• fubo@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The violence isn’t caused by the hell belief; it’s institutionalized by the hell belief. Abusive, violent, hellfire religion is an institutionalization of the habits of abusive, violent parents. Get rid of the actual physical child abuse, and the violent doctrine has nothing to sustain itself.

    Hell is just a metaphor for how terrible it is when your parent screams at you and beats you. To a small child, while that’s happening, it is eternal. You are wholly condemned, wholly guilty and judged, and no part of you is safe from pain and punishment. The doctrine of hell is religion telling you that’s normal.

    Without hell religion, kids who are beaten by their parents might grow up to beat their own kids. Or they might get over it. Or they might not have kids at all.

    But under what circumstances do you get generations of kids getting beaten, growing up, having kids, and beating those kids too?

    That’s where hell religion comes in. It tells you that the beating isn’t just your parents being terrible people; it’s an explicit command from God, who created the whole universe. It’s not just your parents, it’s how the whole world is supposed to be. And you’re supposed to grow up and do it too.

    Hell religion tells you that it’s wrong to recover from the abuse that was done to you. Stay traumatized; stay violent; put on the character armor of God and raise the rod to your own child so that they stay on the same shite-and-narrow path that you were put on.