How many still struggle with the fearful indoctrination of a church from your youth?

Question

Fear is truly a mindkiller. An indoctrination based on fear has lasting affects when taught to young children.

Now that I am 30 I still have some chains of fear from those early teachings. With time, study, and wisdom they are weakening.

How many struggle with the same? This can apply to any sort of fear teaching by any group.

Primora - you were luck then.

Guilt works hand in hand with that fear too.

Answer 1

Emperor, where do I even start? Aside from the "be saved or you'll burn in hell forever", the worst fear I had to overcome was that demons were apparently lurking around every corner, waiting to possess you or attack you in some way. The list of activities that could get your a$s possessed was so long, I lived in constant torment worrying about doing the wrong thing and then have a demon enter my body.

I weep just looking back on it, it was so irresponsible of my parents and the church to put that on a child. I can barely talk about it. I get anxiety attacks just thinking about stepping foot into a church. When someone tries to proselytize me in any way, even subtly, it pushes a button on me and I feel nothing but rage.

While I have overcome all the fears that I was indoctrinated with, my anger about losing my innocent childhood to a life of constant fear still remains. I am working on that, and being on Y/A and sharing experiences with people has helped tremendously.

Answer 2

I don't anymore, but then I'm 60 years old. But it was a long, hard fight. The logic basically went like this: (1) Mama's religion just can't be right, because a God that mean shouldn't be worshiped, he should be challenged. (2) You can't challenge God, he's bigger and stronger than you are, than you will ever be. (3) You try to live by the rules, but some things are just irrational. (4) You find out other people live by different rules, and they don't get zapped by God. (5) You start looking around for something you can believe in that isn't so demanding. The fear of hell lurks ever in the background. (6) You become more and more aware that the people who preach don't always live up to what they preach, they even act like they don't believe what they tell us. (7) You follow a different religion, but still have that feeling that it is all show, that there's no divinity out there paying attention.

In my case, the pattern got very personal at this point, but eventually I realized that if I'm just using the gods and goddesses as metaphors, and don't really believe they exist outside the minds of humans, then they are of no more significance than Harry Potter and Dumbledore. Actually, I get more wisdom out of fiction than the Bible that claims to be fact, and always have.

What if the Bible is fiction, too???

Answer 3

As a teenager, I was a devout Christian and attended a small Pentecostal church. The pastor there said that if I accepted God and Jesus as my savior and then turned away that I would literally be killed. Then he invoked the example of a man who did this and died in an automobile accident. He was trying to frighten me and the rest of the congregation. I am no longer a practicing Christian, although I still hold to some of the tenets of Christianity (the humanist ones). The pastor, on the other hand, fell in a hard way, and was sinning in a most heinous way, even as he made the threats in God's name on our lives. After his hypocrisy, I waited and wondered. He repented and made amends with the one he wronged, and he is alive to this day. Thus, I do not believe the threat he made during that Sunday service long ago. He himself is proof against it, and I know we all must die. For humans to make threats based on certainties, drawing lines of fear, is a grievous misuse of authority and is to be questioned at all times.

And I do agree with you and Paul Atreides--fear IS the mindkiller.

Answer 4

Wow, I still have some difficulties they'll go in time with the acquisition of knowledge. I come from catholic backgrounds and fear is used allot behind the curtains, they might not tell you at church but I went to catholic schools and they instill fear of punishment since kinder garden.

Once I even had a religion teacher who told us that masturbation was the key to AIDS. I mean, come on! How can someone tell that to six-graders?

Personally I see religious indoctrination as psychological abuse and I consider it illegal.

Answer 5

I do. I am much better after a long stretch of therapy, but I still have lingering after effects. When I was a little girl I would have nightmares about my bed catching on fire and a big, snarled hand reaching up and sucking me into a fiery pit under the earth and I'd wake up screaming. My parent's response? "Just keep trusting in Jesus and that won't happen to you. If you deny Jesus that's exactly what will happen when you die."

Nice thing to say to a six year old, huh?

Answer 6

I don't struggle with fear as much as I do with guilt and with the moral system. Mostly this occurs when I tell my kids about life and how to deal with it, as some of the indoctrination seeps out.

Answer 7

As you so appli quote the line from DUNE, just keep in mind, HE WAS TRANSFORMED. He lost the need for the wierding modual, and spoke into exsistance. HE did OVERCOME the false teachings of the BLACK ROBED witches, a type of babylons priesthood (i.e. catholic and protestant) which dress like women in long flowing garb, and put fear and dred into them.
WE WIN this war! All opposition will be destroyed.
The overcomers do WHAT???
DESTROY those UGLY POTS!!
Rev 2:26 And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:
Rev 2:27 And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.

Answer 8

I was raised Baptist and I still can't even think about setting foot in a Baptist church without my stomach knotting up.

Answer 9

I can honestly say that I finally feel free from those chains. I am not afraid of Hell, God, or anything else they want you to be afraid of.

Answer 10

I'm 32, and sometimes I'm still injured by those fears.