I Did Need Saving
My childhood church experience was way more Threatcon Delta than joy and peace.
I needed saving, all right —
from church people
who scared the hell out of me with their devil talk.
It was all so confusing —
the Jesus of my early childhood
healed the sick and fed the hungry
in peaceful, green pastures beside still waters,
but then I grew out of the warm and fuzzy stuff and
landed in a terrifying place known as
THE AGE OF ACCOUNTABILITY
with terror alerts ahead of their time
code red for
rapture
HELL
and eternal damnation
and terrifying movies — lacking any type of
parental advisory — were shown
to seal the salvation deal.
My sweet tween dreams were preempted
by this Baptist horror which sponsored
my nightly terror for what seemed like — an eternity.
Bloody guillotines
the antichrist
the mark of the beast and
white panel vans rounding up people of all ages
to usher them to their bloody fate.
To add to my spiritual confusion,
my weekly hell was
packaged in some pretty benign trappings
quaint hymns
an ivory sreeple
and little, old grannies who served
church dinners with Jell-O salad.
I was often teased for being a goody two shoes,
but it turns out I was a SINNER —
a wretched sinner — and, apparently,
someone had to die
for my sins which seemed like a bit of overkill for
arguing with my brother and shirking
the occasional chore
but, as I was constantly reminded
by the church people
I couldn’t save
myself by being good and the only way out
of a hellish nightmare was
the salvation prayer
which I prayed
constantly, obsessively.
Jesus, I am a sinner, come
into my heart and save me
please, please, save me
I begged.
But did it work?
How could I ever be certain?
What if I somehow botched it?
Were there any loopholes for well-meaning children?
So much was riding on these WORDS,
and I was just a grade school kid
whose biggest worry should have been
my next math test not a scorching eternity
in a fiery pit.
My promised, everlasting peace was preempted by
terror because I had no means to question
this church of good intentions.
I was trained to listen to my elders
without disclaimer
and, it turns out
they were right
I DID need saving.
But I needed saving from dogma
and fear-mongering
and from a sanctuary that was anything but —
a sanctuary.
Helpful resources for “deconstructors” may be found at
https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/
https://www.exvangelicalpodcast.com/
and on Chrissy Stroop’s page at https://cstroop.com/
If you absolutely insist, buy me a coffee — or a Pinot, I’m not picky — at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/stephdromainn
