The hell story has been employed by the church to coerce good behavior, to correct believing and submitting to teachings. It’s been a valuable tool to keep people in line and to scare people into faith." ~ Bob Nolan
Scaring the hell out of me never worked.
I grew up in a hell, fire and brimstone church.
I was taught I was unworthy, nothing better than a filthy rag.
I was made to believe I couldn't keep anything I owned. I remember my ten year old mind wishing I didn't have to give up a dresser my daddy gave me (even though I knew he stole it), because that was the only thing he had ever given me.
Truth be told my daddy was scarier than any devil my mind could conjur up. He made the devil look like the ice cream man.
He beat my mother, stalked us, was in and out of prison most of my life. When I was in the first grade a diesel truck fell on him and I remember asking God to let him die, my own young heart believing I was going to hell for it.
When I was seven he kidnapped my brother out of the front yard and I was so scared I couldn't even scream as I was running into the house. A seven year old has logic and rationale. I remember thinking he was going to come up through my grand daddy's bathroom floor and get me. I clearly remember it, not wanting to be left alone in the room.
He always did stuff that made me feel uncomfortable about loving him, things I'd rather not talk about and things I never told my mother because I didn't want to lose her to the prison system for killing him.
I remember the youth pastor talking about the devil when I was twelve, causing me to have nightmares for weeks and my mother to have a word with him.
I remember a Sunday school teaching me there was only room for 140,000 souls in heaven and this struck great fear into my heart. That same woman, whose nephew was in an accident, was worrying out loud on facebook about his soul and where he would go. I comforted her with great insight and she deleted what had been said because she'd rather hang on to the lies she's embraced than believe
God is that good and she didn't have to worry.
The devil wasn't shit, my daddy, that dude was scary.
When I was fourteen I tried to kill him, only to have my mother knock the gun out of the way. This was way before they began to try children as adults, I would've been put in a juvenile facility until I turned eighteen and my file would be sealed and I would go on with my life when they released me.
Going to hell seemed to be a small price to pay to be rid of that dude.
I grew up in church, my grand daddy took me, my grandmother forced me, my mother made sure I got there. I loved Jesus with all my heart and all the other kids made fun of me for it.
In church I heard about my sin, was made to feel less than, walked out of church most Sunday's feeling like a total failure.
I was made to believe nothing I ever did would be good enough for God to love me.
If you're good you'll go to heaven, if you're bad you'll burn forever in hell.
I had a bad daddy, I knew what that looked like, so how was I supposed to believe a God that loved me? A God that was going to burn me for all of eternity if I didn't love Him back and give up everything I owned.
The lies were so deep and treacherous I believed God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit were three separate beings until I was almost thirty years old! God had killed his son Jesus and sent the Holy Spirit to comfort us about it.
It's bad enough the lie has been told to begin with, but then you have the crazies who come along with their stories about God taking them to hell. They give all these crazy accounts of what they saw when they were there, souls crying out, people burning and screaming. It's like a corporate hallucination that has taken place.
I learned little more than condemnation, judgement and suffering from the church.
One week I walked out feeling great, the rest of the time I just knew I wasn't going to make it. That's how they do it, they give you this empowering sermon one week, one that makes you feel like you can save the world, then they deliver all kinds of poison the rest of the time, making you feel like a bug about to be squashed underneath God's feet, because He hates your sin and you are so unworthy.
I was a stripper for years after my first husband divorced me, leaving me homeless with three little boys and a grandmother who didn't want a stripper living in her house. What would the people at church think? Good christian that she was, who talked bad about everybody she ever met, treated me like dirt because I was pretty, called me a jezebel my entire life, never mind every picture ever taken of her she had on skirts so short you could see her panties and my mother was the daughter of her sister's husband. I remember her and her friend on the phone every Sunday evening gossiping about everybody they could think of, good christian women.
Whatever.
In hindsight I see how she lacked love for anyone but herself.
This was the beginning of a long cycle of homelessness and a downward spiral that sent me into the streets, I got strung out on crack, I was a prostitute, had my kid all messed up on dope with me and lived in a tent in the woods for more than three years.
Talk about hell, I was living in it.
Hell is every weirdo in town wanting you to do things for money, so they can get their kicks and they don't want to pay you what you're asking and they might very well kill you because you're nobody.
Hell is watching your eighteen year old son get high and thinking he's never going to be anything but a junky the rest of his life and it's all your fault.
Hell is falling in love with a man more messed up than you are, who has nothing to offer you and spending 15 years with him, 11 as his wife and he never gets better.
Hell is waking up one day and realizing your two youngest sons are grown because you've spent ten years of your life destroying it and the only good thing you did was find a way for their daddy to take them.
Hell is the place Jesus came and got me from when I wasn't even looking for Him.
Hell is every moment of my life I spent not knowing how completely and perfectly loved I was, every time I didn't cry out to my Daddy to help me, because I was fooling myself into running from Him and didn't understand His unconditional love for me.
Hell is the place I came from, not a place I will ever go again.
I know how good my Father is and I know a good good Father would never torture and torment His children, even though my own earthly father did.
Hell is other people's nonsense because they've embraced the lies and won't even open themselves to learn something new. Hell is the constant back and forth of biblical idiots playing theological ping pong.
Hell is someone brow beating me because they disbelieve God is that good and I couldn't possibly know what I'm talking about, or even know God. Hell is when I want to go through the computer screen and choke some idiot that's condemning me and telling me all about myself, because they want to be right.
Hell is the stupidity the church has been spoon fed for over two thousand years, lie after lie, half-truth after half-truth. Hell is a word some knucklehead threw in there because we don't even have the language to bring it from the Greek and Hebrew into the English language properly.
Darlene Gossett is an open book. She believes that there's healing in telling and blogs about her life and what she's becoming by God's love through Renegade of Grace. She has her own youtube channel with the same title.
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