Behavior Modification and Stockholm Syndrome

[shawn]

Hell being the ultimate threat, torture for eternity was invented to control behavior.  When a person under this teaching fails (and they will) the consequences of guilt, shame, anxiety and horror are supposed to modify behavior.  In essence they are held hostage, kidnapped and do one of two things...escape (become atheists, agnostics, or universalists) or sympathize with the kidnapper (Stockholm syndrome a form of traumatic bonding) making excuses for and falling in love with the kidnapper.  What else can explain being in love with a diety who threatens with eternal punishment?  What else explains a willingness to love a diety who has threatened not only you but your family?  Stockhom syndrome is a defense mechanism that leads to the victims unwillingness to leave their torturer.

Not that I am a bg fan of Freud but I think he nailed it when he described the psychological mechanism of this kind of phenomenon.  "Identifying with the aggressor is one way that the ego defends itself. When a victim believes the same values as the aggressor, they no longer become a threat."  So, a natural progression of being tortured, tormented, threatened is to become like the torturer.

Hell teaching brings sickness to the mind, body and soul.  The defense mechanisms extend from the victim like a cancer hurting everyone it touches.  There is no love in this teaching.  Love is not a product of the teachings of eternal torture.  It is merely a dysfunctional mechanism to modify behavior while scarring the heart.

So, I appeal to my brothers and sisters in Christ who are prone to judge those who are sickened by the illness of this teaching.  Love the sick...and that includes people who are sick from the religious teachings of men.

[Lazarus Short]

Hell teaching brings sickness to the mind, body and soul.

Thinking of history, we can see the sickness which crept into Christendom after the ET doctrine became orthodox.

I think of the Black Death.

I think of the Dark Ages.

I think of unlettered ignorance, and economic stagnation.

I think of the Inquisition.

I think of all those crusades against Muslims and other heretics. 

In particular, I think of an incident when crusaders were exterminating an entire town in southern France (in those the area was not even called "France," as that only applied to the area around Paris) during the Albigensian Crusades.  A lieutenant reported to his commander that they could scarcely tell the heretics from the faithful.  The commander replied, "Kill them all - God will know His own!"

In my own time it has been Godless Communists, and now, "ragheads," and so a large slice of humanity is relegated to terrorist status, and deemed fit only for Hell.  If I'm ranting too much, please excuse...

[shawn]

Not rambling at all...actually it was a good post.  Ignorance, poverty and a lack of education opened the door for learned men of power to control and hijack the religious institution.  Fear passed down through the generations from this teaching has grown its ugly roots into the hearts of men strangling out the teachings of Christ concerning love and reconciliation.