Letter 31

I grew up among the Fundamentalists. I know how they think. My first novel was basically about this.

You have to understand the vigor with which the bubble they live in is built. Rock Music? It'll let the demons in. So will yoga, martial arts, comic books, and any reading material that wasn't either the Bible, or approved by the SBC in Nashville. Dungeons and Dragons? Devil worship.

And sex? Even thinking about sex will make you an eternal roast toasty. Not to mention turning you into a disease raddled crack whore. And if your teen boy is worshipping the devil's serpent alone, well, he's obviously gay, since he is having sex with a man.

Homosexuality is, of course, contagious. Seeing gay people, much less talking to them will turn you gay.

Hardy Boys? Secularist propaganda. Here, read "Joy Spartan," Jesus driven girl sleuth. I don't think there was a single page of that drivel that didn't have the word "Jesus" on it at least twice.

My father used to say that anything that was not from God was from the Devil. Secularism, Humanism, or worse Secular Humanism was the doctrine of the Anti-Christ. Universities were nothing more than corruption factories. Another gem from Dad, "Children don't need to be taught to think, they need to be taught what to think."

Living with a demon behind every bush is stressful. Constantly policing your every thought, and, importantly, your child's every thought is as essential as it is impossible. Secularists, you know, live lives of misery and debauchery, which in all their little cartoon books ends with being thrown into a lake of fire by a square jawed, white robed Caucasian angel.

The common thread here, of course, is that any pleasure they haven't pre-approved is sinful and destructive. You can trust no one who isn't "born again." And any day now, if you're not "saved," everyone you know and depend on may suddenly vanish in the Rapture, leaving you alone to face the horrors of the Tribulation.

Terrible fear to put on a child. But that's rather the point.