Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

Religious Abuse


bird28

Recommended Posts

Basically as a kid, I was scared to go to Hell. I remember one of my Sunday School teachers saying that if we missed a Sunday of church, you would go to Hell. That scared me so much, I would get so upset when we missed church.

 

Also, would speak against the sins of the other kids, so they would stop what they were doing and not going to Hell. Even in Junior High School, I caught a student in Sex ed ironically with a condom and I exploded in class and pointed out his sin! Poor kid...

 

More recently, one of my former pastors a few years ago bragged his kid was so scared of Hell, he couldn't sleep at night and had horrible nightmares. He said because of this, the kid would grow up a missionary and everything.

 

Also in early college, I was still a bible thomper. I feel sick to my stomach when I think of one of my suitemates. Her dad just died and she was upset at my beliefs and asked me if I thought her dad went to Hell because he didn't believe in Jesus. I said "Yes". She called me a horrible person and burst into tears and left the room. Later, I told this to an xtian and they were like "Good! She will think about this and convert to avoid the same fate!"

 

How did the teaching of Hell affect you?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Initially, it had no effect since I converted myself. My initial pastor was the opposite of hellfire and brimstone, much more a psychological and Focus on the Family type. However, I saw myself as part of the "in crowd" so hell was for others, and I wanted to hear preaching that was real preaching, so I got tired of the mild approach. I wrote about "The Terrible Reality of Hell" in my blog, and this unfortunately influenced my brother to become more fundy like me.

 

The idea of hell played a big part in my deconversion when I saw that hell was never part of the Jewish religion and had been brought in and modified from Greek and Roman religion, the dominant cultures of that time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hell was not the primary focus of most of the churches I grew up in, but it was always there, always present, and that fear overshadowed everything else we did. The knowledge that the less than faithful were going to hell was scary - believing that my loved ones were gone and burning in eternal damnation was a horrible thought. This left me praying for family members on a nightly basis for literally years on end...of course, god never bothered to answer those prayers.

 

In fact, this general fear was used to cow us kids into "submission." If we were too naughty (often my brother got that tag) then we must not truly be saved...which meant we were going to hell even if that portion was left out of what was said. But we knew the consequences of not being saved, so stating that meant the obvious - you were doomed.

 

Demons were a big thing in those churches. We were taught to be terrified of them, but at the same time, anyone who had seen one was given such huge props on being a strong enough christian to warrant direct assault from the devil's minions. This started when I was very young - 5 years old people were telling their demon stories to us, it was like real life ghost stories. This continued throughout most of my childhood and teen years, even having one pastor who claimed to have seen a "horrible" person self-combust. These irrational fears still haunt me to some extent, it was so ingrained in us from childhood on, although my logical mind can rationalize it away, that deep gut fear is still there.

 

So, hell was actually less scary to us since we were sure we were part of the "special" crowd not going there. But demons, now THOSE were scary!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a kid I was always afraid to return home from church on Sundays. My fear was that I'd get into a car accident on the way home from church, die, and go to hell for some unconfessed sin.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fear of Hell is the reason why I was baptized.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I was six-years-old, I used to cry myself to sleep every night over my fear of hell. Not just for myself, but for the millions of people in other countries who might never "hear the word." Since I was also also taught that god always answers prayer, I decided to start praying for these people. My bedtime prayers got longer and longer as I tried to make sure I didn't leave anyone out. I started ending my list of "god blesses" with "... and anyone else I might have left out." My prayers started to sound like they'd been written by legal counsel as I tried to get everyone in the world into heaven.

 

It was an absolutley awful experience. No one should ever feed a little kid this garbage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was scared. At my school kids would make up stories about the devil or demons coming to the surface, turning into inanimate objects and capturing people who touched them, dragging them to hell. I was so scared by this story (they were saying a girl had gone missing from school via this event), that night (my parents were out) I went to my brother's room and tried to stay there, the housekeeper made me go back to my own room. I was screaming and crying, banging on the door to be let back in.

