Going to Hell

Christianity tells you that it will give you closure over the issue of death by promising you eternal bliss in Heaven. However, it also introduces you to the existence of Hell, which is where people who don’t believe in the right interpretation of the Bible spend eternity after they die. It’s supposedly worse than the worst place imaginable, and every human being deserves to go there to be tortured for eternity. But even after you get saved, you still have to spend the rest of your life knowing that you deserve to go to Hell. And you keep reaffirming how much you deserve to burn in Hell by constantly breaking Yahweh’s schizophrenic rules. So the threat of eternal damnation looms over your head for the rest of life. That’s a traumatic fear to instil into someone. It’s a recipe for deep rooted anxiety, and the worst thing about it is that the source of this fear isn’t based on reality.

Being unworthy, despicable scum

The Bible teaches that you’re a worthless piece of scum who isn’t fit to live in order to convince you that you need to believe that you need to be saved. Not only do you have to worry about what’s going to happen to you after you die, but you also have to worry about the fact that right here, right now, you are a flawed, horrible, disgusting, unworthy, pathetic, worthless scumbag who deserves to burn in Hell for eternity. Christians have to carry the shame of their lack of self-worth with them through the rest of their life. This shame will nag at them and pull them down relentlessly. Every second spent thinking about this is a waste of time and an insult to the grandeur and beauty of life.

Loathing pleasure, fighting temptation and feeling guilt for “failure”

Sometimes Christians can distance their mind from the abusive message of self-loathing that the Bible teaches by focusing on the contradicting message that God loves us so much that He sent His son to die for our sins. However, the Bible also teaches that doing pretty much anything that makes us feel good is evil, sinful and shameful.

This fact is particularly harmful because our brains and bodies are designed to feel these emotions. We were designed (by whatever or whoever created us) with these feelings to motivate us to increase our chances of survival and maybe even enjoy ourselves a little. We can’t turn these bodily functions off. Trying to do so will only result in increasing levels of anxiety. And when the anxiety reaches a breaking point we end up doing drastic, irresponsible things (as any child-raping priest can attest to). Most Christians don’t rape children, but all Christians have to wrestle with the shame of feeling the things their bodies naturally tell them to feel, and they have to wrestle with the shame of failure when they inevitably give into their bodies’ natural desires. This is a waste of irreplaceable time and thoughts.

Making amends for non-existent crimes

Since the Bible has set Christians up for failure by placing impossible demands on them that conflict with their bodies’ natural design, Christians are doomed to feel like failures. It’s only natural to want to make amends for disappointing God. Inevitably, many Christians have adopted masochistic ways of punishing themselves. Early Christians adopted the practice of flagellation, where they beat themselves with leather straps. The much acclaimed Mother Teresa didn’t beat herself, but she worshipped suffering and lived a life of self-imposed exile from any physical comforts of joys in life. Christians who “celebrate” Lent pick something they enjoy and force themselves to live without it for a few months. Each Christian must find their own way to make amends for the crimes the Bible teaches them they’re committing, and every one of those self-imposed punishments degrade their quality of life for no reason that’s based in reality.

Evangelizing

Since the Bible teaches that everyone deserves to go to Hell and the only way to avoid this fate is to believe in the salvation story of Jesus, Christians are burdened with the responsibility of evangelizing. Many Christians have argued that The Great Commission officially orders all Christians to evangelize. Some Christians have argued whether that’s what The Great Commission really meant, but at any rate, Christians should want to save the people they love, which should be everybody. In addition to the emotional trauma that this responsibility inflicts, it takes a lot of time and energy. Every second you spend evangelizing is an irreplaceable opportunity to grow and enjoy life for what it really is that you squandered. Every second you spend engaging other people in conversation about your mythology is irreplaceable time you’re taking away from both of your lives. That time could be better spent engaging with problems that actually exist.

To make matters worse for Christians, nonbelievers don't want to hear about how Jesus died on the cross for our sins because that story isn’t true. So Christians have to struggle to balance their desire to save people and their desire not to create socially awkward situations. Most Christians more or less keep the story of salvation to themselves and accept that everyone around them is doomed to the darkest, blackest, most evil place in all of existence forever. Their failure to save their loved ones saddles them with varying degrees of guilt. But 100% of that guilt wasn’t necessary, and non-believers are free to live life without that weight on their shoulders.

Everyone else going to Hell

The Bible teaches to love everyone, and it also teaches that everyone is so evil that they deserve to spend the rest of eternity being horrifically tortured unless someone tells them the magic salvation story that will save their soul. Christians have to spend their lives surrounded by people who they believe are destined for eternal torture and will be missing out on Paradise. Even if you wasted your entire life evangelizing you still wouldn’t be able to save everyone. If you truly loved everyone you should spend the rest of your life eaten up with guilt over this fact. If you’re not then you must have found some method of cognitive dissonance to convince yourself how you’re not responsible for the deaths of your loved ones. This emotional trauma and the mental gymnastics you have to use to diffuse this anxiety are all senseless.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3