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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My conservative evangelical upbringing instilled a fear of a God who judged me as such a horrible person that his son had to endure torture and death so that I wouldn't go to hell. But only if I said a prayer earnestly enough asking Jesus to be in my heart and save me. That God was quite scary. I consider it a form of spiritual abuse.

I am no longer afraid of God, but it's been a long road to get here. From rejecting the God of my youth, to losing faith altogether, through despair. Then finally experiencing grace, love that requires no moral perfection or special prayers said in just the right way, I can now say I am indeed saved by Jesus.

[/quote]

This is beautifully stated. I'm the OP and although I'm Hindu, I've gone through a very similar series of stages like you have. For me, it was the fear of difficult future incarnations, and the fear of incurring bad karma, that made me subconsciously worry about my actions. I went through some traumatic times and lost faith for a while, and wondered a lot about things. Now, for me, faith means unconditionally loving myself and surrendering to the present moment. When I'm in the present moment I don't worry about future incarnations or karma, and I don't worry that I have "be" something or "do" something in order to win God's approval.

One thing my experiences have taught me is that people tend to project their own insecurities, fears and conditioning onto God. Even if a scripture advocates self love, some insecure person will read that and misinterpret it through the filter of their own self-destructive urges. And then people like that create a culture of fearing God. That's just what I've observed though.[/quote]

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