lisarea

I was raised non-religious, first in a very Catholic neighborhood, then in a Southern Baptist town.

I had friends and classmates and others try to convert me several times during my childhood, and I don't remember a single argument that DIDN'T revolve around hell. I'm sure that there were some, but I don't remember them.

I had nightmares for years as a result of some of these horrifically graphic descriptions of hell, and I genuinely tried to believe in god at several points during my childhood just because the images were so upsetting to me. I would try to pray, and try to imagine that there was a god, but I couldn't. It was just too silly.

Oddly, the idea of hell was just too horrifying to me to be able to discount completely.

Maybe people really are trying to use peaceful and happy images of religion to sway children, but at least in my case, that is not what stuck.

The Other Michael

As a kid I wanted to go to Oz, not Heaven. Especially if I could have an army tank to drive around in - that would have been really cool.

I'm pretty sure that Sunday School was not without the occasional mention of h-e double toothpicks.

cheers,
Michael

Talulah

There is always the fact that fundy children, who are taken to church so often and made to listen to so many sermons geered towards adults and not children, will absorb the message of hell without even knowing where or how it happened. So what if they aren't taught until a more mature age in their own classes about hell, just sitting in a fundy church will be sufficient to horrify any young mind and make them sensitive to the 'dangers of hell.'

Talulah