Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

The Most Hurtful Thing The Church Ever Said To You


bird28

Recommended Posts

I might have mentioned this on the site before, but I am not sure. I used to go to a AoG church. The pastor made this long argument that sin trickled down the father's bloodline. He basically said that the father has to tell the kids all his sins, and you had to pray for forgiveness from them, or you are going to hell.

 

This really hurt me at the time, because I thought my dad was a deadbeat, I actually found out later he died soon after I was born and nobody told me. I ran out of that church crying.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



Keeping this site online isn't free, so we need your support! Make a one-time donation or choose one of the recurrent patron options by clicking here.



  • Replies 113
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Vomit Comet

    5

  • Shyone

    5

  • Deva

    4

  • OpheliaGinger

    4

The worst message I ever got at church was from a sunday school teacher when I was in second grade. She said "A lot people THINK they're saved, but they're not, because people lie to themselves." That messed me up for years - because it told me I couldn't trust my own judgement to tell me whether or not I was saved. So I could be on the way to hell no matter what...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember it very clearly. An abominable sermon by a Baptist preacher. He said a married woman had no right to refuse her husband sex, for any reason. Marital rape. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and I was about 14.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember it very clearly. An abominable sermon by a Baptist preacher. He said a married woman had no right to refuse her husband sex, for any reason. Marital rape. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and I was about 14.

 

I have heard that one preached too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I remember it very clearly. An abominable sermon by a Baptist preacher. He said a married woman had no right to refuse her husband sex, for any reason. Marital rape. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and I was about 14.

 

I have heard that one preached too.

 

I must add that I think on a deep subconscious level I think it impacted my whole view of marriage in a very negative way. I don't think I ever recovered from it, even now, some 35 years later.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I might have mentioned this on the site before, but I am not sure. I used to go to a AoG church. The pastor made this long argument that sin trickled down the father's bloodline. He basically said that the father has to tell the kids all his sins, and you had to pray for forgiveness from them, or you are going to hell.

 

This really hurt me at the time, because I thought my dad was a deadbeat, I actually found out later he died soon after I was born and nobody told me. I ran out of that church crying.

 

 

That's terrible. I'm sorry he said that, and that you didn't find out the truth about your father sooner.

 

 

For me I think it was a paid staff member of a college-based evangelical Christian group who told me he thought I had demons because I wasn't "getting the Holy Spirit" and hysterically jumping up and down in my chair clapping my hands like most of the other kids during a big worship rally on a week-long retreat.

 

Or... no, actually, even that was not as bad as the various Christians who told me over the years that all non-Christians go to hell. My best friend from high school was killed, and he was Jewish, so it was very painful to think that he had gone there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's easy ... the evening I got a phone call from the leader of the InverVarsity fellowship I'd belonged to in college. It was 6 months after graduation, I was underemployed, lonely, and clinically depressed. I was so happy to hear a trusted friend's voice. Except that it wasn't a social call. He was simply asking for "support" (as in $$$). It took a couple of minutes for me to realize he in fact did not give a shit about me, except for the smug expectation that there was some tithe money for him in my minimum-wage world.

 

My deconversion process was long and tortured, but that was definitely a pivotal moment.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Do you take this woman,"...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was a Bible Study, and they were talking about "lust in your heart." I asked the guy "do you have to repent for every last little thought?" He said "yes, you do."

 

That headfucked me bad for the next several years. About 500 times a day, every day, I'd pause and mutter "Lord forgive me for [insert thought sin here]." Certain OCD/autistic tendencies don't mix well with that kind of religion. Or mental illness in general, let's say.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've heard so many that they have all wadded together in this one bad image.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've heard so many that they have all wadded together in this one bad image.

Yeah...true that. Hard to pick just one thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I might have mentioned this on the site before, but I am not sure. I used to go to a AoG church. The pastor made this long argument that sin trickled down the father's bloodline. He basically said that the father has to tell the kids all his sins, and you had to pray for forgiveness from them, or you are going to hell.

 

This really hurt me at the time, because I thought my dad was a deadbeat, I actually found out later he died soon after I was born and nobody told me. I ran out of that church crying.

 

 

*I was in school and studying the Book of Revelations ( 6th grade?). I was having severe anxiety as my dad wasn't "Saved", I was taken out into the hallway and told that God would wave his hand in front of my face and I'd never remember my father. :twitch: That devastated me for years.

