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JOHN DEMPSTER: Where was God when I was quivering with fear as a teenager?


By John Dempster

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Jeff Zycinski.
Jeff Zycinski.

Would you say you were indoctrinated?

That’s what Jeff Zycinski asked me. I was appearing on the Inverness-based Ways to Wellbeing podcast to discuss my memoir Choosing Joy.

I took a moment before answering. Indoctrination? The constant promotion of one particular ideology while not allowing any dissent? I thought back to my teenage years, to some of what I heard in church and my instinctive reaction to it, to the alienation and hopelessness it produced.

“Yes,” I replied. “I was indoctrinated.”

I was chatting about this afterwards with a friend. He suggested that not all indoctrination is bad – in any family, the parents’ beliefs and values are passed on to the children. But to me ‘indoctrination’ implies something life-denying.

John on the Ways to Wellbeing podcast.
John on the Ways to Wellbeing podcast.

It’s perfectly normal and appropriate when what’s passed on is a way of living and believing which is joyful and nurturing, which energises children to live creatively and well to the benefit of themselves and others, encourages them to ‘taste and see’, to reach their own conclusions, to live abundantly.

The churches I was brought up in celebrated the wonder of God’s love, yet what lodged in me was not joy, but fear. Was I ‘lost in sin’? Would I be in hell because I couldn’t get being ‘born again’ right? Would I be left behind when Jesus came?

And I further indoctrinated myself with these fearful thoughts. I didn’t consider questioning what I told myself. It seemed to be God’s unchallengeable truth.

How do I react to this now? I could rage against churches, parents, against the God who let me go through this, but rage is destructive, both to the enraged person and to those who are its target. I could sink into numb denial ‘No, they meant well. The problem lay with me, and the way I reacted’.

Or I could name, and forgive. Yes, churches messed me up; yes, parents could have been more probing and empathic. And where were you God, when I was quivering with fear as a teenager and called out to you and there was only silence? How could you see a vulnerable child weeping, and do nothing?

Yet I forgive you, parents, churches, God, and if there is anything to forgive, I forgive you, my young self. This forgiving helps me reach out in love to those in whose care I was wounded, and to the God whose great love I have glimpsed, despite the mysterious divine game of hide-and-seek.

My lovely discovery is that Christianity is not, when alive and real, an ideology. It’s a way of living which, on our more positive days sets us free not just to think as Jesus thought, but to live as Jesus did, abundantly.


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