Old HP = Spiritual Abuse
The more I learn about HP through step work the more I realize just how different HP was shared with me before:
Old ideas of God:
- God punishes
- God can and would kill you whenever he feels like it if you disobey etiquette
- Told many times “aren’t you ashamed under God” for saying this or that in response to emotions of anger or establishing boundaries
- Implied I’d feel guilt in the here and now and it’d be used to emotionally manipulate / punish me through silent treatment or verbal abuse, eating alone in my room or not eating at all
- If not feeling guilt now, God would seek retribution and justice against me in the afterlife.
- Unbelievers would have their skin literally burned off their bodies forever and ever.
- Throw out books / burn items that don’t align with literalism, go around to little book houses to filter through any “non fundie books” to destroy
- Anyone who sees it different needs to be prayed for and expelled of demons
- No secular music, videos, media, hanging with non believers, homeschooling encouraged
- Purity culture to the point of not kissing anyone til your wedding day, no touching yourself or a parter until the day you get married, and even then the other person is “responsible” for your body
- Distrust of science and the “world” including people who don’t believe that way
- No working with or hiring non believers
At that point, I realized … I was in hell, that hell was my actual reality. Either that, or this God is full of shit.
So — No wonder I’m so confused and am perfectionist if about HP. Really been unpacking this and embracing a HP of my own Understanding.
I started to understanding a living HP — until my sister made me into a witch.
I could hardly go to bed last night just thinking of how angry I was at my sister for all the spiritual abuse I experience in my most vulnerable state after my hospitalization.
So at this point I’m still oscillating between agnostic atheism and mystical Christianity.