Over the past year I have developed an overwhelming fear of death. It sneaks up on me all the time and is almost crippling, especially since my father died in January. I have nightmares a lot more now, and a lot of them are death-related. My most recent memorable nightmare involved me being put to death for no reason other than in that society when you reach a certain age an enigmatic They would take you to a facility, take your usable body parts, and then end your life. It was just what had always happened, and everyone went calmly to their end. I knew I was rapidly approaching my expiration date, and up until the last little bit I was fine with what was going to happen, because I had no choice and that’s what I’d been conditioned to accept my entire life. But in my dream, when they came to take me to the facility, something in me snapped and I started freaking out when actually staring down the barrel of the unknown. I remember a deep feeling of dread overtaking me, and I started screaming NO NO NO and fighting the people who were trying to take me. And that’s how I woke up from that dream: filled with dread, heart racing, hyperventilating, complete terror.
In my dream I wasn’t so much concerned about where I would spend my eternity, which is funny because determining where I would spend eternity was the dominant theme of the first 20 years of my life. Rather, I was terrified of nothing. Or, The Nothing. I guess in my dream land heaven and hell didn’t exist, and death of the body also meant death of the soul/consciousness/whatever you want to call it. Annihilation. Bye bye, no more existing in any form on any plane. This runs contrary to the very foundation upon which I was raised, as the entirety of my formative years were spent as an evangelical Southern Baptist church member. Heaven and hell, fire and brimstone, eternal salvation or damnation, True Love Waits, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, all the greatest hits. I was taught from a very early age that I was an abject sinner who deserved to spend eternity engulfed in flames and regret, completely worthless and devoid of value, and also that the literal son of God sacrificed himself for me because my soul is precious and He is the divine Pokemon master and he gotta catch ‘em all. But there was a very special incantation that must be said, and I had to believe it or it doesn’t count, and once I said it I was forever delivered of those eternal flames and nothing could ever take that away from me, even if I stopped believing it after a time, and that anyone in the entire world could do this and we would all go to heaven.
In stark contrast, my father was a devout member of the Church of Christ. The majority of his extended family are still active members. Chief among their beliefs is that only the members of the Church of Christ will go to heaven. My father made the mistake of marrying a Southern Baptist woman, and when the children came along we were brought up Southern Baptist, occasionally visiting our father’s church for various reasons. Yes, they went to separate churches for their entire marriage. But it was a bit of a mind fuck of knowing that one entire side of your family thinks you are going to hell and not doing everything they can to save you. I think I’ll save that subject for another time though. Right now it just serves as CONTEXT.
I am a very logical and rational person by nature. I like data and empirical evidence and science and proof. So it’s really strange to look back on the time when I was fully entrenched in evangelicalism and remember how SURE I was about everything I had been conditioned to believe. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything they said was true. And now that I’ve been out of that world for a time, the only thing I’m certain of is that none of us will ever know what is true and real and guaranteed regarding what happens when we die. Is it a nice thought that my loved ones are chilling in paradise and that I’ll see them again one day? Yes. It is comforting to think that I will see my dad again, especially since I lost him much too early. He should still be here. He should be getting ready to help my son work on the little pickup in the driveway. He should be making plans to attend the twins’ soccer games in a few weeks. He never got to see my middle child play his viola in a school concert. So it does provide some measure of comfort to tell myself that I will see him again. Do I know that to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt? Hell no.
But this thought about being eternally separated from the people I love and from the love of God permeated my entire upbringing. I read Hell Is A World Without You by Jason Kirk over the past weekend a few weeks ago, and it was easily the most relatable book I have ever read. I highlighted more in this work of fiction than I did in any textbook I have ever used. It was relatable not only regarding the main character’s evangelical upbringing and persistent doubt and questioning, but also in that he lost his father at a very young age and believed him to be unsaved and therefore in hell based on what he had been taught in the church. Every aspect of Isaac’s life was colored by not only the loss of his father, but being continually reminded that his father was in hell.
Throughout the book I saw church leaders instilling the fear of hell into young people and then capitalizing on it. As a result there were young people scared to get caught stepping a toe out of line, but being human and falling short and subsequently workshopping loopholes for these “terrible” sins. One thing that stuck out to me is the routine atonement that Isaac performed whenever he expressed any kind of doubt or questioning of the indoctrination he’d been subjected to for his entire life. Any time he would think anything outside of the box of Christianity, a voice in his head would scream at him about how awful he was and he’d regret that when he was burning in hell, etc. “Sorry.” There was just this deeply ingrained guilt that would not loosen its grip on him, and as Christians we are taught that we have to ask forgiveness for all of our sins. I cannot even count the number of times I’ve tossed up a quick “Lord forgive me for saying/doing/thinking/feeling that” over the course of my life. To this day I have a tendency to apologize for things I should in no way be apologizing for just to make sure that nobody is mad at me, or trying determine whether or not people are mad at me, which makes them mad at me. It’s a lovely little vicious cycle/self-fulfilling prophecy. BUT I DIGRESS. Back to the purity culture aspect of the evangelical church. From about the age of 9-10, I started being compared to a piece of bubble gum or a glass of water, and was told countless times that no man is going to want a piece of chewed up bubble gum or a glass of water that everyone has dipped their paintbrushes in, and various other comparisons implying that I was a dirty little whore (which, ironically, being told that really gets me going now, if you know what I mean). At the same time, I was told that I was the utmost and highest prize for a good Christian man IF my hymen remained intact. As I got older, my mother hammered into my head that abstinence was the only acceptable form of birth control and that if I ever had sex she would be able to smell it and I would definitely get pregnant. Neither of these things were true, because she didn’t smell it (what a fucking weird thing to say to your daughter anyway) and I required medical intervention to get pregnant the first time, so take two massive Ls and call me in the morning, Mom.
