my choice at 16: stop masturbating or burn in hell (salvation chronicles 1)
tw: religious trauma
Book 1 of the Salvation Chronicles
i have so many memories of being in the car with my mom where she told me about hell. i was in sixth grade and i was failing almost all of my classes. my teachers hated me: i didn’t see the purpose behind school, and all i wanted to do was disappear into my notebooks where i wrote my stories or into my headphones with my girl music.
but as much as i wanted to focus on other things, my mom was constantly reminding me that i could burn in hell forever if i wasn’t careful.
“jesus could come back at any moment,” my mom said.
when we least expect him to return, jesus will return, and all the signs suggested that he would return very soon.
“everyone who is a christian will just disappear,” she said. “pilots will just vanish out of planes. the planes will crash and all the passengers will die. drivers will just poof out of cars and crash into pedestrians in the street.”
obviously i wanted to know: will i disappear with the christians? how can i know?
“only god can know what’s in your heart,” she often told me.
the world in which i would be left behind was a terrifying one. my mom told me that there would be these demons who were hybrids between locusts and lions. people would be in such agony from how these demons tortured them that they would run to the tops of buildings and jump off to their deaths. but god would ensure they stayed alive no matter how many stories up they dove from. she told me how these people would be twitching around on the ground while the demons gruesomely tortured them, and i saw myself in the future: plummeting from a building into locusts.
*****
how could i be saved? i was never sure.
so many times i had asked jesus into my heart. so many times i told jesus he was my lord and savior. but my mom said that if we are really saved, the holy spirit works upon our hearts to nurture real change. this is how we know we are saved, she said: we feel the holy spirit working inside us. we will know this by our fruits, our deeds, and also by our thoughts, our feelings, and our desires. are they bad? are they good?
photo my own (stockholm)
could i feel the holy spirit working inside me? at 12, i was instructed to analyze this question, and i knew the salvation of my soul depended on the answer.
the analysis was a short one. despite asking many times for the holy spirit to come into my heart, it was clear i was still a bad person.
a couple years later, my parents threatened to have “men come in the night,” take me out of my bed, and lock me up in a military school. “you’re grades just aren’t good enough,” they liked to say once they looked into the school. so at night i would lay in bed and cry. i imagined myself being tortured by demons and i would ask god: please change me, please make me a good person, please don’t let me go to hell.
my mom said that this time of the demons, the climax of a seven year period during which a man promising peace (the antichrist, who some in my community believed to be the un secretary general kofi annan for opposing the iraq war) would rule over the world as a ruthless dictator. this time would be called the tribulation.
but what, i asked my mom, would happen after the tribulation?
after the tribulation, there would be a great battle where god would destroy all his enemies.
“every knee will bow,” my mom said. “every knee will bow!” she adamantly pointed her finger in the air.
after the battle, all of us would be rounded up in front of god for the final judgment.
“god will open up the book of life,” my mom said to me when i was in sixth grade. “and anyone whose name is not in the book of life, he will throw into the lake of fire. they will burn there forever and ever, and they will never stop feeling pain.”
the fire would never fully consume them. there would always be something left of them to burn.
“why won’t they die?” i asked.
“god won’t let them die,” she said. “they have new bodies that keep them alive.”
i asked my mom how i could know that my name was in the book of life.
“only god can know what’s in your heart,” she said.
i asked her if she and my dad would be sad when i was burning in hell.
she told me of course she would be devastated if i was burning in the lake of fire and she never saw me again. “but god tells us,” she said, “that he will wipe every tear from our eyes.”
the warnings seemed to escalate when my behavior at school and home worsened.
they told me at church how much jesus loved me, but they also told me to think about all the people in my life who weren’t christians. all of them were going to burn in hell. they asked me to share the names of people in my life to whom i would “testify.” and i tried to spread the word to some of my friends, but mostly i was terrified for myself.
as i wrote in my post about lucy dacus and overcoming religious trauma,
as early as 10 years old, i used to sit and wonder: am i the antichrist? i imagined god throwing me down into the deep dark abyss described in revelation. i would fall and fall and fall forever. thinking about it, i would sit there, paralyzed with utter terror. people wondered, “why doesn’t this kid do his homework?” and i wondered, “don’t these people realize if they don’t do something they’re all going to burn in hell?”
sometimes at night when i was trying to fall asleep, i imagined that i was in the lake of fire. i saw my parents and jesus up on the top of a cliff looking down at me and all the other souls who were screaming in agony and pleading for mercy. then i would see jesus and my parents turn their backs and walk away: i saw this in my nightmares.
would god have mercy on me?
i asked my mom about abraham and isaac. god had stopped abraham from killing isaac at the last moment, but the story still haunted me. i knew god liked to test the loyalty of his followers. i asked my mom, “would you also kill me if god told you to?”
she hesitated and i pressed her. finally she admitted that she would.
what choice do we have when issued one of god’s commandments?
