Hellfire And Damnation Essay Research Paper Looking free essay sample

Hellfire And Damnation Essay, Research Paper Looking back on my childhood, I have many memories shrouded in fright and self-loathing. I was raised in the Baptist church. My female parent and grandma made certain that I attended church every Sunday forenoon. My grandma was from the mid-west. She carried her rigorous Bible belt background with her as she traveled West with my gramps. The many lessons I learned from my grandma and the curate at our church played a large portion in how I began to see the universe and my topographic point in it. It would look, looking back now, that the whole footing for my instructions during those early old ages was fear. I had the most intense fright of traveling to Hell. The lone thing one had to cognize approximately Hell was that it was the topographic point where one # 8217 ; s worst incubuss became existent. The truly atrocious portion was that Hell was for infinity. This one life that I had to populate could find whether or non infinity would be heaven or hell. From my experience as a five-year-old, I knew that most things normally turned out incorrect on the first attempt, so the idea of holding to acquire it right in merely one attempt darn near paralyzed me. With Hell as the ultimate penalty, I began traveling about the concern of larning how to avoid it. It seems that there was a list a stat mi long of things that one should or shouldn # 8217 ; t do that would set one in the good graces of the Lord. Do non hang out with the heathens down the street ( there was a Mormon Church about two blocks down ) . Do non prosecute in pre-marital sex. Never masturbate. This is merely to call a few ; the list seems to travel on and on. As if the list of things to avoid was non long plenty, the curate of our little fold was ever prophesying about how unworthy of God # 8217 ; s love we were. It seemed his favourite subject. He could travel on for hours about how we were all evildoers. Such atrocious evildoers were we that there was nil we could make about it. We were rotten to the nucleus. We did non merit God # 8217 ; s love or anyone # 8217 ; s love, yet God loved us anyhow. That made God a truly great cat. My reading of this peculiar discourse was that I was a atrocious individual non worthy of love. I was a evildoer and I was traveling to Hell. I would shout myself to kip at dark because I was so certain that I would be one of those lost psyches for all of infinity. The curate talked of salvation. All I had to make to be saved and acquire into Eden was confess my wickednesss and inquire for forgiveness. I was certain, nevertheless, that I had far excessively many wickednesss to be forgiven ; besides, I wasn # 8217 ; t truly regretful for most of my # 8220 ; sins. # 8221 ; I could non experience bad about oppugning my parents # 8217 ; and the church # 8217 ; s authorization. Most of the clip it seemed that they contradicted themselves or merely didn # 8217 ; Ts make any sense at all. I had a really difficult clip digesting the instructions of the church that included both a God who would demand killing and forfeit and the same God who would love and protect his kids. Due to the instructions I received and with so many people being in understanding, I merely figured they must be right on some degree, which made me the uneven adult male out and the 1 destined to pay with my psyche. All I had to make was to take a expression at the Ten Commandments to see that I was non making so good in the eyes of the Lord. # 8220 ; You must non Murder, # 8221 ; I hadn # 8217 ; t done that. # 8220 ; You must non perpetrate adultery. # 8221 ; I didn # 8217 ; t even cognize what that meant. # 8220 ; You must non steal, # 8221 ; I did this all the clip. I would take alteration from my male parent # 8217 ; s alter drawer. My female parent was ever stating me that I could non hold confect from the shop or little cheap playthings because we had no money. I knew that she was lying. From the expressions of my male parent # 8217 ; s alteration drawer, we were rich. Which leads us to the following Commandment, # 8220 ; You must non state lies. # 8221 ; If my female parent was stating me a prevarication about the province of our household # 8217 ; s fundss wasn # 8217 ; t it all right for me to steal to do up for her prevarication? Funny plenty, no 1 was willing to discourse this with me. # 8220 ; You must non fire with desire for another adult male # 8217 ; s married woman, nor envy him for his place, land, retainers, cattle, donkeys, nor anything else he owns. # 8221 ; What if his material is better? # 8220 ; You may idolize no other God than me. # 8221 ; At an early age I knew no other God so, this was non a job for me. # 8220 ; You shall non do yourselves any graven images: any images resembling animate beings, birds, or angle. You must neer bow to an image or idolize it in any manner ; for I, the Lord your God, am really genitive. I will non portion your fondness with any other God! # 8221 ; From a really early age I would play a game utilizing my stuffed animate beings and high hills of soil to do sacred topographic points, small sanctuaries, incorporating my stuffed animate beings. The stuffed animate beings were my particular friends. I was neer certain if this would direct me to hell or non. I was afraid to inquire because I enjoyed the game and was afraid person would state me I had to halt playing it. # 8220 ; You shall non utilize the name of Jehovah your God irreverently, nor utilize it to curse to a falsity. You will non get away penalty if you do. # 8221 ; I was non wholly certain what this meant, but person one time told me it had something to make with the phrase, # 8220 ; God damn it. # 8221 ; I used this in private when I would acquire defeated. I was patterning my male parent, who besides liked this term. # 8220 ; Remember to detect the Sabbath as a sanctum day. # 8221 ; Sunday was one of my weekend yearss. How was I supposed to give it up to God and do nil when I spent at least five yearss a hebdomad at school and Saturdays normally cleaning my room or something? I found this to be a really unreasonable petition. â€Å"Honor your male parent and mother.