Dear Lindzee:

You wrote: “I have (as of a month ago) ‘left the Faith’ because of a number of issues. It’s fear mongering.. I’m fearful of Hell.”.

The concepts of heaven and hell were invented and promoted by humans who are in some position of power, for the purpose of manipulating the behavior of people who are subjected to their power, encouraging approved-of behaviors by offering heaven, and discouraging disapproved-of behaviors by threatening hell.

Imagine this scenario: a parent disapproves of his/ her child’s behavior. To discourage the child from repeating the disapproved-of behavior, the parent may (but shouldn’t!) yell at the child, or physically punish the child (giving the child a bit of hell). To encourage the child to behave in approved-of ways, the parent may reward the child with candy (giving the child a taste of heaven).

But the parent cannot always be present to witness the child’s behavior, and reward or punish it, and so, the parent figures: if I tell the child that someone is always watching her.. an invisible entity, a god that is always there, and that this god will reward or punish her, depending on her behavior- then I have power over my child’s behavior even if I am not present!

The idea may have been born in the context of parenting and extended to the bigger context of the church.

“Another thing is that in the Bible, when we sin we have our punishment on earth. In the duration of me leaving Christianity, I’ve lost my part time job, I’ve crashed my car, and got in trouble with my parents for lying to them” – these things happen a lot, to many teenagers who did not leave Christianity (because of various reasons, ex.,  losing one’s job because of the pandemic).

There is no entity watching. Our actions affect others in many ways, some of our actions/ behaviors are helpful (ex., a: being kind to others, b: minimizing the use of plastic), some are harmful (ex., a: being rude to others, b: using lots of plastic). When we harm others and the planet, we make the world a worse place, and long-term, we will suffer from the harm we do to others/ the planet (the world is getting hellishly hot because of human misbehaviors, particularly politicians, isn’t it?)

We suffer and will continue to suffer for the harm we do, not because there is an entity watching, taking notes, but because of the law of cause and effect: our actions/ behaviors have consequences.

I hope to read more from you!

anita