Fear and its various levels of intensity from the most inept source to the very ultimate threat of death to one’s self or even to one’s love ones is by far the most effective means of eliciting that total obedience to any authority or obtaining a totally fictitious confession to any imaginable or contrived crime.  There are those amongst us who might go so far as to say that there is no greater crime than that of denying the reality or existence of God; doing so surely guarantees one’s damnation to an eternal hell.  From the very inception of the Christian religion, the most horrific images have been imaginatively conjured by the very same religious despots that also promised an eternity spent in the presence of this wonderful and omniscient God and his angelic hosts; of course, there were required those specific conditions.  From all that is describe and/or implied by these loveless despots, you could easily imagine that their ideal and perfect God must also be the epitome of a divine Jekyll and Hyde.  If God is indeed the singular creator of this universe and all that it contains, then one must also hold this imaginary divine being responsible for the creation of those hellacious devils and their blazing inferno domains of hell.  The idea that God is equally responsible for the creation of evil only clearly depicts Him as possessing an inner quality that I would only imagine being that of a divine daemon.  I would suggest that it just isn’t at all reasonable to have such a contradictory divine entity as being any part of reality.  Now, if you would suggest that all of this imaginary hellfire and brimstone along with its depicted grotesque entities overseeing its tormenting subterranean operation are part of some spiritual fantasy created by some despicable human who was intentionally devoid of love, then I could more easily comprehend such a totally catastrophic illusion.  It is most certainly man himself that creates his own heaven and hell, and both of these creations are experienced as part of life, not death.
          Whether this hellish state, which is diabolically the very opposite of an imagined Garden of Eden, is a reality or not, the very thought and images of such a horrific reality still has the capacity to strike mortal fear in the depths of any soul that is convinced of such an outlandish farce.  The reality should be quite obvious to any reasonable mind; it is specifically the design of these hideously emblazon images to accomplish but just one objective, strike fear.  I cannot imagine any other emotional state that can elicit almost immediate behavior or response when directly imposed upon any individual.  Although there is no more evidence for a hell than there is for the existence of God, the possibility of such a hell has been so reinforced from almost every aspect of our culture.  I am once again reminded of Dante's totally fictitious, Divine Comedy and the manner in which its description of purgatory soon achieved the status of a given reality in the minds of so many otherwise naïve Catholics.  Artists, throughout the ages have put to canvas the grotesque images that they alone imagine to being the representation of the devil and his inferno.  It is irrelevant whether these images are the result of these artists having some spiritual experience, indulging in some psychedelic drug or is totally the product of an artistic imagination capable of relating in vividly colored oils the oral or written images of a spiritually deranged despot, the result remains the same to those confused who are unable to discriminate between fantasy and reality.
          In the Christian religion, fear is not only the prime instrument of discipline when employed directly which is the usual case, fear can become the overriding cause or motive for sometimes heinous behaviors that would have never been employed except for moral impositions of the Christian religion.  There is a whole field of thought within psychology that goes on the proposition that it’s fear that is most likely the driving force that is behind many behaviors; the fear of failure, the fear of being found out, and the fear of just about anything else that doesn't necessarily present an immediate and present physical threat.  “Our only true fear, is fear itself.”  I don't know of anyone that has suffered third-degree burns from an encounter with hell nor have I ever encountered anyone suffering a wound inflicted by some hideous devil.  The intense fear that is inflicted by Christianity on most of its faithful individuals has no substantive matter except that which is imagined by the victim.  This perceived threat can become so intense as to motivate and escalate any normal individual’s behavior beyond that which might otherwise be considered as reasonable moral boundaries.