 

That was messed up. But as for the sinning part, I thought I would always have confession to get out of that. Unless I died before getting to do so, lol (thanks South Park for the idea).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The doctrine of eternal punishment has been a dominant idea in my life, from early childhood on. Its an abusive teaching for sure and its downright Orwellian how evangelical Christianity can call itself "good news" while holding that billions of humans will writhe eternally in torment. Its offensive and its obscene. Damn sure isn't "good news" even if I were to escape this "loving god's" holy prison.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did anyone else hear the story about the man who had terrible chemical burns from playing around with a powder that burned in water? I was told this story when I was just in elementary school, and then told that the fate of people in hell was even worse because they burned forever.

 

Sometimes I want to ask my parents if they truly believe that just because I am not a Christian, they think that my sins against god are so great that I deserve that kind of punishment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How did the teaching of Hell affect you?

 

When I was growing up my family wasn't particularly religious; it wasn't until I was in my teens and my mom and I were both born again that the matter came up. So I didn't get any lifelong indoctrination from childhood, and while there were plenty of things I was afraid of as a kid, hell wasn't one of them.

 

That changed when I was born again and hell doctrine suddenly registered on my radar. I don't remember any intense panic about it, but the fear of losing my salvation and going to hell was always in the back of my mind. So was the belief that any of my unsaved friends and loved ones were going to suffer an eternity burning. Both of those things produced a constant, low-level anxiety that would occasionally flare up into some neurotic flurry of prayer or evangelizing. At such times I was desperately sad and worried for my friends, and terrified for myself.

 

Even after I'd started down the path of deconversion, I think it took longer than it did because there was still this subtle fear of hell underlying all my questioning. It was as if I knew on some level that asking the wrong questions could lead me out of faith, and thus into the post-mortem eternal weenie roast. So I think there were things I just kind of skirted around because of that latent fear.

 

It wasn't until I finally lost the fear of hell that I was really able to delve unabashed, unfettered, and uncensored into all the issues I had, and dare to ask questions that had previously been taboo. And whaddaya know, it did indeed lead me right out of the faith.

 

I've since realized that fear of hell is a great way to avoid this sort of intense, critical questioning. If you're afraid that the wrong question will land you in hell, then you're less likely to ask the question in the first place, less likely to examine, less likely to probe - and less likely to leave.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest wester

One of the best days in my life occurred when I was teaching ESL at a middle school in Beijing. I playfully reprimanded some of my 11-12 year old kids for writing on the board by saying "Don't do that or you'll go to hell."

 

One of my students said to me "What's hell?"

 

I thought that was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

My psychological well-being has improved considerably since that day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the best days in my life occurred when I was teaching ESL at a middle school in Beijing. I playfully reprimanded some of my 11-12 year old kids for writing on the board by saying "Don't do that or you'll go to hell."

 

One of my students said to me "What's hell?"

 

I thought that was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

My psychological well-being has improved considerably since that day.

 

Imagine for a moment ex-christians what your lives would've been like had you never known of "hell". How would your life have been different? I know mine would have been far, far different than what it has been.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the best days in my life occurred when I was teaching ESL at a middle school in Beijing. I playfully reprimanded some of my 11-12 year old kids for writing on the board by saying "Don't do that or you'll go to hell."

 

One of my students said to me "What's hell?"

 

I thought that was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

My psychological well-being has improved considerably since that day.

 

Imagine for a moment ex-christians what your lives would've been like had you never known of "hell". How would your life have been different? I know mine would have been far, far different than what it has been.

 

Having been indoctrinated with the idea from very young childhood on, I really can't even begin to fathom how different my life would have been. There's really nothing there for me to even base my imagination off of since it was so integral to my entire upbringing - and I have a pretty vivid imagination, but essentially, I would have lived an entirely different life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was in denial about the whole "hell" thing. I got saved as a teenager.

 

Demons, however, were very real. I was one of the people who saw them constantly, but unlike HRDwarrior's church, most people in my church would have been like "huh?" :twitch:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Imagine for a moment ex-christians what your lives would've been like had you never known of "hell". How would your life have been different? I know mine would have been far, far different than what it has been.

Sometimes I wonder if I had been raised in a liberal Christian church if I would still be a Christian because the doctrine that you go to hell if you're gay is the one of the main reasons I started to question my faith.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think liberal Christians are more likely to just "lapse" while retaining a vague, indeterminate Christian component to their identity. The more you pound on something the more blowback there is; the typical liberal Christian is getting gently whapped with a wet sponge, while we former fundies got slammed with a sledge.