I also spent most of my upbringing preparing myself to be PERSECUTED! They were going to come after me, throw things at me, call me names, yell at me, just generally abuse me for my Christianity, and I as a child and teenager had to prepare to defend my beliefs to the death if necessary. The fuck? Organizations are conditioning children to be ready and willing to martyr themselves for the cause of Christianity. And it is so wild how normal that felt as a young person. Spoiler: I was never persecuted for being a Christian. Most of my classmates and teachers were Christians even at the public school. We had Christian clubs and prayer before sporting events and See You At The Pole and we all went to each other’s church events when something fun was going on. So why were we preparing for some sort of battle 2-3 times per week?
And then there are the actual mechanics of salvation.
Does salvation from Hell happen by way of asking, receiving, believing, confirming grace, works, wonders, fruits, dying to self, killing our flesh, the Name, the Law, sacraments, sacrifice, forgiving people, letting Jesus appease God and/or Satan, canceling money debts, sinning no more, letting the Spirit make us sin less, healing diseases, handling snakes, rebuking demons, screaming the gospel until we got martyred, praying secretly, giving everything to the poor, joining the 144,000 undead saints beside the Living Creatures, getting good judgments recorded in the Book of Life, saving the world, being hated by the world, fixing the world’s governments, or…?
And if I didn’t know which, how could I guarantee I was saved? And can we choose, or were most of us created for Calvinist Hell? I’d never agreed to exist, let alone pass the age of accountability, yet I sat one breath away from flames unless I guessed correctly whether we’re saved by asking, receiving, believing…
These are things that I have lost countless hours of sleep over during the course of my life. There are so many different religions in the world, and various iterations within religions. How are we to know which one is right? How can we be certain that OUR particular interpretation of a translation of an ancient text is the correct one? Is being saved horseshoes or archery? If we get close enough will it count, or do we have to hit that bullseye? And does it even matter? If everything is predetermined and there is no free will then nothing I do will ever save me if I am not supposed to be saved. Which means that God created me just to let me spend eternity being tortured? And God is supposed to be love? But He is also jealous and vengeful and petty and murderous and full of wrath? But He loves us so much that even though he created us to never be able to live up to His expectations, the loophole He came up with was to make another type of Himself and send that down to this one particular planet in the universe in the form of a human infant, born of a virgin (ahem), and then KILL him? And this is the supreme being of the universe. Omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. There is nothing He cannot do. But He chose to create souls and allow them to not only suffer on this planet but also to burn for eternity in a Hell that He obviously also had to create. Like, I do my best to make sure that my dogs have a good life. I would do whatever I could to prevent their suffering. Hell, we have chickens that I take care of and make sure they are healthy and comfortable. Actual livestock. So what I’m understanding is that I love my pets and my food-producing animals more than an all-powerful deity loves its own creation. Make it make sense.
REGRET!
That is possibly a plasphemous thought, which from what I understand is a sin and will send me to Hell. This is great for those of us who frequently have intrusive thoughts. We literally cannot control our own brains, the brains given to us by God mind you, and for that we deserve the lake of fire. And we are to believe that God COULD save us all if He wanted to, because He is omnipotent. But He doesn’t, because we don’t deserve it. But God is love! God is good, all the time!
I had a conversation with my evangelical mother the other day about my father’s death, which I will get into in a separate post hopefully. Basically I finally said to her what I have been thinking for years but never really wanted to get into it with her about: If God cannot save us all from Hell, then he is not all-powerful, and if He can save us all from Hell and chooses not to do so, then there is no love in Him.
So where does that leave us?
I think I am in the Rhett McLaughlin camp of hopeful agnosticism. I don’t know what happens after we die. I would like to think that there is an afterlife, and that this consciousness is not all we will know of existence because if this is all we have then we are seriously fucking it up. But I don’t know. I can’t in good conscience believe in a physical place of eternal torment, though. Yet I am still terrified of dying. Still having random panic attacks at the thought of dying. Not because I am afraid of Hell. If the evangelicals are right, I punched my ticket and nothing can pluck me from God’s hand. And if they’re wrong, then I’ll either be in whatever afterlife awaits us, or I’ll be nothing.
I’m terrified of the nothing.
Anyway. The book was great, amazingly relatable, written in a very realistic first-person perspective. It brought up questions that I’d never even thought to ask before, validated a LOT of feelings and emotions I have about my childhood being stolen from me, and honestly reminded me that I’m not as alone out there as I think I am.