God is Not the Sadistic Motherfucker I was Told He Is
Avoiding hell isn’t the point of Christianity and heaven isn’t a club for the elite
I once had my father tell me that he was praying that I would be gang-raped and left in a gutter for dead, so that I would realize that I had sinned against the Lord and would come back home.
This came from the same man who really believes that he was especially chosen to be in the elite God-club before the foundations of the world. He thinks he’s one of a small group of people that God decided to create with the purpose of going to heaven when he dies.
The thing is that God decided before he even created me that I was destined for hell, but then he decided to create me anyway. My father truly believes this, and he really thinks this is grace. He thinks this makes God good.
I said that if God is such a sadistic motherfucker that he would create anyone, including me, for the express purpose of sending them to hell as part of his great cosmic joke, I didn’t want to know him.
My father calls this shit “the doctrines of grace,” otherwise known in other theological circles as “Calvinism.” What makes him and my mother, and my siblings so fucking fantastic that heaven is reserved for them?
I’m not sure I want to be stuck in the same place as them in the afterlife anyway, as they have already put me through hell. I’ve been to hell and seen hell and it’s nothing like they imagine anyway.
They will be disappointed to know that there is no fire and brimstone in hell, and I’m not even sure people go there. I’d like to think not. I have, however, seen it personally and I am pleased to be a disappointment to them in the afterlife too by not being burnt alive for all eternity.
Christianity is not an exclusive club for the nice, decent, people God decided could go to heaven, Christianity is about a relationship with Jesus, divine union with God.
I know I’m not going to hell when I die, because hell is a place that is totally void of the presence of God. It’s a great place of nothingness. I know this for certain because I remember exactly what I saw. God isn’t in hell.
I know God, and I love God, albeit imperfectly, and so as someone who loves God, it’s impossible to end up in hell. I want to think that nobody ends up in hell, and that’s how I think of it at the moment, but whether my beliefs shift in the future I don’t know.
Hell isn’t a dungeon with the devil running around with his pitchfork cackling with glee. I do think that Satan will end up being housed there, and all the angels and demons that followed him in his rebellion, but I don’t think humanity ends up in hell.
God created humans because he wanted a relationship with us, and he loves us. His kingdom runs on a whole different structure with totally different values.
I’m angry enough to not want to see my family in any kind of afterlife, but I do know that healing exists and that if my family and I are ever going to speak to each other again, it will be when we all get to the other side of physical death.
