My True Church Hell

I was raised by judgemental people. It was part of us. Judgement was woven into the fabric of our lives. It starts off sort of making sense. If you believe the Bible is the book that reveals God to us, and if you believe it is important to know God, and to please God, then you get really interested in the Bible. The more you learn about God, from that book, the more you understand what you have to do to please God.

Of course, if you have to please God to be saved, then so does everyone else. If you believe that you have a strangle hold on the truth, then you know that everyone who behaves differently from you is NOT pleasing God, so you need to explain the error of their ways.

All of a sudden you are judging other people. Do this and you are lost, you go to hell, you will surely be flung into the outer most regions of the nether Stygian darkness where there is a lake of fire, and the worm is not consumed.

My people seemed to do this with ease. They were not troubled by the idea that God was very willing to torture people forever for things like, lusting in your heart, or singing hymns while also playing a musical instrument, or being baptized because you are saved instead of being baptized in order to be saved.

I knew I lied when I thought it would get me out of trouble, or allow me to escape a belting for my sin of failing a spelling test. I knew I looked at girls and they percolated my hormones. I would try not to, but sometimes I got so hot to trot that I would, well, pleasure myself. I knew all that stuff was sin, I was a sinner, so I was heading to hell with absolutely no chance of avoiding my fiery, torturous fate. There was only one way I could avoid hell and please my family and that was to be perfect. Perfection was the one and only thing I could never ever hope to be.

The very day I was baptized was the same day I knew I was hopelessly condemned. I was lain back into the water of our church’s baptistery. I rose from the water redeemed, righteous, and saved, a pleasing child of God. Then this girl was baptized after me. As the preacher pulled her up out of the water, I noticed the baptismal gown, a white gown, had plastered itself to her breasts, and while it wasn’t transparent, it was close to that. I could see the shadow and the perkiness of bosoms, and BAM! before I had even dried off from my own baptism I had committed the sin of lust in my heart, and I was lost.

I tried to be righteous. I tried to be perfect, and to judge other people with zeal and enthusiasm, but I just was not good at any of that. At some point, I just gave up. I was never going to be good enough for the TRUE CHURCH and I was never going to be good enough to be in my family. I gave up, but the habit of judging myself is a habit harder to break than cigarettes, or booze. I am depressed. In my mind, this goal of perfection has been pounded into my brain and etched on my DNA. I continue to examine my life, my thoughts, and my actions, and every imperfection I find becomes evidence that I am no damn good, I don’t deserve to live, and God is wasting air on me.