To all Buddhists who were raised in predominately Christian society, have you ever feared not believing in Jesus? Do you still to this day? Have you ever been told that you will go to hell for not believing in Jesus?
If you had feared at one time, how did you over come this fear?
Fear: opposite of love, in my personal dictionary. To me, although it is found ad nauseaum in the current telling of Christianity, it has nothing to do with Christ or Buddha or Krishna, or any other "divine teacher".
I personally left Christianity for the hypocrisy. Fear is a part of the hypocrisy, feeds it, fuels it. Standard Institutional Christianity, like any patriarchal exclusive telling of Religion, rests on the assumption that it is the Only and Correct way. No other religious system, magical practice, spirituality, or elaborate technical theology can be allowed to stand. In order to uphold the authority of Select Christianity, or Islam, or sometimes even Buddhism, or sometimes Paganism or Hinduism even, all other systems must be discredited. Fear of exclusion from the rewards of the Holy is used as a boundary to keep the sheep in the walled pasture.
I jumped the fence once I saw that the world was a lot more colorful and lively outside of the Religious Farm. After escaping, I'd find myself every so often in a new Religious Farm, attracted by the security and the abundance of food and the seeming kindness of the Masters. But I'm an anarchical sort, and tend to ask lots of "Why? Why this? Why not this? Who says?" types of questions. The way I've been able to approach satisfying those questions is by breaking down all the fences, making firewood out of crosses and wooden buddhas, wandering widely, and cultivating my own answers from scrap and scratch.
Once I was able to see the hypocrisy Eternal Hellish Retribution as a threat from an Almighty and Mostly Benevolent Gawd (Who Really Did Love Me, Even if that Love Equalled Damnation), I was able to cut my leash to Big Poppa Gawd and frolic, picking wild mushrooms and burnt and banned books along the way, with which I nurtured an ever-present connection to immanence and Be-ing and becoming. That connection has always been there and I strutted it freely and un-selfconciously as a child. It was only by cultural and religious indocrination that this natural humanity and spiritual affinity got tarnished.
Still, I live and move through tarnishing and toxic environments. Keeping pure and dirty, loose and natural, free of sullying influences is a full-time job. One thing that's really helpful is to reframe the fearful paradigm. Jesus got you down? Gawd seem like a judgmental un-gentleman? Why not wash them off, redraw them even? Jesus is a world-wanderer full of Love and Compassion who learned about his chi from Mary Magdalene, who is a luxuriant and lusty priestess of the sexual, life-affirming Goddess. Gawd is a woman, or better yet, a child.
Unlearn what the man taught you, unless you like business suits, guilt complexes, and politics as usual.