          I was watching a televised repeated episode of Law and Order which in part was responsible for this chapter.  The storyline dealt with the tragic events of a man of color who was depicted as being a lawyer working in the District Attorney's Office.  This lawyer was reportedly meeting with five or six other men of color on a weekly basis for a poker game.  It was on the night of one of these poker games that this lawyer killed a coworker.  This coworker was a man that had fallen in love with the lawyer and was apparently threatening the lawyer with the exposure of his homosexuality.  One of the black investigators explained to his fellow detectives that homosexuality among black men was totally forbidden.  In the course of the investigation it was discovered through forensics that the victim was HIV-positive.  The detective had made every effort to cover his crime as well as to avoid detection of his homosexuality.  Another tragic part of this story was the realization that the lawyer had passed on his HIV to his wife, who was totally unaware of her husband's hidden forbidden lifestyle.  This lawyer had apparently entered his marriage in an effort to disguise his lifestyle for fear of discovery within his own community as well as the workplace.  Of course, in the end the crime was solved in the lawyer pleaded no contest to the charges in an effort to avoid any further humiliation by the whole incident.  I believe that the moral of the story was intended to relate that no matter how severe the circumstances; murder is never justified.  What this story had dramatically related to me were the tragic consequences resulting from the “fear” of violating what Christians consider as one of God's laws; a law of course, which is not entirely supported by the Bible; unless one were to necessarily take words out of their original context.  My point is simply this; had the Christian religion and some of its more radical despots not have put forth this false allegation of homosexual being such an abomination, then this lawyer would have had nothing to fear.  I am not suggesting that this lawyer's behavior is in any way acceptable.  What I would suggest is that the Christian Church should share its just portion in the commission of this crime.  The awful dynamics involved in this scenario is not unlike the Christian churches contribution to that tragic statistic of one-third of all teenage suicides being gay related.
          If you miss-behave, the boogie man is going to get you!  It's up here is so natural for us humans to employ fear tactics as a means of soliciting good behavior.  Because the Christian Church has been so successful with employment of its crime and punishment program it has become only natural to use negative reinforcement as opposed to positive reinforcement for the discipline of children.  And of course this is not limited to children as our whole criminal system is founded on the threat and fear of punishment to the extreme of a capital sentence, death.  We have become so accustomed to and familiar with this singular approach to law enforcement that it is unconceivable that any other method of social control could possibly work.  We are as conditioned to accepting this form of social control as we are to believing that there is a God.
          I would naturally anticipate being challenged on the great importance that I place upon the factor of fear.  There is little or no doubt that the average Christian today possesses a sense of stability and would probably be very convincing of the supposition that he or she have absolute nothing to fear from their religion.  This appearance and state of homeostasis is deceptive in that the reality is the overwhelming success of the Christian religion to having historically contained the spiritual psyche of the individual with the intentional use of fear and threat of damnation.  In most cases the success has been so thorough as to negate any possibility of the individual ever questioning the veracity of his religion.  All that remains for the Christian church to do is to subtly remind the subdued believer that should he or she stray from the narrowly defined path, hell and the devil very anxiously anticipates and awaits their arrival.  The fallacious promise of a blissful and eternal afterlife to those who obey the church provides that added incentive to confess one's faith, and again, this only adds to that false state of spiritual serenity.  The overall success of the role of Christian church in maintaining law and order within the greater society goes without challenge; the question is whether the end does in fact justify the means.  The church’s sinister indictment and assumption that mankind is essentially evil and therefore requires such an austere and manipulative means of control, should be taken as an insult to man's higher nature, love.  I will remind you again of my supposition that evil is simply the absence of love.  It may interest you to know that I arrived at this supposition because of my respect for the teachings of Jesus, as it was Jesus who had so vehemently proclaimed that the entirety of the law was based upon but one principal, love.  It is such a paradoxical yet very understandable contradiction that the Christian church has simply failed to yield its moral authority to Jesus and his singular commandment of loving one's neighbor.  The Christian church has been so focused on the concept of original sin and the damnation of mankind without the intervention of the Christian church and its bogus offer of salvation, that it has in effect condemned mankind to a spiritual slavery that prohibits the manifestation of man's greatest potential, that of living a life based solely on love; “and why should you do that;  So that you might have joy in your life!”
          Being the realist that I have become, I am deeply saddened with the realization that most Christians have been so thoroughly brainwashed into a sedated state of blissful ignorance.  This is just another side effect of the repeated and negative imprinting on the DNA memory strands.  It would appear that most individuals in our Western culture are born with an inherent predisposition for obedience to a spiritual moral authority based solely on the Christian churches doctrines.  The once commonly overt and aggressive use of fear has over a great deal of time been displaced with only subliminal reminders sufficient to maintain the blind faith of and obedience to a religion that has as its sacred trademark the name of a Jewish teacher and social rebel, Jesus.  The despicable images and concept of a hell and devil were created and perfected essentially by Catholic despots.  I am not convinced that these hideous creations were necessarily materialized for some sinister purpose.  I do contend that their creation was primarily for the purpose of soliciting obedience very much in the same manner as individuals in my own generation might say to a child, “behave or the boogie man will get you!”  Initially it was probably artists that gave life to these images and today these images and ideas of an invisible demonic force are vividly depicted on the big-screen; they are grouped under the genera of “horror films.”  It has become the matter of big business and personalities like the author, Stephen King.
