Childhood traumas caused by religion

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I remember being in church listening to how the pastor thought God would torture us after we die, punctuating each example by yelling 'god doesn't mind', then go on to describing another way god would torture us.

Not sure why I'm thinking about that right now.

I remember being absolutely terrified about hell, and since I was raised Seventh Day Adventist, that God would return immediately and crush everyone, including followers who didn't yet beg for forgiveness for their most recent sins. When growing up, I had prayers that were practically begging to god, for hours at a time, for forgiveness for what I had done, pleading to get out of the abyss that my life had already fallen into. I even began to think that I was a demon and the most evil and vile person on the earth for things that my mind had conjured up and how others reacted to me. Even now, my mind goes to a place where I imagine myself being constantly immolated by flames.

And never before or since, have I ever felt so completely and utterly crushed as I did after hearing about the unpardonable sin. The stuff that they tell you in church is toxic to one's health.


None of this vile thinking would have ever occurred if I wasn't born into a Christian family. The worst part is, I've had experiences that I still feel to be proof of God, even with how much I despise religion. It's a ****ing black hole of torment.

I praise myself lucky that my parents accepted my non-religious/atheist believes. I come from a very catholic background, mainy on fathers' side of the family all people are strongly catholic. For them it was not acceptable that I was autistic and atheist, but luckily the only ones in the family who accepted my choices were my parents and they always protected me.

I remember a funeral of an aunt of mine, she died at only 49. I went to the ceremony out of respect for my father, even though I did not pray or practise any religious aspect of it (I just sat in church and witnessed without really participating : a nice compromise between not letting my dad down and still staying loyal to my non-religious self). The priest said we should be thankful to God for everything. To say that after a mother of 2 lost life at age 49 was simply horrible and if it wasn't out of respect for my parents I had just stood up and told that priest to keep such statements to himself. It just felt wrong. That moment made me decide to never enter a church ceremony again.

Bad religion causes childhood trauma. You know the religion is bad when you're left with emotional scars. My experiences with organized religion range from mediocre to good to very good.

It sure did with me! I had grandparents who would tell me if I was bad, told lies, and didn't pray that I was a sinner and would go to hell. I remember counting the number of times as a child that I was bad and would wonder what time it will be before I'm going to hell. I still think I am bad person to this day but I stopped believing in that s**t.

Luckily, my parents were pretty sane. The only real childhood trauma caused by religion was this pastor's daughter that I knew who bullied me. -_-

At least my parents weren't as f**ked-up as Audrey Santo's mother.

My family really wasn't religious. The only odd moment I recall as a child was when I had a habit of collecting butterflies...you know, gassing them in a jar and mounting them on balsa wood. Then this Irish Catholic auntie (who was otherwise a real sweetie) came to stay and told me St. Peter wouldn't let me in the Pearly Gates if he knew I'd been gassing butterflies. Not that I believed a word of it, but hey, to be fair, it wasn't long after that that I worked out that it was a bad idea because they were living things too, and they might be capable of suffering, and anyway if I didn't gas them there'd be more butterflies around next year.

Real nasty religious stuff didn't occur till later, when in high school, in my teens, I encountered 'born again' Christian girls who would quite seriously tell me I was going to hell for being interested in other religions....then want to carry on being my 'friend' as if nothing had happened. (They also implied strongly that John Lennon, who of course was then fairly recently deceased, was also in the hot place for being into Eastern stuff. That actually was quite distressing, given I was a big Beatles fan and particularly a Lennon fan, and still am.)

The last time, and when all this truly hit home, was after I'd left school, after I was married in fact, when one of these girls met up with me for a coffee...and after some chance reference to the date of a medical appointment, started pressing me for details of when I'd had my first Pap smear.

After a few moments I cottoned on that she was actually trying to work out whether I'd had sex with my (now ex) husband before we got married..and she was clearly not doing it in a 'c'mon, let's share our girly secrets' kind of way.

I drank my coffee, ended the conversation abruptly and walked out, and I have never contacted that person or spoken to her since. It may sound odd, but just the way she was poking around there made our whole 'friendship' up to that point feel like a farce. Since then, I'm afraid I've been rather circumspect about revealing anything personal about myself to anyone I know to have strong religious views.

I find it very odd (and very frustrating) that one person could grow up as a Christian with nothing but good to say about it, with genuine peace in their hearts, but another would come to believe (via the world around him) that God must hate Him or desire to crush Him.

I'm really sorry you grew up with such beliefs, and I agree, getting a regular meal of fire and brimstone is extremely unhealthy. I used to struggle with the idea of whether or not I was saved.. I've prayed and asked God several times to forgive my sins and accept me as His child, confessing I believed in Him. It's actually because of that I began to wonder if perhaps I had OCD, I'd be repeating it so much and wanting to make absolute sure I was going.

I've come to realize, this is totally unnecessary, and it was simply a matter of personal fear, though what you feel or fear is not always correct. Whoever God accepts as His adopted son or daughter, is indeed His son or daughter. Those who believe in Christ will be saved; in a sense, it's like being barred from getting into hell. Yes we do need to take sin seriously, but God is very merciful, which was the whole purpose of Him dying on the cross. The world was destined to pay the price for its sins until Christ decided He would sacrifice Himself so the debt would not be ours to pay. Many people feel as it sounds like you do right now, that God's simply waiting to crush us for any wrongdoing we do. Please let me assure you, it is not so. God knows a genuine heart when He sees it; there was the woman with an immoral past who came and poured oil on Christ's feet, perfume that was worth about a year's wages, and she dried His feet off with her own hair, and Christ mentioned she weeped the way she did because she had been forgiven so much. There was also the woman caught in adultery, where Jesus looked with mercy on her. God knows who His sheep are, and He fights jealously for His sheep, and you cannot simply lose salvation at the drop of a hat. God knows you're not going to be perfect; He died for you because of that fact alone.

