But I was reminded of the incident later when I received a letter from an American woman in her forties who had been brought up Roman Catholic. At the age of seven, she told me, two unpleasant things happened to her. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And, around the same time, a little schoolfriend of hers, who had tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my correspondent had been led to believe by the then official doctrine of her parents' church. Her view as a mature adult was that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by far the worst. She wrote:Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as 'yucky' while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest--but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to hell.
That's from Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion - from a short section on the trauma, especially to young children, caused by belief in hell: pp. 317-21 (the above passage is from pp. 317-8). If you get your hands on the book, I recommend that short section. This section, and especially Dawkins's comparing sexual abuse to being taught nasty doctrines of hell were the subject of some great outrage. Though there are other bases for such outrage, some of it was underwritten by thoughts to the effect that it's absurd to think believing in hell could be as harmful as sexual abuse. Never having been the victim of sexual abuse myself, knowing little about what that must be like, and having nothing useful to say about it, I don't want to get into the comparative issue here. But some of the outraged seemed to be quite sure that being taught nasty doctrines of hell could not be seriously harmful at all, and that I do want to dispute.
As someone who spent many sleepless, terrified nights as a child - at just around the age Dawkins's correspondent was at the time of her trauma - over hell, I can certainly emphasize with the judgment this woman expresses. (Protestants take no back seat to Catholics when it comes to hell-terror, I believe.)
Dawkins describes his interesting encounter with a promoter
of a terrifying account of hell as follows:
But I was apparently getting the hell message too early: Pastor Roberts seems to think that 12 is the best age (though I'm here just going by what Dawkins writes). By 12, I wasn't any longer really terrorized by hell, though I still accepted a very nasty, traditional doctrine of hell - as I did all the way into my early 20s. (When I accepted the doctrine but was no longer terrorized by it, I did find it curious that I wasn't so terrorized.) Why do some people who accept a traditional doctrine of hell experience debilitating terror of it, while others don't? Why was I terrorized at 7, but not at 12? Why does debilitating terror tend to occur among children (though some adults also suffer from it)? These are questions that I hope receive some serious investigation. (And, again, if anyone knows of any studies of this, please let me know.) All I can do is provide my own (non-expert) guess, which is based just on my own case and that of several other people I've talked to.
My guess is that debilitating terror of hell is (at least often) explained by the subject getting or having one cognitive ability before or without having another (or having one of them to a much greater extent before or without having the other to a significant enough extent): Having the ability to understand and appreciate the doctrine without (yet) having developed the ability to "quarantine" threatening "beliefs" from having the effects beliefs of that content in some sense should have. (Since this - and especially my use of "quarantine" - is all very vague, perhaps this shouldn't even be thought of an explanation so much as my guess as to the form that the right explanation will take.)
As I'm tempted to describe it (and I often succumb to this temptation): When I was 7, but not when I was older, I really believed a traditional doctrine of hell.
The notion of belief seems to be a very messy one that I don't very well understand, but it seems to somehow involve a very complex set of dispostitions: dispositions to act in certain ways under certain circumstances, to have certain emotions under certain circumstances, to form certain other beliefs under certain circumstances, etc. And it's possible to have some of the relevant dispositions without having others. And in such cases, it may happen that neither "yes" nor "no" is a very accurate answer to the question of whether the subject believes the item in question. To use some advanced, technical terminology: They kinda believe it--and kinda don't. By the time I was 12, though I still accepted a traditional doctrine of hell, I only kinda believed it, as opposed to my earlier, terrorized self, who really believed it. The "quarantining" of the doctrine wasn't a simple matter of fully retaining the belief while blocking it from having some of its corrosive effects. Rather, it seems to me, it reduced the extent to which I could accurately be described as believing the doctrine. In that sense, I didn't really believe it.
That - including such a use of the likes of "really believe" - is how I've been explaining this matter since well before Dawkins's The God Delusion came out. So the following bit really resonated with me (the italics are Dawkins's own):
Another of my television interviewees was Pastor Keenan Roberts.... Pastor Roberts's particular brand of nuttiness takes the form of what he calls Hell Houses. A Hell House is a place where children are brought, by their parents or their Christian schools, to be scared witless over what might happen to them after they die. Actors play out fearsome tableaux of particular 'sins' like abortion and homosexuality, with a scarlet-clad devil in gloating attendance. These are a prelude to the pièce de résistance, Hell Itself, complete with realistic sulphurous smell of burning brimstone and the agonized screams of the forever damned.(These "Hell Houses" seem to be a variation on an old theme. For some vintage ("classic") hell-terror-mongering, follow this youtube link.) When I was around 7, I got that message - that Hell is a place I absolutely do not want to go to - loud and clear. And it did terrorize me--And not just worries that I might end up there, but terror at the thought of anyone ending up in such a place. The combination of eternal duration with unspeakable torment really got to me. In a later post I hope to go into the effects - some of them lasting to this day - beyond nightmares.
