I learned fear watching a twenty-something white man with three goody-goody sons and a wife of a teacher or maybe a teacher of a wife sermonize on hell clothed in the black cassock I imagine death decreed all pastors should wear in reverence to the end-all be-all. fear was realizing that all your friends that shared the same skin color were bound to hell by an omnipotent and benevolent and above all merciful god who couldn't tolerate any dissent. we were children, we were taught, didn't Jesus love children best of all?
I grew up, and then it wasn't just my friends who shared my skin color; no none of my friends believed in a higher power at all, and I was unsure I did.
but fear of eternity in hell kept me devout and that was when I learned that there was something worse than hell, there was heaven. how could I be happy without the people I loved? would God make me forget all about them? how could you be perfectly happy in a utopia with no problems to surmount? how could an eternal God judge mortal crimes so harshly? and then I realized that not even people who had dedicated their lives to preaching the word of god knew why God would allow it. I heard ******* arguments that hell was God's last great mercy, allowing those who did not believe in him to not have to be near him for eternity; I didn't believe them for a second. people are full of ****, but only because god created us in his image.