Mom, Can You Pick Me Up? They’re Talking about Eternal Damnation
I stepped out of the sliding van door and frowned. The van belonged to my relatively new friend, Melissa Harvey, and the church whose parking lot we were in also belonged to her, in a sense. “Faith Fellowship Church presents: Bring a Friend Night!” is what the flyer Melissa showed me read, and what followed was her sincere, verbal invitation and assurance that it would be so fun. I hesitantly agreed. My background in religion was lacking, as I was raised to believe that there was Something out there, probably God, but nothing we could definitely know.
Melissa picked me up on the night of, and a quick 5-minute car ride brought us to the rural church that I had been to many times as a child with a different friend of mine. All of my memories of time spent there playing soccer and volleyball, running around in the grass outside, and pretending to sing along to the religious songs that played before each worship service hit me when my eyes landed on the cream colored, one-level building. Smiling faces would greet me and offer me juice or cookies, and ask if my family was a part of the church or not. No grand arches, no beautiful architecture or stained glass windows, no 10-foot-tall doorway, Faith Fellowship was a modest complex that didn’t draw much intrigue. When I returned at 14 years old, still technically a child, I was met with a completely different form of “hospitality.”
The church was composed of two separate buildings: The first (the nicer, bigger, and more church-like one) was mainly for adults and Sunday worship service, and the second (the makeshift, newly erected, FEMA-camp like one) was for teens and their worship, as well as for different bible study groups. “Bring a Friend!” night was held in the dingier building meant for teens while the parents had their own session in the main one. Upon entrance, I found myself wondering if the teen-designated building was even safe to occupy. There were multiple wooden beams, crooked from weight bearing, that would unapologetically give you a million splinters should your bare arm graze one. The deep blue carpeted floor was already permeated with the relentless smell of moldy, musty bibles that stayed in your clothes and your hair long after you left. There was a “gymnasium” that was nothing but a concrete room with a metal cage holding 20–30 obscure dodge balls ranging in shape and size.
The room in which we all gathered was tiny; at capacity, it probably held 25 people. That night, they crammed upwards of 40 of us in there, and those not lucky enough to secure a seat had to line the walkways in packs. Though, I’d argue that sitting wasn’t much more desirable. The folding chairs they set up were almost all broken in one way or another. With no heating or AC system, the room quickly rose to an unholy temperature, forcing me to violently fan myself with the “Jesus Loves You” pamphlet I was given.
After a few minutes of waiting, a young, short, white man emerged from the crowd and stood behind a massive podium that was at the front of the room. He introduced himself as Pastor Frank, his voice unsettling in a way that I couldn’t quite describe. The beginning of his speech felt light as he thanked all of the “friends” for coming and encouraged us to come back and bring our families so that they could join the supportive community Faith Fellowship fostered. I nodded slowly as he spoke, knowing damn well I had no intention of coming back on my own free will.
“Let me see a show of hands, who of the friends here tonight regularly attend church? Even if it’s not this one,” he said, his ghoulish grin fading away with each word. There was a general shuffle in the room as arms raised, paired with the rustling of bracelets and colliding of hands in the air. I scanned the room with narrowed eyes, feeling like the only one left with hands folded neatly in my lap. “That’s good, I like to see that,” Pastor Frank continued.
“God loves us all, He does. But, as I often say, His love is unconditional with a few conditions,” he began, lowering his voice under a chuckle. “For those of you who didn’t raise your hand, I want you to listen closely. The Bible says that in order to serve God as faithfully as possible and be allowed entry into Heaven on Judgment Day, you must regularly attend church. I didn’t make this rule, okay, He did. You’ll wind up not in Heaven, not in purgatory, but in Hell. And Hell? A lot of people think, ‘oh yeah, it’s fine, I’m gonna be sitting around a campfire in Hell with all my friends, drinking a beer for the rest of time!’ But that’s not it at all. Right now, imagine the most intense pain you’ve ever felt. For eternity, you will be completely alone, engulfed in flames, experiencing the most excruciating pain imaginable.”
It felt like the entire building began to shake with wrath and anger that stemmed from an entirely unwarranted source. I turned my head to the right and envisioned the shaky wooden beams lighting up in flames as the Pastor went on making threatening remarks until the entire place, the chairs, the piles of moldy bibles, the Jesus posters, were all on fire. I wanted see children screaming and running, begging to be let out before the structure collapsed on us all from the flame-inducing words. I wanted chaos to erupt and for everyone to take each other’s hands and rebel against Pastor Frank’s beliefs. I shook my head and looked around again, but this time more frantically. Surrounding me were blank faces, completely un-phased by this man’s powerful words. Hands were folded neatly in laps and there were no cries for help, but instead just the occasional cough. There was no sense of panic or discomfort with what was happening in front of us in the overwhelmingly beige room. The lack of reaction and outrage in the room only made me more overcome with an emotion I couldn’t describe. I wanted to stand up and leave, but the pressure that was placed over us by such damningly mesmerizing words paired with the physical obstacle course of an over-capacitated room discouraged me.
I wondered if his words could be true, if this small man preaching in this makeshift, natural disaster-like shelter could be correct. Was I going to spend eternity burning? Just because I didn’t attend church on Sundays? And that’s not even mentioning my budding awareness of my sexuality, my use of curse words to sound cool amongst my friends, and what about the Polyester blend shirt I was wearing that very night? When my body temperature spiked and a drop of sweat fell down my forehead and on to my cheek, it seemed as if I was already beginning to feel the effects of my sins and my future residence in Hell. My insides prickled and contorted as I fought for air in that tiny room, trying not to focus on my hands numbing and my eyes welling up with the Devil’s tears. If I stayed any longer, I was going to burst.
After essentially crawling my way out, I was reunited with the outdoors. Alone, miles away from town at night in a woody area somehow felt far safer than Faith Fellowship Church. Bending down to my knees, I went over everything I had heard in my head while trying to avoid the impending doom I felt hanging over me like a guillotine. I wondered how that could be possible, how, even if you were a good person, God could still let you burn in Hell for not worshipping Him in a specific way. Could it all truly be that serious? Why isn’t belief in Him enough? I looked back at the building I had escaped and sighed. Though I hadn’t fully processed the information I received that night, I decided upon one thing matter-of-factly: Faith Fellowship’s God was not one I wanted to know.