After watching a rehearsal, in which the devil was suitably diabolical in the hammed-up style of a villain of Victorian melodrama, I interviewed Pastor Roberts in the presence of his cast. He told me that the optimum age for a child to visit a Hell House is twelve.
This shocked me somewhat, and I asked him whether it would worry him if a twelve-year-old child had nightmares after one of his performances. He replied, presumably honestly:I would rather for them to understand that Hell is a place that they absolutely do not want to go to. I would rather reach them with that message at twelve than to not reach them with that message and have them live a life of sin and to never find the Lord Jesus Christ. And if they end up having nightmares as a result of experiencing this, I think there's a higher good that would ultimately be achieved and accomplished in their life than simply having nightmares. (pp. 319-20)
But I was apparently getting the hell message too early: Pastor Roberts seems to think that 12 is the best age (though I'm here just going by what Dawkins writes). By 12, I wasn't any longer really terrorized by hell, though I still accepted a very nasty, traditional doctrine of hell - as I did all the way into my early 20s. (When I accepted the doctrine but was no longer terrorized by it, I did find it curious that I wasn't so terrorized.) Why do some people who accept a traditional doctrine of hell experience debilitating terror of it, while others don't? Why was I terrorized at 7, but not at 12? Why does debilitating terror tend to occur among children (though some adults also suffer from it)? These are questions that I hope receive some serious investigation. (And, again, if anyone knows of any studies of this, please let me know.) All I can do is provide my own (non-expert) guess, which is based just on my own case and that of several other people I've talked to.
My guess is that debilitating terror of hell is (at least often) explained by the subject getting or having one cognitive ability before or without having another (or having one of them to a much greater extent before or without having the other to a significant enough extent): Having the ability to understand and appreciate the doctrine without (yet) having developed the ability to "quarantine" threatening "beliefs" from having the effects beliefs of that content in some sense should have. (Since this - and especially my use of "quarantine" - is all very vague, perhaps this shouldn't even be thought of an explanation so much as my guess as to the form that the right explanation will take.)
As I'm tempted to describe it (and I often succumb to this temptation): When I was 7, but not when I was older, I really believed a traditional doctrine of hell.
The notion of belief seems to be a very messy one that I don't very well understand, but it seems to somehow involve a very complex set of dispostitions: dispositions to act in certain ways under certain circumstances, to have certain emotions under certain circumstances, to form certain other beliefs under certain circumstances, etc. And it's possible to have some of the relevant dispositions without having others. And in such cases, it may happen that neither "yes" nor "no" is a very accurate answer to the question of whether the subject believes the item in question. To use some advanced, technical terminology: They kinda believe it--and kinda don't. By the time I was 12, though I still accepted a traditional doctrine of hell, I only kinda believed it, as opposed to my earlier, terrorized self, who really believed it. The "quarantining" of the doctrine wasn't a simple matter of fully retaining the belief while blocking it from having some of its corrosive effects. Rather, it seems to me, it reduced the extent to which I could accurately be described as believing the doctrine. In that sense, I didn't really believe it.
That - including such a use of the likes of "really believe" - is how I've been explaining this matter since well before Dawkins's The God Delusion came out. So the following bit really resonated with me (the italics are Dawkins's own):
'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.' The adage is true so long as you don't really believe the words. But if your whole upbringing, and everything you have ever been told by parents, teachers and priests, has led you to believe, really believe, utterly and completely, that sinners burn in hell..., it is entirely plausible that words can have a more long-lasting and damaging effect than deeds. (p. 318)
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Having been indoctrinated as a child and also having been sexually abused by a priest when I was a little girl, I can assure you that the latter rather than the former caused me much more pain throughout my life.
I can call myself a recovering catholic, and work through dismissing the doctrine (which if you think about it is a really hard sell no matter the victim's age) but I will never ever forget what that priest did to me, how it made me feel, how the bishop and his cronies minimized then denied my truth....
If you've never been sexually abused by a priest you could never fully understand the pain. Working through this is difficult -- now THAT is hell!