 

In other words, to question the fundie shit is to find yourself with your back against the wall. Whereas to question things in liberal Christianity is to step aside from the spot where the wet sponge was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a liberal christian I decided Jesus would not allow Hell to exist, therefore it didn't. Of course I didn't say that to anyone. When it came to religion it was best to quote the party line or ignore the subject, but in my polite family we all ignored it except on sundays. Liberal Christianity is hard to leave because you are constantly redefining it to suit what makes sense. On the other hand you have more access to different schools of thought like science and philosophy. My father was a christian but believed education was a duty as God gave you a brain...he had gone to Harvard medical, so I was sent to an esteemed private secular high school to prepare for college. I was finally able to study other religions and realize I couldn't really prove they were wrong.

 

I once met a fundie when I was still a believer, we worked at a grocery store together. He mentioned Noah's Ark as if he really believed it happened, and I was paralyzed with shock at the stupidity of it. I had always assumed the old testament was somewhat exaggerated or just metaphorical cause it didn't make any rational sense otherwise. I grew up in New England so I didn't get much exposure to blatant ignorance like that, which really tears down liberal Christianity because you tend to forget what you are supposed to actually believe, and when you see it's fundamentalist form it's really confusing because their version of Jesus does not mesh with yours.

 

So for fundies they are locked in a cage, but the spring is wound tight. If they can crack the lock the door swings open violently. For liberal christians, it's like floating in a sea of the abstract, and some find a raft of free-thinking and slowly dry their clothes and make it to land, and others keep treading water, confident that they'll be okay because Jesus loves them and the rest is irrelavent, and some get seduced by fundamentalism when they realize they don't know anything about their faith.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had the demon fear, but not the hell fear. The worst fear of all was that I would let god down, that I would not be the person I promised him I would be.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How did the teaching of Hell affect you?

 

It scared the piss out of me. What's really bad is that when I started to get pretty sure that Christianity wasn't true, this fear kicked in like crazy. The demon one, too. For me the hell thing and the demon thing went together, because the whole objective of demons (so I read) is they want you to go to hell. Because as long as you're still Christian, well, you can be kinda backslidden and have some liberal views and maybe not be as "good" of a Christian as your friends are, but if you believe in Jesus you're still saved. But once you start to actually not believe it -- to really leave the fold -- you're outside of God's grace and doomed to hell. Not to mention wide open to demonic influence.

 

I had a lot more remnants of fundamentalist belief running around in my head than I realized, or wanted to have, and that fear kicked my ass. Repeatedly, and hard.

 

 

I've since realized that fear of hell is a great way to avoid this sort of intense, critical questioning. If you're afraid that the wrong question will land you in hell, then you're less likely to ask the question in the first place, less likely to examine, less likely to probe - and less likely to leave.

 

Or, if you do try to leave, the backlash is horrific.

 

Imagine for a moment ex-christians what your lives would've been like had you never known of "hell". How would your life have been different?

 

I can't even begin.

My life would certainly have been more normal than it has been, and there would have been a lot less pain.

 

There are some ways in which poor coping with these fears has permanently and seriously affected my life in very bad ways. And there's no way to change it now.

 

In other words, to question the fundie shit is to find yourself with your back against the wall. Whereas to question things in liberal Christianity is to step aside from the spot where the wet sponge was.

 

That's about it. People who left liberal Christianity would probably have a hard time imagining some of the stuff ex-fundies might have to deal with.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One way to put the whole "hell" thing in context is to study some Greek mythology. They knew (scientifically) that it was "hot" under the Earth, and they believed that is where dead people's spirits went. They knew about volcanic activity, lava, hot springs and the like, and had compiled their mythology around the Underworld, featuring Tartarus, where there was fire and "brimstone", Elysium (sp) which was like an "Eden", and then a kind of purgatory involving wandering around the river Styx, and so on.

 

Once you start realizing that much of this stuff is pre-Jesus, it's easy to see where they got the "hell-fire" business from, as well as the idea that fire is a cleansing energy force, such as references to Jesus saying that he would baptize people "with fire", and so on.

