I was just curious if anyone else here was subjected to fear-inducing tactics as a child within their religion? Besides the depicting of Hell as a guillotine threatening to drop anytime you misbehave I mean. Personally, I was subjected to something that terrified me well into my adulthood. My church would have these plays called Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames. They would have people on stage acting out scenarios. A father would be driving with his two daughters and they would ask him why he doesn't come to church anymore. There would be jokes about stopping at McDonald's and such. Suddenly one of them would scream, "Watch out!" and the speakers would blast this deafening screeching and crashing sound and the room would go dark. The lights would come on and they would be at the foot of some stairs (my church was big enough that the production value was actually pretty good). They would ask an angel if their name was in the book. The angel would check and either they would be welcomed up the stairs into heaven to joyous music... or the angel would cover its eyes and the lights would turn red. "Satan" and his minions would come from a red pit off stage and grab the father or friend or mother, to the cries of family members, and drag them away. This was also accompanied by deafening laughter and loud noise.
I was younger than 10 and I remember burying my face in the pew and covering my ears. I remember praying desperately, though I had no idea what exactly I was supposed to pray for or why I was praying at all. This kind of child abuse should be illegal. These plays combined with the movies Ghost and All Dogs Go to Heaven were enough to keep me too frightened to question Christianity until I was 17. Luckily, religion is so logically flawed that even fear isn't enough to permanently secure belief.
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Indeed.
From a devout Irish catholic family ,I was educated (if you'll forgive the expression) first by Dominican nuns. It was they who taught me about mortal sin and hell--threatening a 7 year old with hell, for fuck sake! From out of the frying pan to the De La Salle Brothers academy of applied brutality. Dire warning of the pains of hell were hurled me for the full seven yeast of my sentence.
I was terrified of going to hell especially from age 13 when I discovered masturbation, which was/is of course a mortal sin.
My terror was reduced at 16 , when I read 'The Psychology Of Sex" by Havelock Ellis. It was he who explained that all healthy boys masturbate. I reasoned that something so absolutely normal and healthy could not possibly be a sin.
About 40 years late, but this year I discovered Anglican archbishop George Shelby Spong .Quoth he; "The church is in the guilt and control business" He also explained that the notion of an eternal hell is a Christian invention. Archbishop Spong has written a couple of Times best sellers and there are many clips on Youtube. The links below is to a short clip Spong on hell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF6I5VSZVqc
LOL: Baptized Assemblies of God. Hellfire and damnation. Spread the holy word for the world is about to end! Make a joyful noise unto the lord. Then bend over and kiss your ass goodbye because all the rest of the Churches are being led by false prophets.
hallelujah brothers and sisters.
Re: OP
Yep, of course I got the standard, "God is always watching you. God knows what you are thinking/feeling at ANY time past, present, and future. God will punish you if you even THINK something wrong/sinful. God loves you more than you can ever imagine, but he will send you to hell if you do not obey his Word. Once you are baptized, you are ALWAYS baptized and forever saved from hell, but if you do not continue to obey God he will send you to hell. Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins, but you will still be sent to hell by God if you sin and don't ask forgiveness. God has a PERFECT plan, and you are part of that perfect plan that can never be changed. As such, God has always known what will happen to you in your life and at the end of your life many eons before you were ever born. But pray to God to help make your life better and to help others in need. Your prayers will ALWAYS be answered by God. Sometimes, "No," is the answer, because God always knows what is best for you and others. The Devil is EVIL and he punishes the wicked and the wrong-doers and tries to lead the faithful away from God. God knows EVERYTHING (Past, present, AND future), but he will sometimes test us to determine what we will do... (WTF???)..." Anyway, those are just the highlights. There were countless other more subtle "teachings" that I could have listed, but I don't have all night. Needless to say, that was some fairly fucked up and confusing stuff for a seven/eight year old kid. And NONE OF IT ever made any sense to me, even at that early age. Still, I got sucked in, nonetheless. The Devil and hell were a constant fear I carried around with me throughout my childhood years and beyond. And the imagination I had as a kid just made things that much worse, because apparently God knew everything I was thinking at any time of the day or night. So, imagine my disconcerting dilemma when I discovered a Playboy magazine in the storage room of an old house we lived in at age 8. YOWZA!... *chuckle*...
But, sure, I also saw a few of those highly dramatic (traumatic) church skits along the way. Interestingly enough, however, they did not affect me as much you might think. I was a bit older and and a little better educated by the time I saw those plays. And they were so "generalized" that they really didn't register too much with me. For, by that time, it was all the smaller and more intricate details of the whole religion thing that had my mind all twisted and warped. Took me over forty years to finally pull myself away from all that nonsense. And at the very base of the thread that held me to it all that time was the fear of that malicious threat of Satan and hell.
Oh, and on an ironic note, here is something one of my Uncles told me one time when I was about 11 or 12. One day he asked me, "Who should you fear most... God or the Devil?" Well, my natural response at that age was, "The Devil." To which he quickly corrected me by saying, "Wrong. You should always fear God the most, because God is the only one who can send you to hell. And with God on your side, there is nothing the Devil can do to ever harm you." (I'll just let everybody make their own assessments about that... *sardonic chuckle*...)
Fear is common when logic is insufficient, or missing. The more unprovable the results of the transgression, the more frightening the threat has to be.
It's not just religions who play that game.