Thursday, July 19, 2007

Tearing IN TO JESUS' HELL

In the 19th century, cutsie-pie christian ministers tore into the hearts of little kids with stories like this:

’Of two little maids of sixteen, one cared only for dress, and went to a dancing school, and dared to disport in the park on Sunday instead of going to mass: that little maid stands now, and forever will stand, with bare feet upon a red-hot floor.

"The other walked through the streets at night, and did very wicked things; now she utters shrieks of agony in a burning oven. A very severe torment – immersion up to the neck in a boiling kettle – agitates a boy who kept bad company, and was too idle to go to mass, and a drunkard; avenging flames now issue from his ears….’” (Walker 1983: 389 quoting from Homer Smith, Man and His Gods, Boston: Little, Brown, 1952).

It’s hard to believe anyone in the ‘good old days’ ever chugged into adulthood with garbage like this thrown at them every week. And thrown at them I might add by dudes they were taught were crème-de-la-crème.

It’s so obvious the christian underground torture chamber was a political-control tool it’s kinda embarrassing even to bring it up. I mean, you should feel insulted I even think I have to.

Evidently approved even by the "Prince of Peace" himself, the old torture chamber was “perhaps the most sadistic fantasy ever conceived by the mind of man” (Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia 1983:387) and “though the possibility is seldom recognized, there are many indications that the Christian vision of hell in its sadistic horror was one of the leading causes of disillusionment with Christianity itself” (Walker 1983: 390).
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thnx goes to milson for the foto

4 comments:

Morgaine said...

Next time I run across one of those illustrated Christian tracts about hell the fundies like to hand out, I'll grab a copy for you. You'll love them!

Anonymous said...

Is that quote from this book??

http://web.archive.org/web/20020203205154/http://home.att.net/~jehdjh/kidlit1.html

Athana said...

Hey, anon, yes, what you see in quotation marks is taken verbatim from Homer Smith's book *Man and His Gods*.

Athana said...

Anon, some quotes are from Barbara Walker's book *The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets,* which I always heartily recommend to everyone.