 

You cannot deny the sharing of these mythologies throughout the Middle East and Roman Empire, there were fixed mythological ideas that were quite strong in the ancient world which many modern religious people aren't even aware of, or think irrelevant. There's nothing original about your "ghost" living in misery in a shadow-world, or being boiled in a hot place under the Earth. Some of these notions existed for centuries before Jesus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a kid I was always afraid to return home from church on Sundays. My fear was that I'd get into a car accident on the way home from church, die, and go to hell for some unconfessed sin.

 

When I was six-years-old, I used to cry myself to sleep every night over my fear of hell. Not just for myself, but for the millions of people in other countries who might never "hear the word." Since I was also also taught that god always answers prayer, I decided to start praying for these people. My bedtime prayers got longer and longer as I tried to make sure I didn't leave anyone out.

 

That about sums up my childhood experience with belief. But for me it lasted into my late teens. Peace in Jesus my ass. It's a wonder any of us escaped with our sanity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One way to put the whole "hell" thing in context is to study some Greek mythology. They knew (scientifically) that it was "hot" under the Earth, and they believed that is where dead people's spirits went. They knew about volcanic activity, lava, hot springs and the like, and had compiled their mythology around the Underworld, featuring Tartarus, where there was fire and "brimstone", Elysium (sp) which was like an "Eden", and then a kind of purgatory involving wandering around the river Styx, and so on.

 

Once you start realizing that much of this stuff is pre-Jesus, it's easy to see where they got the "hell-fire" business from, as well as the idea that fire is a cleansing energy force, such as references to Jesus saying that he would baptize people "with fire", and so on.

 

You cannot deny the sharing of these mythologies throughout the Middle East and Roman Empire, there were fixed mythological ideas that were quite strong in the ancient world which many modern religious people aren't even aware of, or think irrelevant. There's nothing original about your "ghost" living in misery in a shadow-world, or being boiled in a hot place under the Earth. Some of these notions existed for centuries before Jesus.

 

Yeah but according to Christianity everyone is supposed to know deep down that unless you repent and turn to Jesus your off to the great fire pit down under. So it doesn't really contradict the fundy view of things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One of the best days in my life occurred when I was teaching ESL at a middle school in Beijing. I playfully reprimanded some of my 11-12 year old kids for writing on the board by saying "Don't do that or you'll go to hell."

 

One of my students said to me "What's hell?"

 

I thought that was one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.

My psychological well-being has improved considerably since that day.

 

Imagine for a moment ex-christians what your lives would've been like had you never known of "hell". How would your life have been different? I know mine would have been far, far different than what it has been.

 

Having been indoctrinated with the idea from very young childhood on, I really can't even begin to fathom how different my life would have been. There's really nothing there for me to even base my imagination off of since it was so integral to my entire upbringing - and I have a pretty vivid imagination, but essentially, I would have lived an entirely different life.

 

.... HRDWarrior and Nightflight .... you sum up my experiences! Being brainwashed with this CRAP from birth .... I STILL now in my 50's vividly remember returning home from hell fire sermons at a very young age. Repeating and repeating to myself at a tend age of 5 or 6 what a useless pile of shit I actually was .... over and over again .... at the same timing crying my eyes out .... begging for god's forgiveness and somehow at the same time trying to get some sleep! One would lie awake for hours especially every Sunday night with this same scenario .... because hell fire was every Sunday night! No wonder a person grew up with absolutely NO self esteem! I can honestly say this evil religion dramatically affected my education .... it even determined my job outcome ... but that's another story! So YES ... I too cannot begin to fathom what my life may have been without this bullshit in it!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a wonder any of us escaped with our sanity.

 

Vigile .... you speak for yourself!! Hime quieet norrmall fank-ewe!! :crazy::ukliam2:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Peace in Jesus my ass. It's a wonder any of us escaped with our sanity.

Yeah, erm...

It seems it took a little while to get the sanity back in my case. I didn't escape fully unharmed.

 

(And I'm glad there is a delete button to get rid of confused middle-of-the-night batshit drunken rants. :freak3: )

 

Repeating and repeating to myself at a tend age of 5 or 6 what a useless pile of shit I actually was .... over and over again .... at the same timing crying my eyes out .... begging for god's forgiveness

 

Thankfully these kinds of experiences did not come quite so young for me.

But I hear you, I've definitely been through that, and it's horrendous.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.