I will give you a hint... if you are scared that you committed the unpardonable sin, it's proof that you haven't The unpardonable sin was Jesus' way of describing the Pharisees who were so hard-hearted against Him despite all the miracles they did, and he alled it blasphemy of the Holy Spirit because they did not want to believe in Him at all, even after the countless miracles. In short, they were in a place where they absolutely could not deny Him by any stretch of logic or reasoning, but they did their best to deny Him anyways (they tried accusing Him of healing through the power of Beelzebub, a chief demon character). The passage where it's found also sounds like Jesus was simply warning them as well. In any event, it's not a spiritual state easily obtained.

Don't get hung up on the doctrine of hell. Know and understand it, but once Christ is the Lord of your life, you are set. Your security is set for an entirely opposite eternal existence, and there are many other things that need to be focused. Don't worry about feelings. If Christ is Lord of your life, you are forgiven; you are safe and sound.

Hope this helps you friend.

I already know I've committed an unpardonable sin, blasphemy. But meh, I'm an atheist, and not believing in God is grounds for him torturing me for eternity. Sorry, I should not be rude. I totally respect your right to believe in God, and am glad for those of you that have had good experiences with organized religion. Truly, I am. I have not been so lucky. I have some very big problems with many core things about the Christian church, but don't intrinsically have a problem with Christians. Although, I do feel sorry for them sometimes. I see many Christians with the same self-loathing I once had, and it makes me so sad that the religion inflicted upon them as children continues to haunt them and hold them back.

Really though, kudos to those for whom it has worked.

I take my own path through life.

I suppose I have comitted the 'unpardonable sin' as well.

My memories of church are frustrating rather than traumatic; I was the kid in Sunday school who asked, "But how...? "But what about...?" "But doesn't God... ?" until the teacher told me not to ask any more questions. I never have gotten satisfactory answers to any of those questions.

Hmm, my parents are Roman Catholics. The very few times we went to the cathedrals were for my baptism, other's baptism, weddings, and a couple of sermons. I don't recall ever getting the "Fire and Brimstone" talk. I did find the place very relaxing and I enjoyed getting lost there. I never understood the validity of holy water though despite my mom's impenetrable faith on its miraculous and supernatural powers.

I don't have experience with protestantism outside a couple of evangelical friends I used to hang around with. It never struck me as something I see myself following.

It makes me wonder why a minister would preach to his/her congregation about how bad hell is going to be when one could assume that most of the congregation would not be going there anyway. Maybe he/she thought they were not doing a good job as a minister -- some type of inferiority complex.

The weirdo Christians were not as bad as the animal activist/terrorist types who would taunt me for eating meat and wearing leather. I consider that crowd more cultish than all the really bad churches I tried out. They would sit around and read the labels on people's food to see if their were any animal or dairy products in them. Even marshmallows and honey were considered evil. They pretended to be friends at first.

Most Christians are just like everyone else. A few are really good people, most are hypocrites but trying to change and some are phony or control freaks. I think that could be said for just about any religion.

Thank you for this topic
I have something I have needed to
clear the air about for a long time..

I was driving down the road with my father. I must have been 5 or 6 at the time. I looked out the window and saw a Dennys and it really struck me as odd. To this day I can eat there without developing hives, which is why I always carry around antihistamines because one never knows when they will have to stop and eat at a Dennys.. Anyway I asked my dad "shouldnt it be called Danny's?" and he said "no shut up". To this day I cant get over it, I think it should be called Danny's. I think someone messed up the original sign and they just went with it. Later in life I find myself wondering if Denny is just a nickname for someone named Dennis, and if this is true maybe I shouldnt care so much because making a big deal out of it is like making fun of someones name and thats the last thing in the world someone named Fredrick Filbert should be doing.

A little bit on the dynamics of the unpardonable sin (I have to make this quick cuz I'm leaving for a week)...

Many ministers don't believe that the sin could be committed anymore. It occured at a point where Jesus had just cast a demon out of a person, then the religious leaders said, "It's by Beelzebub (the prince of demons) that he casts this demon out!" Then Jesus said, "How can the devil cast out the devil? A house divided against itself cannot stand." Then he warns of blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, and like I said, it sounds like a warning saying to them, "Watch it, you're in danger of coming to this point." The Holy Spirit is what keeps you from falling completely to your sinful nature, Christian or not. It's what cuts through your human self and puts the capacity for good in your life (I'm sorry if you don't understand this, it may seem a little different to you, and I don't have time to explain). BOHS is believed to occur when a person's heart is so hardened against God they simply will never come to Him, and don't care to. If there's any chance at all you still will, I seriously doubt you've committed this sin.

Some preachers do speak excessively about hell, it's true, and that's not healthy. Sometimes though the church does need to be reminded that it's there simply because it represents how much God hates sin. He wants to save the human race, but as long as the human race continues to reject Him, He can't save them. He won't force them to accept Him. In other words, He won't "force religion down their throats." He sent Jesus to die on the cross so that salvation, rescue from hell, and eternal life with Him is as simple as, "Your sins are forgiven, and I adopt you as my own."

I'm sorry, that's the extent of what I have for a while. God bless you all.

Jake