 

* Fear of abandonment as I felt the rapture was going to happen any second. If I came home and no one was there I was scared to death I was "left behind".

 

* Being told anyone I loved was going to hell if they didn't conform.

 

*I was also told I was filled with demons, and had them cast out of me (when I was a young teenager). That was pretty mindfucking, and another thing that's stuck with me for years.

 

*A girl I went to church/school with sister committed suicide. Two weeks after that horrific incident the pastor felt the need to give a sermon saying all people who take their own lives are sentenced to Hell. While this didn't happen to me persey, what my friend endured from pain and anguish along with losing her sister still affects me to this day. Being helpless to comfort her in anyway is also something I've never forgotten.

 

I have a long list... but these are my top 5

I went to the Ass of God church as well, They are among the most evil of the cults.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I went to catholic schools my whole life, so I was constantly surrounded by the church even when I was at school. The priest regularly made appearances at school to talk to teachers and the principal of our school. When my parents first separated and were on the path to divorce, word somehow spread very quick even though I didn't tell anyone. It was only a couple days after my dad left the house for good and by that point lots of teachers, the religious director of our archdiocese (who also worked at our school every once and awhile) and the priest had took me and my brother and sister aside and "talked" to us about what was going on. They somehow figured out my mother was the one who wanted the divorce and my dad did not. Most of them tried to offer words of support, but failed miserably at saying anything comfortably other than what I already knew, that it wasn't our fault, blah blah blah. Another common thing and our priest really harped on this, was that it was basically our mom's fault. According to their twisted religion a marriage should never be broken off no matter what and they tried to convince us my mom was breaking our family apart and we should be strong. I honestly sympathized with my mom, my parents would argue late into the evening after my dad got home from work, he worked 2nd and sometimes 3rd shift so they almost never were in the same room at one time. They just did not get along at all and sometimes my dad would get violent. It really scared me and would upset me, so I was kind of glad that it was finally coming to an end. I just found it very offensive that these preachy types who are suppose to be good people would condemn a woman without having any clue as to what she was going through. I knew she was sad, but was trying so hard to be a good mom for us. Sure the following few years were very painful for me and my brother and sister, but we became very close. Close than we would have been if life had just limped on. I am thankful for this to this day, I think it made us stronger people in the end and I think both my parents are much happier in the long run.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess having to listen to a sermon about a guy who rushed into a burning building and saved three children; it was in fact based on a real incident. The hero in question was a non-believer, though, and the minister made it clear that even though it was an incredible selfless act of courage and sacrifice, the guy was still going to Hell, to be burned in everlasting torment...

 

I remember afterward seeing an elderly woman crying on her way out of the church; some people were trying to console her, but now she realized that her deceased husband was in hell, because he wasn't a true believer, and he had been kind to her all of their married days. There were other people who looked gloomy, too. It had been a pretty vicious sermon.

 

The worst part was how the minister looked so dramatically smug and satisfied after seeing these results. Totally made his day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was a Bible Study, and they were talking about "lust in your heart." I asked the guy "do you have to repent for every last little thought?" He said "yes, you do."

 

That headfucked me bad for the next several years. About 500 times a day, every day, I'd pause and mutter "Lord forgive me for [insert thought sin here]." Certain OCD/autistic tendencies don't mix well with that kind of religion. Or mental illness in general, let's say.

 

I went through similar repetitions in the 7th grade after first being exposed to demon theology. I was sometimes asking for forgiveness but more often asking for Jesus to cast out whatever was putting such thoughts in my head in the first place.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It was a Bible Study, and they were talking about "lust in your heart." I asked the guy "do you have to repent for every last little thought?" He said "yes, you do."

 

That headfucked me bad for the next several years. About 500 times a day, every day, I'd pause and mutter "Lord forgive me for [insert thought sin here]." Certain OCD/autistic tendencies don't mix well with that kind of religion. Or mental illness in general, let's say.

 

Yeah ditto. It's a wonder I didn't end up OCD as a result. I prayed for forgiveness enough to be considered clinically obsessive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Certain OCD/autistic tendencies don't mix well with that kind of religion. Or mental illness in general, let's say.

Understatement of the century. Or rather, the last twenty centuries.

