I don't believe in hell as eternal conscious torment anymore. I think the category for this belief is Christian universalism? Which some people consider an oxymoron.
I'll be honest, part of me feels like a heretic for thinking it, let alone writing it or speaking it aloud. But deep down, I know it is the truth of what I believe. And I know I have believed it for a long time, even though I am only now aware of it enough to verbalize it. The part of me that is trying to convince me that I'm misguided is the same part of me that tried to convince me my parents weren't abusive. That part needs to be heard and comforted, but I won't be following its advice.
After truly awakening to the fact that my parents, despite their deep desire to be loving and good, are abusers, I felt swept up by a tornado. Everything I had been trying to force myself to believe for 30 years was now up for questioning. Some of it was easy to let go of: I have good parents that love me well. It was a relief to admit that they had deeply hurt and manipulated me. If I don't submit to their control, I'm not loving. was a little harder to undo, but I could tell it was right and good to do so. Here is a short-list of some of the bigger lies that I believed:
Being honest is dangerous
Vulnerability is often gossip which is sinful
I'm not worth knowing
I don't have needs
If I express my wants, I am selfish which is sinful
Everything bad that happens is my fault
If I could be good enough, people wouldn't hurt me
If I don't put others' needs before my own, I am not following God
If I am sinful or not following God, I am going to hell
Most people think they're going to heaven, but they're deceived
I can't trust myself - neither feelings nor thoughts
God is angry at me unless I'm perfect
Thanks to all the therapists I've worked with to uncover and confront these lies over the past 3 years.
You can see how much spiritual abuse is tangled up in emotional abuse. I remember laying in my bed repeating "I'm bad. I'm wrong. It's all my fault." over and over and over again. I don't remember the specifics of what came before, but I remember being scared that if I didn't figure out how to submit and trust my mom more than I trust myself, I would be stuck in hell for eternity. Because "children obey your parents" and the 5th commandment and whatnot.
My parents said they loved me. And they were very controlling. And they hurt me physically and emotionally. It wasn't hard to believe that God was just like they were. Of course God would hurt me if I didn't honor and obey Him.
As I started to heal, I learned what love actually was. The way I felt around my grandparents was "loved." My abusers had labeled it "spoiled." It became an inside joke that Grammy would repeat often: "I'm spoiling you!" When I was with her, I knew spoiling wasn't bad. But at home with my mother, I was made to feel guilty about it.
I was supposed to feel that way about God? I was supposed to believe God felt that way about me? The best I can do to try to feel God's love is to close my eyes and imagine my Gramps' face when I walked into a room and somehow transfer his face onto a wispy spirit in the sky. I've tried to notice at least one moment of beauty in each day and increase the number of seconds I allowed myself to marvel and wonder at it, but I struggle to make myself believe that those moments are encounters with a loving God.
I began being skeptical of the verses that had been used to support such ugly beliefs about the world. I found that in their original language, the words often didn't mean what our English interpretations convey. "Obey" was more of "seriously consider" than "mindlessly comply." "God's wrath" was more "God was deeply moved emotionally."
I soon learned more about how the Bible has been written and translated by men and oppressors for men and oppressors. Thankfully, before I tossed the whole thing out, I learned about Liberation theology which centers voices of oppressed, marginalized, and abused people. Reading Bible stories to find God's love and concern toward those suffering from injustice felt like a healing balm.
But there is still the problem of evil and eternal suffering.
From a neurological standpoint, it is impossible for us to feel loved and safe with a God who is going to eternally torment us if we believe the wrong thing. God made our brains, so God knows that! I stopped believing that hell was a place of eternal conscious suffering. But I still believed you needed to believe in Jesus or there would be some kind of punishment.
I just finished the book Hellbent by Brian Recker and I can't tell you how excited and relieved I feel. I want to tell everybody! I feel more like evangelizing than I ever did when I was trying to believe there was a hell.
God is not abusive!!!!
My parents were.
The Church certainly has and can be.
But God ISN'T.
And that's good news.
I'd been feeling uncomfortable sitting in Sunday services as if that made me a good Christian. I would much rather be at a protest against ICE or serving in a soup kitchen or just hanging out with an LGBTQ community. I think that's where Jesus would be too.
I realized maybe what I need to do is find some places to volunteer to scratch my social justice itch. But now I am free to believe that social justice is more than an itch. It's the whole point.
And now the whole thing just seems so silly to me. We thought we had to go to church and listen to one white guy talk for 40 minutes and sing some songs in order to keep our beliefs in line so that our souls are eternally secure?
Our souls are already secure in the love of Jesus and God the [non abusive] Father. The saving work of Jesus is the removal of oppression and domination from our earthly life. And we are invited to be co-laborers in that work! Not because failure to do so will result in eternal punishment, but because failure to do so results in hell on earth. Right now! And because success of this mission results in heaven on earth.
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