† This meant ever to listen and obey. I should neer speak back or inquiry. As one can see, I was doomed under such Torahs. I suffered from changeless anxiousness that the terminal of the universe was coming, along with judgment twenty-four hours. My fright was reinforced by discourses and films covering the subject of the terminal ( I was certain that it would come in the signifier of atomic war. It was the early 1880ss and the cold war was the large intelligence narrative ) . I was certain that I would be one of those hapless people that suffered greatly in the Book of Revelation. After all, I was a evildoer and unworthy of God # 8217 ; s love. I knew that God could read heads, and when he read mine he would cognize without a uncertainty that I did non believe in him with all of my bosom. I knew that I had excessively many inquiries for God to happen me fit for Eden. I neer spoke it aloud, but I thought that God was a really average adult male. Besides all that, I had a feeling that I would acquire bored in Eden. My male parent and I frequently discussed the affair of the terminal of the universe. I think he was besides waiting for atomic war to do the Book of Revelations a thing of world. I was still excessively immature to truly cognize what was traveling on, but I did cognize what the diagrams screening Russia # 8217 ; s ability to establish missiles and have them land on U.S. dirt meant. It meant decease and devastation of the worst sort. I would frequently state to my male parent, in the spirit of the blanket-over-the-head defence, # 8220 ; If there is a atomic war I will merely travel unrecorded in Antarctica ; there I will be safe. # 8221 ; My male parent was non a adult male who allowed his kids their phantasies to do them experience safe. I think that he wanted us to experience as afraid and confused as he did. His answer to my phantasy was # 8220 ; When the atomic war happens, there will be no topographic point on Earth that will be safe. # 8221 ; With complete panic I would halt all conversation. I was doomed, so. How could a good, sort, originative God allow his kids endure? If I were God I would neer allow any of my kids suffer. What about the unconditioned love that the Bible sometimes spoke about? Unconditional love and grace contradicted Hell Fire and penalty, didn # 8217 ; t it? How could an all-powerful God base for both? It was inquiries like these that neer got answered. It was inquiries like these that I thought would direct me consecutive to Hell. I battled with myself and my parents and the church through my childhood. Why did everything that came to me of course have to be a wickedness? How could everything that felt good and right be bad? The older I got, the more I questioned. The more I questioned, the less got answered. The power of Hell began to melt. I began to look into the universe around me. I no longer took the word of the grownups in my life. The consequences were surprising. I had the experiencing all along that something with Christianity was non rather right. The first clip I remember truly going cognizant that Christianity was no better than any other signifier of faith or myth system was when I was in the 7th class. We began analyzing Greek mythology. I couldn # 8217 ; t believe that a whole group of purportedly educated people would believe such wild and brainsick myths. Then I began to remember the narratives from the Bible. Why were Zeus and his buddies any more far-fetched than Moses separating the Red Sea or speaking to the firing shrub? These simple inquiries were plenty to agitate my foundation. I came to the decision that one faith was merely every bit right as the following. If I had been raised in a different land, so I would merely as easy have been raised with another faith. I would so keep house to those beliefs and all others would be wrongs. There were people who belonged to other religions who believed different thoughts, thoughts that I found to be more sensible. Of class, Christianity would state that these people were all traveling to Hell. I could no longer believe that God would desire me to travel along with anything that went against my bosom, so I began seeking with my bosom. I used my ain interior counsel to find what was right and incorrect. I figured that this had to be a better system than listening to a 3rd individual state me how unworthy I was and go on doing myself suffering. After all these disclosures, I came to the decision that I had to seek out the truth for myself. This was the reply I was looking for. There would be certain undeniable truths hidden among all faiths, and I would hold to happen those truths for myself. In so making, I was to make my ain belief system. I wanted a belief system that would give me a steadfast foundation and the strength to confront life. I did non desire a belief system that was traveling to paralyse me with fright. I still, to this twenty-four hours, do conflict with the fanciful devils that were placed in my caput as a kid. My feelings of being unworthy sometimes surface, but more frequently than non I feel confident and free following my bosom. I feel that God would much instead hold me happy and distributing felicity than suffering and spreading wretchedness. Christian religion to me these yearss is merely another establishment set up by those few who want to take advantage and command the weak and tired bulk. I can no longer live in fright, so I must stand up and decline to listen to anyone claiming to cognize what # 8217 ; s best for me. My bosom is my lone true usher. Teri Carrick English 100 Anita Wilkins Hell Fire and Damnation 28 April 1999 Class: Expository