If My Kid Is Worried About Hell

Noah's ark Sunday school craft made from a paper plate. A cutesy little kids' craft about genocide. This should strike as so horrifying it's surreal. Image source.

I've been thinking recently about how Hendrix and I want to have kids in the future, and how I think it's fine if our hypothetical kids occasionally go to Sunday school or VBS or if my parents read them bible stories or whatever. I have good memories of those things from when I was a little kid. Maybe that's a strange thing for me to say, because y'all read my blog and you know I have a lot to say about how stuff I learned in church was really harmful. But the crafts and games were fun, I seem to remember, and maybe I want my future kids to experience that. Maybe for cultural reasons.

The key is, I'll make sure my kids know that whenever someone tells them something about religion, they don't have to believe it. (They should be polite about it, but they don't have to believe it.) They can consider the claims and only believe things if they feel there is a good enough reason. When we are presented with some version of god, we can judge that god and decide if they are worthy of worship.

And I think, as long as they know that, they'll be fine. In my case, as I child I had to be evangelical because all the trusted adults in my life were, and I didn't know adults could be wrong. In a practical sense, I didn't have a choice about "asking Jesus into my heart"- of course it was inevitable, because all the role models around me believed that's what everyone needs to do, and I didn't know there were other valid ideologies out there. I didn't know adults could be wrong about something so big and still be good people. I didn't know that the things they said about people that believe differently were all a bunch of bullshit- about how it's impossible to be truly happy without "a personal relationship with God", about how "everyone has a God-shaped hole in their heart", how most people who "claim" to be Christians are actually fake Christians, how no one can really be moral without the Holy Spirit living in them, how "Christianity is unique because all the other religions are about how to earn God's approval, but Christianity says we can't earn it, God already loves us and has already done the work, we just need to accept it."

"Do not bear false witness against your neighbor" is one of the 10 Commandments, but the religion I used to believe was 100% built upon dehumanizing lies.

But I'll tell my kids there are a lot of religions out there, and it's okay for people to disagree about them. The important thing is how we treat other people, not our opinions on abstract, unprovable religious questions. I don't think it's a problem if someone teaches some unhealthy evangelical doctrine to them, because they'll be hearing it in the context of "here is one possible thing that I could believe but I don't have to" instead of "this is the Truth and if I don't like it that means I'm the one who's sinful and I have to stomp down those emotions and force myself to accept it."

And they'll see that their dad doesn't believe in God and he's fine. A tangible proof that all those things evangelicals say about "the unsaved" aren't true.

All right so that all sounds good in theory, but what if my kid is at some church event that uses emotional manipulation and it really gets to them? What if they're at a campfire and the music is low and everybody has to write down their sin on a piece of paper and come lay it at the foot of the cross, and they feel God's love and they come to the front and pray and cry and give their life to Jesus. What if it feels so real, this God that believes their dad is going to hell. What if they go to evangelism training and read the passage from Ezekiel about being a watchman, and they're encouraged to feel guilty because they don't love their friends and their dad enough to badger them about accepting Jesus?

I know those emotions can be really intense. And if they believe they feel God- and I believe I have felt God- it will make them think everything else is true too, all the bad theology that surrounded the moment when they felt God. As if God endorses everything that happened there.

So, what am I gonna do if my kid is worried that people they care about are going to hell?

Here's the thing: Nobody knows for sure if hell is real or not. For people who don't believe in it, surely we can understand why they don't- it's because there's not evidence. You can't blame them, right?

So if it's true that our friends are going to hell and we have a responsibility to warn them, well, that puts us in a very difficult situation, right? Because we can warn them, and they won't believe us, and we can't really blame them too much because yeah there's not evidence for the existence of hell anyway. So the result is, we end up in a situation where we're scared that our friends are going to hell, we feel a little embarrassed for trying to convince them about something we know there's not good enough evidence for, we feel like we should manipulate and push them for their own good, and then we feel guilty for trying to manipulate them, and on top of that maybe we're a bit worried hell isn't real anyway.

Like, what a mess. All that fear, worry, uncertainty, and not respecting people's boundaries. Would a loving god put us in a situation like that?

See, I believe in a god who cares about our emotional and mental health. And I believe that when someone is trying to motivate you by using fear and guilt, that is a GIANT RED FLAG.

A loving god is NOT going to set up a system of "perfect justice" that results in all these negative emotions for their followers. You love your friends, and therefore you constantly feel all worried and anguished about their eternal fate, because of choices your god made. Yeah, no. A god who turns love into fear is not worthy of worship. Perfect love casts out fear.

So if my kid is worried that people they love are in danger of hell, I will tell them this: Yes, if that teaching is true, it makes sense that you would be worried about that. A person who truly loves people and truly believes those people are going to hell would be so scared and sad all the time. But is that really how god would want us to live? If god loves us, doesn't that mean They want us to be healthy- and that includes mental health? Let's take a step back and think about this, and realize it's motivated by fear instead of any rational reason to believe that hell is a real danger.

Mental health matters, and that's something I never knew when I was a good evangelical. Of course I didn't- I was taught that I should be "desperate" for god and "dependent" on god, and that meant I could never feel safe. It meant taking big risks I wasn't comfortable with, giving away money without caring about my own financial situation, constantly reminding myself that I can't do anything on my own- because if I ever forget, even for a moment, that I literally need God in order to live, well, that's selfish and sinful pride. Back then, every day was a "spiritual battle", everything was a crisis and an adventure, I felt like I was out of control but I trusted god and believed that's how it should be. I fought my "sin", I "took captive every thought", overanalyzed and accused myself whenever I sinfully had emotions over giving up something that was important to me. I lived like I didn't need sleep, like I didn't need people to care about me- I just needed god. I didn't know emotional needs were real. I worried that other people at church would think there was something wrong with me because I was so devoted, but decided maybe they were fake Christians and it doesn't matter what they think. I prayed on my knees and cried and believed, oh I believed so hard. My relationship with god ... my personal relationship with god ... it was my entire life, back then.

You guys, I loved him. And he never let me rest. He let me beg and plead, with no answer, and then had me convince myself that I was the one in the wrong, for not being content with his silence.

And I didn't know mental health mattered, so I didn't notice my own fear, stress, worry. I didn't know it was good and healthy to care about myself, my desires, my own happiness. I didn't know how damaging it is to give up so much and force myself to be okay with never having my emotional needs met. None of that registered as a red flag.

But my kid is going to know that their emotions matter. And my kid is going to know that it's good to have desires, and the key is to handle them in a healthy way.

And if anybody tells my kid they deserve to go to hell, well, there will be hell to pay.

So that's my plan. Start by teaching them to love themself. Their emotions matter and they should pay attention to those emotions in order to take care of themself in a healthy way. Of course empathy is a big part of this- your emotions matter, and, similarly, other people's emotions matter, so that's why you need to treat other people right. And if somebody tries to manipulate you by using fear, that's a giant red flag. Take a step back and evaluate if they actually have anything worthwhile to say or if it's all preying on people's emotions.

Start with that foundation, and hopefully they won't be "led astray" at church.