*****
toward the end of middle school, i was inspired by this terrifying ride at disney world to create my own scary experience for my little sister. i moved about her room in the dark ruffling things up, trying to make myself sound like an alien.
she screamed obviously, then ran to my parents who woke up from their beds.
in the living room, my mom shouted at me while my sister cried in her arms,
“there is only one explanation for this kind of evil! there is a demon in you!” she pointed her finger adamantly in the air. “this is demonic! you hear me? demonic!”
i went to my room and spent the rest of the night imagining the fires of hell.
*****
a few months later i went to a sleepover in my friend’s basement and we played truth or dare. i told him i wanted to go down on him and he let me. we both got completely naked. i loved running my hands all over his body. we were all over one another with our lips and hands, but we never kissed. kissing felt too intimate and we were sinning already. i knew it was dirty while i touched him, but his skin made me feel so good.
what kind of a person was i, i wondered the next day, to do something so awful?
i never talked to that boy again.
the holy spirit was not inside me. i was wicked and depraved.
i spent hours on the internet watching youtube videos about the existence of hell. there was a recording from some russian geologist who had drilled down so deep that they actually captured audio of the souls screaming in hell.
i used to just sit and listen to them scream. for hours and hours each saturday.
one night in tenth grade my friends asked me to come join them in someone’s basement to hang out. it would have been a 20 minute walk. i didn’t go.
i spent the whole night listening to those people screaming.
forever and ever and ever, i thought. i knew my destiny was to burn for eternity.
the only question was: what does it mean, forever? what will it be like?
i spent hours wondering, “will there be any way to relieve the pain?”
i even asked my mother. “is there any way the souls in hell will just get used to the torture over time?”
“no,” she said with a firm shake of her head. “absolutely not.”
*****
one day when i was suspended for fighting, i wondered, “am i the antichrist?”
the antichrist wouldn’t go to the lake of fire. the antichrist would fall down forever and ever and ever into an infinite dark abyss.
i asked my mom, “could the antichrist choose not to be the antichrist?”
“no,” she said, shaking her head firmly, “the antichrist has no choice. it is god’s plan.”
*****
i hated myself in tenth grade for being so lustful.
“what would you do,” my dad asked me when i had my first girlfriend, “if she tried to touch your penis?”
“i wouldn’t let her!”
“good,” he said, and that was the end of our sex talk.
i watched a lot of porn. i liked to watch men having sex with each other. i also liked to watch women having sex with each other. it was the same-sex videos that i most liked. every time i watched one of these videos, i would end up touching myself and thinking about people, and then i would cry and cry and cry in my bed. i would read the bible and pray to god, “please god, don’t let me burn in hell. please.”
over and over and over, i re-pledged myself to jesus.
“lord jesus, come into my heart and be my lord and savior, forgive me of my sins, send the holy spirit into my heart to purge me of my wickedness.”
and every time i said these words i felt such relief. i was saved. i would feel this burst of happiness: the holy spirit, stirring something up inside me.
but merely hours later an erection would be back, and i would masturbate again, and again i would be crying on my bed, again i would see my parents turning their backs, jesus between them, his clean white robe contrasting with the smoke rising out of me.
why did i have such strong sexual desires? shouldn’t the holy spirit be working inside me? i analyzed and analyzed and analyzed: i couldn’t find anything there.
*****
once my grandpa told me that if you blaspheme the holy spirit, god will never forgive you and you’ll burn in hell forever.
this was the one unforgivable sin.
i looked it up in the bible and it was true:
and so i tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the spirit will not be forgiven. anyone who speaks a word against the son of man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the holy spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come. (matthew 12:31)
i analyzed and analyzed and analyzed the past.
had i ever blasphemed the holy spirit? even just as a joke?
what about just in my mind? could that count? thoughts could be evil too. desires could be wicked too. what if i wanted to blaspheme against the holy spirit?
was this why the holy spirit was not working in me? i had offended him?
was this why i struggled with so much sexual desire?
