The Doctrine of Fear

Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian environment, one of the things that stood out very clearly to me was an intense fear of hell. Even in those few churches we attended that focused more on love, hell hung like a pall over every decision you made, every thought you had.

I remember when I was seven or eight, I would sit in church week after week, and hear about the suffering of hell. People crying and burning and never getting relief. I would think about the sins I'd committed through the week, and feel like I needed to run forward at the end of every week's service to prostrate myself before God, so I wouldn't be damned for eternity (I was always a bit dramatic, even in my fears). Once, at age 14, I lay awake all night long, fearing that Jesus was going to return for the church, and everyone would disappear but me. I stayed awake, thinking that I'd see him and beg him to take me along even though I was completely unworthy.

Religion, as we know, perpetuates fear in its followers, even when it is couched in love. Earlier in this blog, I talked about my mother, and her belief that Barack Obama is, if not THE antichrist, AN antichrist. She was so full of fear over this, yet just a couple of e-mails later talked of how much she felt loved by God, and how much she sees the love of God in scripture (I'm wondering if she just skips those parts of the Bible where God slaughters thousands for sometimes nothing more than one guy stealing a gold cup).

It is quite a dichotomy, and what finally led me to study further, until I'd studied my way right out of belief in God at all. Frankly, even if I did still believe God existed, I wouldn't want to serve him because I think he's kind of...well, an abusive, fussy asshole. It was the cognitive dissonance I experienced between being told of a God of love on the one hand, and then seeing a God that was not at all showing love to his people or anyone else in any real way.

Christian families had the same monetay problems that non-christians do (unless they're televangelists). Christian families have children who get molested, they have divorces (sometimes higher rates than the general population), diseases, and all manner of ills, just like the rest of us. For every Christian who says they experienced a miracle, there are 10 people of other religions who claim miracles as well.

It becomes obvious, no matter what the talk of love, that Christian belief and morality is ruled primarily by fear of hell. Many people think it is only fringe groups like Fred Phelps' Kansas church that pickets gay funerals, military funerals, and anything else that provides publicity. They scream hate and invective. Check out this article which interviews Phelps' son Nate to see the damage that kind of fear can cause (link)

But I did not attend the "crazy churches." I attended a normal, run of the mill Baptist church growing up, yet still came away knowing of the fear. After deconverting, it took several years to throw off those flashes of terror at the thought that hell could be real. That was the last battlefield in my mind related to religion. Richard Dawkins, renowned atheist, goes so far as to say it is a form of abuse, to raise people in this type of fear.

There are sites like this one all over the 'Net for people who have come out of religion and need the encouragement and support of others because they lived in such a world based on fear of a punishing god.

So much for a doctrine of love.