IF SOMEBODY threatened your children with eternal torture you’d call the police – right?
So why was there no help when it happened to me as a child?
Because those who did the threatening belonged to that all-respected, all-protected, all-hallowed bunch of villains – the Christian Church!
And they’re still doing it…to millions….. every day.
My case was even more shocking because it was my fundamentalist Christian parents who were making the frightening threats, for my father was a Pentecostal minister.
‘For God so loved the world’ he preached to me and the rest of his deluded congregation, ‘that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him, SHOULD NOT PERISH but have everlasting life.’
There in that John 3.16. New Testament verse is the scary summary of their twisted belief.
In simple terms it means ‘believe this and you won’t miss out on eternal life’ or put another way ‘reject it and you’ll go to hell’.
And when they talked about hell, they meant fire and brimstone, demons with forked tails and torture for ever.
‘If you walk out of here today without asking Jesus into your heart’ my father and others like him thundered from the church pulpit, ‘you could get knocked down by a bus and go straight to hell.’
No surprise that this kid stuck up his hand for Jesus – I could almost feel the flames licking round my little legs!
It was only when I was older that I realised how stupid I’d been to get tricked by such dangerous spiritual blackmail.
And from then on I was angry and amazed.
Angry; because what they taught – and still teach from gospel pulpits around the world – was a sick threat to coerce innocents into their clutches.
Amazed; because so many apparently sensible people still believe in a God who punishes people who don’t believe.
Simple question: If you told your child something you couldn’t easily prove and he refused to believe it – what would you do? Smile and say: ‘Well one day he might see it my way’? Or maybe you’d chuckle and chortle: ‘That’s my kid, he knows his own mind, bless him’
That’s not the way our ‘loving heavenly father’ sees it, according to these crackpot Christians. Oh sure, they say, God gives you the free will to make up your mind what you believe.
Just one snag. If you don’t swallow his version, he’ll make sure you burn in hell! Some choice!
I’ll tell you straight, I decided at quite an early age that I didn’t want anything to do with any Godfather who tortured his children because they didn’t believe something.
If this was the action of a loving God – I opted for a ‘divorce’ right out of his family.
In later years I came to a deeper understanding of spirituality and moved closer to the concept of a cosmos where all survive death as a scientific inter-dimensional shift and not a reward for belief in some saviour God.
But this religious racism of ‘heaven for the chosen few’, has haunted me right up to and beyond the death of my parents – both wonderful, kind people despite their fascist faith.
I was there at their bedsides as both passed – my father was 100 years old.
But as both left this world, the heaven they longed for was tinged with tears.
They wept because their faith had taught them that they were saying goodbye to me -for ever.
I could never join them in ‘heaven’ you see, because I had committed the supreme sin – I dared to believe something different.
Worse still, in their fading eyes, I was doomed to eternal punishment.
Racial and sexual discrimination is now a criminal offence; there are laws too against intimidation with threats. So why don’t we legislate against these crazed Christians?
Let’s put an end to this religious tyranny of terror repeated on and on down the generations.
It’s time for a change.
Teach your children love – not fear.
Yours, Dave Haith
This work by crabsallover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
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