*****
in tenth grade my masturbation addiction had spiraled out of control. i often thought about that boy and the sleepover. i was so scared of what this meant for my soul.
i snuck out at night and met up with a girl. we made out for two hours and then i went home. i wanted to date this girl, but she wasn’t a christian. i hated myself for how turned on i had felt with her that night. i had no control over my lust. i was evil.
finally i took the step: i signed up for an anti-addiction program online, run by living waters (this was 20 years ago). living waters offered online treatment programs with spiritual mentors, helping christians use the power of the holy spirit to overcome drug abuse, promiscuity, homosexuality, and masturbation, among other symptoms of a soul the holy spirit had not yet fully purified.
i was assigned a mentor, a man in his 40s who would help me quit masturbating.
the theory of the 40 day course was that by drinking from the “living waters” of jesus — meaning the bible — i would invite more of the holy spirit inside me, and by connecting on a deeper level with the holy spirit i’d be able to stop touching myself.
i was reminded that even thoughts were sinful. as jesus said,
but i say unto you, that whosoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart. (matthew 5:28)
the verse played over and over and over in my mind. i needed to stay focused on the living waters of the bible so my mind would always be saturated with images of jesus and god. my whole being must contain nothing but a sense of love for the lord. these were pure thoughts, good thoughts, the thoughts of someone who was saved.
i could keep the evil thoughts at bay, sometimes, when i was completing my coursework and writing my reflections on how much i loved the holy spirit.
“i hate sin so much! i hate sex so much!” i wrote these things.
but in the end my sixteen-year-old mind turned to other things. the boy i went down on in the dark of his basement. the looks he would give me in the hallway, like we had an understanding: we’re never talking again; no one is ever going to know we were ever friends; and we both know why.
then there were fantasies about the girl i snuck out with,
videos on the internet of two men and two women all mixed up into each other,
desires to be touched and to touch,
and a knowledge that there were girls and boys out there who wanted the same.
all these thoughts had me touching myself “for last time.”
every time was “the last time.”
each time i failed i would sob alone in my bedroom with the door closed. i was completely consumed with the certainty that i was doomed to burn forever in hell.
i understood that my lustful thoughts were evil. i understood my sexual desires were evil. i understood i would go to hell for these. i knew that if the holy spirit were inside me, he would make all these torments go away.
each time i caved, i reported my sin to my spiritual mentor. “i am so sorry,” i would say, “i know i have let you down, but my whole soul just hates sin now, i know it won’t happen again. i just need to stay focused on the scripture.”
i tried to convince him that the holy spirit really was working inside me.
masturbation and hell: an afterward
his skepticism bled through his sternly worded responses and alarming questions.
i just needed to change my thoughts so they would stop being sexual.
but i could not change my thoughts. at a certain point i would start reading the bible the moment i had an erection, hoping that the living waters of the holy spirit would make it go away, but only one thing would ever make it go away.
sometimes i walked around with scissors, just wondering what i could do with them.
if your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. it is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. and if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. (matthew 5:29-30)
by the end of the first week of the program, i had masturbated 8 times and my mentor kicked me out of the course.
“your heart is not ready yet for this,” he told me. and i knew it was true.
then i knew so deeply that i was evil and depraved and wicked and hopeless.
but the fear of hell kept me going. every night those old images and sounds came flooding back to me, keeping me up in my bed: the souls screaming deep down under the earth, the antichrist falling forever and ever into the blackness of the abyss, the people jumping from buildings only to be tortured alive by demons, my parents turning their backs on me, the flames in the lake of fire scorching me for billions and billions and billions of years.
i always thought about this: eternity. eternity in hell captivated me and defined my entire worldview. i tried and tried and tried to understand: what will it be like, being tortured, burning, screaming in agony, forever?
“it will never end,” my mom had sometimes said. “never. they will scream and scream and scream and no one will save them. the bible says the fire will never be quenched.”
how could i fix my thoughts and feelings?
reading the bible fed pure thoughts and feelings to my mind, and by this point i was reading the bible for 5 or 6 hours a day during my spring break of sophomore year. but what about the sources of my impure thoughts and feelings? who gave me these?
i remembered what my pastor had told me when i’d started dating an atheist several months before (the relationship did not go well). he said i coudn’t date an atheist.
do not be yoked together with unbelievers. for what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? or what fellowship can light have with darkness? (2 corinthians 6:14)
my friends, i realized. they are the problem. they joke about sex. they hook up with each other. they speak openly about their sexual desires. they say they are christians, but when i look at their behavior, it is clear the holy spirit does not work in them.
you will know them by their fruit (matthew 7:16)
i told all my friends that they were no longer my friends.
“i need to purify myself for the lord,” i told them. “all of you are going to hell.”
they pleaded with me to change my mind. they thought i was joking.
but i didn’t see them for several more months.
no comments about any actual people in this story (except about me)
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This was horrifying, I’m so sorry you went through that. This must have been difficult to write
"by the end of the first week of the program, i had masturbated 8 times and my mentor kicked me out of the course". Hey now, no need to brag.