Virgil...I believe Watts was referring more to a really really belief that Satan and his demons exist and are constantly trying to tempt you into sin, so they can get you into hell and torment you. I think realistically people that believe in hell just don't think they are going to end up there. In George Carlin's last HBO special he asked why is it that when you go to a funeral everyone says, "I'll bet he/she is looking down on us now." Why doesn't anyone ever say, "I'll bet he/she is looking up at us now."
As for the Calvinist pre-destination thing, if you're among the elect, you've got nothing to worry about. But how do you know you one of the elect?
I spoke with a Jehovah's Witness years ago, and they believe that only 144,000 are saved and they were chosen even before God created everything. So everyone else is doomed. I asked, "How many Jehovah's Witnesses are there?". He said about 3 million. I said, "Then a lot of you guys are just wasting your time." I think they all think they are one of the 144,000 and how would you ever know for sure. I think that is how most people see it.
Virgil,
Echoing the post above me, I would just add that I have yet to me a Calvinist who wasn't among the elect. Some of them are tortured about it and constantly worried for their election, but in the end they wrestle some sense of "assurance of salvation" out of God.
I attended a fundamentalist Calvinist church for about two years and this was my experience. It never totally sat right with me and I guess from the way I behaved you might say that I never really believed it. This particular church was among those with a "remnant" mentality, preaching that there were no other true churches in the area. I don't know if any of you are familiar with Harold Camping and his Family Radio business, but a bunch of people at this church had a radio show and a few worked at the station. They later condemned Camping as a heretic when he started his "end of the church age" campaign and started a church to try and prove him wrong.
The odd thing is that there was a particular man who was involved in some street preaching group that said something like "Jesus or Hell!" and all of your other favorite turn or burn slogans. Maybe they thought they were just supplying the call for God and God would turn them from a-burnin'. In any event, I think the main way that this particular group dealt with the doctrine of Hell is by saying that in God's justice, he doesn't love all men. He hates the reprobate and loves the elect. This theology was supplied with some serious linguistic gymnastics and an over-reliance on the King James Bible's archaic language being understood as if your next door neighbor today wrote it. Texts that support neighbor love are easily rationalized away as applying to only the church (which is of course only the elect). And the pragmatic result was, like I said before, the mindset of being the last remnant, which is a fancy theological way for saying "we don't care that much about what happens to everyone else."
There was a woman who attended from out of the area fairly frequently who had a couple of sons, both of which were killed on different occasions. When her last son was shot by a man trying to rob him, the preacher gave a sermon trying to warn everyone about hell and telling us all that Kente was there now burning and wishing he had known Jesus, all in front of the grieving mother. (Just in my own defense, I had lost almost ALL of my respect for this church after a few months but I attended with my now fiancée's family and could only socialize with the pastors kids, also among the non-elect). This pastor liked to yell and carry on and pound on things- in retrospect the man was bizarrely insecure. Needless to say, this woman did not darken the door of that particular church frequently after her son's death.
Anyway, this brings up an interesting point- the "s/he is in Hell" sermon at the funeral. I attended a more moderate Baptist church that did sermons for non-Christian family members. The pastor I was close with always said that he had to speak the truth about that person's most likely eternal destiny. The most "comforting" way that he did this was by having a typical alter call at the sermon after proclaiming the good news of penal substitutionary atonement in some form or another, a call which was let to go to the machine time and time again by those listening. Any other experiences?
Keith, this post brought up a lot of weird stuff for me. Apparently I am a post-atheist emergent; I've discovered I have a different sort of childhood hell trauma. I posted my response at the url above. --Angela
Korey January 3, 2009 3:44 PM Interesting thoughts. I too cannot deal with comparative analysis between hell and profound earthly suffering, but after watching the 70s movie "Like a Thief in the Night" on a sunday evening at my church at a young age I was thoroughly disturbed for many months. I would have near anxiety attacks whenever I was alone. I in all honesty think that the scariest movie I've ever seen in terms of its impact on me.
It's interesting you should mention this. I have all four movies on DVD (A Thief in the Night, A Distant Thunder, Image of the Beast, and The Prodigal Planet), and whenever I've had occasion to mention that they're actually decent films, and probably much better than the "Left Behind" movies, I never fail to get responses from people who say how "A Thief in the Night" terrified them as kids.
Maybe that's one reason I haven't shown them to my granddaughters. (That, plus I have some reservations about the pre-tribulation rapture + premillennial dispensationalist doctrines.)
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