 

And the situation is made so much worse by the fact that so much of this is not just an innocent and accidental mixing of two chemicals which should never be mixed: So much of it is done deliberately, whether consciously or unconsciously, by people who zero right in on the vulnerable and take rapacious advantage of that vulnerability. They don't give a flying fuck what the fallout for that individual is, as long as they can get another convert.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If a child dies in childbirth, and is not baptized, it's soul goes to Hell.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After my beloved grandmother died someone told me that if she hadn't said the right magic words she was probably in hell. That one was so dismaying it started the deconversion snowball rolling.

 

The Notorious Bible-Thumping Ex™ had some hurtful things to say too, most of which boiled down to him believing I was an ungodly whore and didn't deserve love because of it.

 

Some of the stuff that believers have said about women has been painful too. Misogynist Bible verses used to justify restricting our lives, xian men telling me that women belong in the home, aren't as smart as men, aren't as capable, aren't as human, are whores, that we've never done anything to benefit humanity (like cure diseases or invent anything useful and so on). Such things aren't hurtful in a personal way, but since I am a woman I can't help but realize that when someone speaks of women disparagingly, what they're saying applies to me too.

 

There are probably more things.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For myself, it wasn't said directly to me, but to my mother. Her and my Dad had an emotionally abusive relationship, my dad was a narcissistic jerk. He was attending bible school at the time when my mom was contemplating separation from him. So together they went to counseling offered by the bible college. One nite, it got so bad, my mom phoned the counselor, and said that she was going to leave, she was desperate, she had two children, and was looking out for us as well as herself; however, the counselors wife get's on the phone and berates my mother for even considering to leave my dad, "Good christian women submit to their husbands. It is wrong for you to even consider this."

 

A few years ago, when my mom told me about that nite, I grew livid. I wanted nothing more then to find that woman, who ironically her husband became the pastor of the college church and even baptized me, and knock her back on her ass. Now guess where Mr. and Mrs. Good Christian dwell? Well they are pastors of an even bigger church, just a few mins drive away from where I live, spreading the 'good' word. Sometimes I feel like going to that church and finding her, and letting her know about the damage her words caused my mom, and the damage that trickled down to me and my sister.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest ephymeris

I think christians either are unaware or don't care that the threat of hellfire for sin can be INTENSELY traumatizing and damaging to children, especially if those children have "family secrets."

 

When I was a kid, the idea that I would go to hell if I had unforgiven sin manifested itself into compulsive prayers for forgiveness. I thought if I died without remembering to pray that magical prayer at the last minute, I would be hellbound. My prayers were a focus point for my raging anxiety. This belief, coupled with guilt from sexual abuse meant I was terribly ashamed, afraid for my soul, and depressed. I believed people who commit suicide go straight to hell so even though I wanted to die, I would never be able to do it myself. I often prayed god would let me get hit by a car accidentally so I could just end it and have a chance to not burn. I would prostrate myself on my belly and cry til I was sick, begging for forgiveness of my "sexual sin" i.e. being raped as a child. I don't think anyone had any idea the amount of pain I was in from both my unfortunate childhood circumstances coupled with these sick christian beliefs.

 

It's a crime to use these fictitious beliefs to "keep kids in line" when it can hurt them the way it hurt me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was asked to leave a church and not return because I was a blemish on their congregation. Three of the church leaders quoted Deuteronomy 23:2 at me and told me as a bastard child, I could never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. However, they would pray for me and they wished me well (just as long as I didn't ever step foot inside their church again). I was 12.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wanted nothing more then to find that woman, who ironically her husband became the pastor of the college church and even baptized me, and knock her back on her ass. Now guess where Mr. and Mrs. Good Christian dwell? Well they are pastors of an even bigger church, just a few mins drive away from where I live, spreading the 'good' word. Sometimes I feel like going to that church and finding her, and letting her know about the damage her words caused my mom, and the damage that trickled down to me and my sister.

I thought you were going to say she was divorced. That would have been the cat's meow.

 

Maybe someday.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On and another horrible thing from that church, the pastor talked about how his son had nightmares of all the people that were going to Hell because they never heard the gospel, and he said that was a very good thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For me as a gay person, it was the constant message that gay people "choose" to be gay (which is bullshit), and therefore they "choose" to reject salvation and go to hell. This type of mindfuck message along with the verses in the Babble that say homosexuals are an abomination to god and he commands them to be put to death, drives many gay youths to suicide unfortunately.

 

Christianity = Good News ™ :twitch:

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.