IвЂ™d try praying while I laid there, asking God to help me with my childish woes, to make me good enough. He cared about your intentions, the state of your soul, and how much weight you put into the voices whispering to you in the dark.ДЇor a kid that spent a lot of time lying awake at night filled with self-doubt and thinking rotten thoughts that I was never allowed to voice, I was pretty convinced I was in HeavenвЂ™s reject pile. It wasnвЂ™t enough to listen to your parents and try not to kill someone. According to the rule books I was being taught from, there were a lot of hoops to jump through. The DevilвЂ™s agenda was pretty clear cut and accordingly didnвЂ™t recreate the same level of paranoia. To a young child my logic was simple: be bad, go to hell.

I feared God in a way I never quite worked up terror at the Devil. Both seemed horrific and bound to leave me separated from everyone I love. I was consumed with the simultaneous fear over being taken and being left behind. As I got older and got a healthy dose of Evangelical interpretations of the Book of Revelations, the Rapture became a bleeding sore I couldnвЂ™t stop scratching at. IвЂ™d sit in religion class and feel my palms itching, wondering if theyвЂ™d start bleeding from stigmata holes. Religious episodes of The X-Files such as вЂњAll SoulsвЂќ and movies like Bless the Child were horror films to me, and would leave me nearly shaking in fear.

There was no greater threat to my young existence than the angry man upstairs who apparently got in moods and could end the world as we know it. This was the God who flooded the world and declared вЂњ Vengeance is mine I will repay, saith the LordвЂќ (Romans 12:19). I was terrified of being punished like Lot, tested like Job, marked like Cain, and made to suffer like Abraham. His wrath was the monster under the bed, my feelings of unworthiness in the night, and I lived in fear of him taking me away one day. As an impressionable youth under the auspices of a religious education, I had a deep and abiding fear of God.

X files home scared the shit out of me