A Childhood Stolen by Hell

I was a small child in Sunday School when I asked the teacher if I could have the floor. Even in those tender childhood days, I was ready to do what needed to be done in front of an audience of my peers so that we could all escape the inevitability of hell.

I then gave the poor children a scathing rebuke, reminded them that hell was real, and that if they didn’t get right with God, and accept Jesus into their hearts, they would end up there, then literally burn alive forever. This was inspired by some general childhood tomfoolery, which I interpreted as disrespect to our sweet elderly Sunday school teacher Mr. Joe. 

Mr. Joe solemnly nodded as I spoke, then thanked me for being so bold for the Lord, finding nothing perturbing at all with a 3rd grader decrying all the ways of God’s eternal torture toward his creation-gone-astray. 

As evidenced by my Elementary School Hell-fire and damnation mini-sermon, Hell was something I thought about long and hard. My POG collecting was punctuated with an undercurrent of existential Hell dread; I frequently wondered, “What is the point of any of this, if my sister died right this minute bound for hell, and here I was trading slammers instead of trying to save her.”

These are POGS.Please tell me you remember POGS. You remember POGS right?! I’m not old yet, am I?

In middle school still suffering from the effects of hell-mania, I told my teacher, “Since we are all God’s children, and God doesn’t send children to hell, I think we all just go to heaven instead.” 

I was desperate for a way out of the all-consuming obsession with saving souls, and oh had she just validated that hail Mary attempt at God saving all of humanity so my precious tired little soul didn’t have to. I would have gotten the end of my childhood back. This was all his mess in the first place. How did it become my job?

 But she didn’t. 

She sheepishly looked at me with her adult understanding of the way things work in heaven and hell and for us sandwiched between, then she said, “I just don’t think it works like that, Blaire.”  

So I picked my cross back up and got back to saving souls. 

I remember the twins at my after-school care program with who I said the sinner’s prayer. I prayed them through Christ’s ABC’s then waited until they both individually prayed for Jesus to come into their heart, and for 10 awkward seconds, there was nothing. Dead space. The evangelist in me just about died. A good preacher doesn’t do dead space well. 

When they realized I was waiting on them to say the sinner’s prayer, both said, “Oh I already did it in my head.” So I said amen, and I carried on, satisfied to have saved at least two souls from the pits of Hell. 

When I went home that day I remember wondering if they were actually going to heaven or not, since their prayer wasn’t out loud the way we had been taught to elicit. And rather than feeling proud of myself for saving  souls for the home team I mainly felt ashamed that I had done it wrong. 

Such is the insidious nature of evangelical Hell. It flavors and touches everything we do, even when the doing is it in its service. 

Hell didn’t stop there. Hell weaseled its way into my home life, my marriage, my parenting, my bedroom. 

And if I’m being honest, weaseled is too kind a descriptor. It would be more accurate to say it was there before I even arrived in the space. Its existence gave it open access to any and  everything, and so wherever I would go there it would be. Whatever I would do, I would do on a balance beam suspended over flames, desperately trying to keep my equilibrium lest I misstep and fall to my demise. 

Hell broke me. 

Hell made me controlling, incapable of placing or respecting boundaries, anxious af, overbearing, depressed. Hell gave me a raging superiority complex.

It necessarily turned me into a judgmental asshole. How could you save someone from Hell if you hadn’t taken an appraisal of what was they needed saving from. These appraisals based upon a version of right and wrong, good and bad, created by a small sect of Christianity that I had mostly accepted as universal law. 

The inventors of Hell, conveniently also the determiners of what sent you there. 

And so judgment, while openly condemned, could not not be a part of the process. If there exists a judgement day where humans are separated like so many sheep and goats, one heading to paradise and the other to eternal torment, it was the absolute requirement of those that assumed they were heaven bound, to do everything in their power to turn goats into sheep. 

And judgment is the only tool they are given. Even if it’s mixed with kindness, patience, or attentiveness, judgment is the undergirding motivator. 

We the victims deserved better than Hell. 

We deserved to collect POGS, trade slammers, destroy our ankles with skip-its, ride our bikes to the woods, and come home at the end of the day covered with a layer of grime and dirt and pockets full of rocks and sticks and flowers and acorns. And we deserved to do it without the crushing thought that perhaps the people around us will be lost to us to eternal torment forever, prisoners of the God we were being taught to worship. 

We deserved a childhood. 

And so an inquest. 

If you believe in a literal Hell, please don’t teach it to your children. Preserve their childhood, because no one deserves the weight of the world. Not a single sweet young soul deserves to contemplate what existence in eternal torment may be like. Your babies need to believe in a God that isn’t an abuser, even if you choose to do so.

I am sorry that Hell was the best you could get. You deserved better too. 

And when you’re ready to rewrite your understanding of it, I am here, and I will walk alongside you as you do.