’m typing on. At some point my mind assumes there are explanations to what I don’t understand, assumes those are unnecessary, and ignores everything but the functional value of the two objects. The things I ignore, or the things I find to be important are essentially acts of faith whether I’m falling back on explanations from physics or metaphysics. I need to decide whether what I don’t know is important or unimportant, and since I can’t know the importance of the unknown, how else can I describe it but to say that it’s an act of faith to believe I know enough to be safe or make the objects work as I intend. I can’t even know if the pen will write without experimenting, even though I buy it based on my faith that it will.

This also speaks to my secular definition of “sin.” Sin must be self-deception, this is just a logical necessity. You’re free to believe the term is nonsense, although hear me out first. If it makes any sense at all it must mean knowing something is bad, but acting anyway. This means there must have been an internal argument / reason that one thought was more important than morality, which would be incorrect. Now there are certain kinds of self-deception that may be helpful, such as dissociation during traumatic events, but overall I would suggest it’s a psychological version of self-harm, the mind is turning against itself.

Remove any spiritual implications here and think about the ways we talk ourselves into things we know aren’t good for us, and whether we’re fully responsible for this “sin” or not, you can see how that could apply to anything from cheating on an exercise plan, to projecting our insecurities onto others because we want to convince ourselves that they’re not there. 

As for the political, here’s my approach when these things come up: the only lies you need to worry about are those from your own side, since you’re unlikely to even believe true things from the “other team.” We believe our team on faith (hopefully with good evidence, but never infallible evidence), and are primed for self-deception due to our desire to win.

So you choose what you think is true, but do believe it’s important to expand understanding and acknowledge the coherence of arguments we disagree with, political or religious. People convinced that those they disagree with are religiously evil or politically sociopathic, but can’t clearly make the “other side’s” argument, only help provide cover for actual sociopathic types of people. It’s worth keeping in mind that those people exist in every faith, and intersectional identity. This includes both mine and yours. 

This is just a truth that can be seen in many situations beyond religion and politics as well. It’s important to keep our eyes open and not miss bad actors due to positive feelings for our team or negative feelings for “the other.” This doesn’t mean you should become paranoid either. If we start with the assumption future behavior will be like past behavior, then we naturally avoid unreliable people. Remember, those we interact with regularly are much more likely to create problems for us than “team other” boogiemen we never talk to.