            It is easy to discount movies as being fantasy, but attending a fundamentalist Christian group that is holding meetings for the purpose of casting out devils can often have a rather dramatic impact on the naïve.  It can seem so real and at the same time many of these religious gatherings can be discounted because they are seen as being on the fringe of society.  What is so dramatic and lends some potential credibility to this casting out of demonic forces is the reality that even the austere Catholic Church has designed special services for that specific purpose and a ceremonial prescription starting with the sprinkling of holy water and the forward presentation of a crucifix in the face of the possessed subject.  Fantasy or not, the subject of demons and demonic forces has been an integral part of Western culture and can be a source of great fear.
          There is no way to measure the full impact of this kind of fear on society or the individual, as the subject matter is considered to be either pathological in nature or belonging in that forbidden realm of religious beliefs.  It is interesting that even our own Thomas Jefferson made a distinction between the Christian faith and the teachings of Jesus.  Consider these words that Jefferson wrote on the front of his well-worn Bible: "I am a Christian, that is to say a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.  I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator and, I hope, to the pure doctrine of Jesus also."  To the pure doctrine of Jesus “also” tells me that Jefferson really understood the difference between the Christian religion and the “pure doctrine of Jesus also.”  Jesus did not nor had any cause to employ the tactic of “fear” in his teachings and nowhere does he refer to hell as a threat to one's bad behavior.  The idea of his having descended into hell after the crucifixion was something that wasn't added to Christian etiology until the Fourth Century, and even then it was not clear as to what was actually at the end of his supposed descent into that mysterious underworld.  In any case, Jesus had avoided not only the negative use but any use of fear at all as part of his teachings; it was usually what one could do as opposed to what one should avoid, with the noted exception for making judgments of other or prying out the mote from another’s eye!  Jesus’ number one commandment was another of those positives as opposed to the general mode of the Ten Commandments, which were essentially stated as “don’ts.”
          The question remains and is repeated as to why so many Christians have been able to remain so faithful to a religion which by all other accounts should have failed in the face of reality?  The circumstances that gave rise to Christianity and permitted it to establish an almost totally impenetrable foot hole with the establishment of such an unquestionable authority has changed in such a manner as to entertain the likelihood of a new era where man is more aptly to achieve his spiritual emancipation.  Fear was certainly a formidable means employed for the establishment of Christianity and so successful especially since its target was a population of naïve and uneducated slaves.  The images of both heaven and hell became such an integrated part of Western culture and with the reins of education being solely in the hands of the Catholic Church, there was little hope of the truth ever prevailing in such an oppressive atmosphere.  Man's threshold of tolerance for oppression increasingly waned in the absence of any viable alternatives to the Christian’s convincing and relentless presentation of an existence and human condition that was ruled by but one God.  Fear won the day and ignorance was the state of mind that maintained the church's dominance over man and his culture.  This rising Age of Reality will be a spiritual renaissance in which man will be elevated to his rightful position as the pinnacle of evolution, most certainly in the definitive domain of this earth and very possibly of the entire universe.  Constantine's boogie man just isn't as frightening to modern man who has been introduced to a reality that is simply far more miraculous than the fairy tales and mythologies of religion.
          In this Age of Reality it will be the church that has reason to fear; the fear of losing its dominance over the affairs of man.  To defend against their loss of power, the church will no doubt frantically proclaim that without its moral authority, mankind is incapable of maintaining what might be considered as a reasonable state of law and order.  This might have been true in a time when ninety percent of the population was unjustly oppressed under austere slavery, and that population of slaves would not have had the necessary understanding or experience to govern culture were they to have ever been so empowered.  Even though the masses are still essentially enslaved to ideologies and a religious moral authority that is righteous beyond any conception, they nonetheless have the essential social tools and understanding to succeed; the question will be asked as to whether they have the necessary motivation.  I am reminded of Churchill’s infamous statement, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!”  Since neither heaven or hell nor God or the devil is a reality, there is nothing to fear except that fear itself.  That righteous indignation that seems to be such a common trademark of the modern Christian is an ominous foe to reality.  The real dilemma for you and me is our inability to prove to the Christian that his God simply does not exist.