By: David Worrell
Re: fear of God

"The God of Fear"
Susan Crain

     I was just 7 years old when the priests and nuns of my grammar 
school decided for me that it was time to go one on one with God.  
Father Murphy started coming to our classroom once a week in order 
to properly prepare us for our first confessions.  "You can't keep 
secrets from the Lord!" he said, an Irish fire blazing on his 
cheeks and forehead, and in a voice so loud we shriveled like 
prunes in our chairs.  "He knows our sins, so don't try to keep 
anything back from Him."
     At home I sat with pen and paper to make my list and went 
through the ten commandments one by one, desperately searching for 
a sin so great and so difficult to confess that it would explain 
what I felt was a completely irrational terror of stepping into 
that confessional.  But I could find none, and the prospect of 
admitting to God that I had not eaten my green beans at the dinner 
table just didn't seem enough to warrant what soon became an 
all-consuming fear.  I couldn't sleep or concentrate on my 
schoolwork, and my mother took to taking my temperature every day 
after I came home from school and huddled fetally in my bed.
     You can pick her out from across the church if you look 
carefully. She's the shortest child in the whole second grade, made 
even shorter now by the manner in which she is sitting:  scrunched 
down as if she wished she could melt and vanish into the wooden 
pews.  She rises and stands rigidly as one of the Sisters waves her 
row over to stand in front of the confessional. Her knee socks fall 
down around the ankles of her scrawny legs. She is frozen. It takes 
a rough push from the girl behind her to force her to walk again. 
She is the fourth child in the line, then the third, second and 
first.  She pretends to be reassured by the fact that each child in 
front of her comes out of the confessional looking much the same as 
when they went in, some of them in fact even smiling (with relief, 
she imagines.)  But she is not reassured.  On the contrary, she is 
very sure now that when she steps into the confessional she will 
begin to fall.  Down, down, down into a deep, dark pit whose walls 
are covered with an unknown slime-like substance, down into a 
laughter of hot  terror.  She will fall down into Hell, because she 
can't think of any real sins to confess, but she is certain that 
she has committed them.  God knows her sins, but she does not.
     She stands there shaking with her hand on the doorknob for too 
long. The Sister's eyebrows crease in disapproval and the little 
girl gathers all she has into opening that door and bursting into 
the little room like a shot. But the space is no bigger than a 
closet and she goes head first into the opposing wall, falling back 
on her rear end.  Her hands touch the icy marble floor and she 
whispers a small thanks that it is there.  Already she is aware of 
the lump that is forming above her left eye, but she raises herself 
slowly and finds the kneeler with her fingers.  The priest next 
door pulls aside the curtain and she starts in a pitifully squeaky 
voice: "Bless me Father for I have sinned."  She thinks frantically 
in an attempt to create a sin worthy of all that she has suffered.  
"I - I - I don't eat my dinner sometimes even when my Mother says 
that some people are starving.  And, and - I said the word 'damn' 
to my brother."  The priest is quiet for a moment and then asks her 
if she is truly sorry for these sins, and she says that she is.  He 
tells her to say three Hail Marys and three Our Fathers and then 
blesses her.  She knows she is free to go, but she cannot move 
because she can't believe that is it over.  "You may go now and say 
your prayers," the priest says.  She leaves the confessional and 
returns to her seat. A heavy fog of incense drifts around her and 
she gets up and runs to the small dank room where baptisms are done 
and vomits all over the floor.  When she is done she glances up, 
trying to catch her breath, sees the crucified feet of Jesus and 
screams.

(continued)

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(480)   Mon 11 Mar 96  2:42                             
By: David Worrell
To: All
Re: Fear of God 2/2
----------------------------------------------------------------------
@EID:cb1f 206b1540
@MSGID: 1:3615/41.11 31439376

(Continued from Previous Message)

     When I got home that day after my first confession, I had a 
mild stomach ache.  It soon escalated into a pain not unlike a 
knife being thrust into and out of my insides, a pain so great I 
could not keep from screaming.  My Mother rushed me to the 
emergency room, where the doctors could find nothing physically 
wrong with me.  This happened every single time I was required to 
go to confession for the rest of second grade.  After it stopped, I 
found that my fear had been replaced with anger and bitterness.  I 
didn't love God anymore, if I ever had, and I didn't care, an 
attitude which has remained with me into adulthood.  I think now 
that after that year I had come to believe that any entity which 
produced so negative a response in me was not worthy of my respect. 
 It took a few more years for me to realize the inanity of having 
to "create" a sin:  in not being aware of any way in which I had 
broken the ten commandments, I was forced to break one of them with 
my lie about swearing.
     Although I espouse atheism now, it is for reasons far removed 
from this event in my young life.  And I cannot very well remain 
angry at a being in whose existence I do not believe.  I do retain 
a very bitter attitude toward those who I feel were at fault, 
however:  the clergy members who so confused and frightened me and 
the Catholic church in general.  While it may be well and good for 
people to have an outlet in admitting their wrong-doings to a 
priest, I still don't believe that 7-year-olds should be forced 
into a practice which condemns them as guilty before they've even 
lived long enough to do anything that would be considered deviant.  
As I try to explain rationally to my own 8-year-old why one should 
not cheat or lie or steal, the thought of her standing outside the 
confessional waiting to admit the evils of her ways to the 
omniscient Almighty becomes laughable, if not absurd. Does using 
fear as a deterrent really produce rational human beings who behave 
in positive ways?  Or does it only produce anger and bitterness and 
eventually result in the behavior it was intended to prevent in the 
first place?  My daughter lives in fear only of things like being 
grounded or having certain priveleges taken away, but she does not 
have to fear me or the mysterious retributions of some all-knowing 
punisher in the heavens, nor do I think she should be required to.  
It turns out she's a pretty well-behaved kid regardless.
     After her third confession, and after her third visit to the 
emergency room with the knives in her stomach, her Mother left her 
alone in the car so that she could speak to the doctor alone.  The 
knives had abated and she sat with quiet tears on her cheeks, the 
smell of incense still in her clothes. She had found more to say at 
her last two confessions, and she hadn't  had to lie those times.  
She had been unable to concentrate on homework and was able to 
confess what Sister Mary called the sin of procrastination, as well 
as the evils of fighting with her little brother and sneaking a 
Hershey's Kiss before dinner.  As she looked out of the car window, 
big drops of rain began to fall here and there against it.  She 
whispered to herself, "Damn."  Once, and then again, and again.  
Waves of anger came up in her as they had never before done in her 
short life, until finally she was screaming:  "Damn! Damn damn damn 
damn damn damn damn!"

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 * Origin: At any time, at any place, our snipers can drop you 
(1:3615/41.11)