My paternal grandfather was a self-ordained preacher, who was known for the fiery "Hell fire and Damnation" sermons that he evangelistically preached in one-room rural schoolhouses and various churches that invited him to be guest speaker. According to Grandpa, God was this fearsome tyrant who would "Spew you out of his mouth and send you straight to Hell when you died," if you failed to live up to His rules for human behavior.
The first pair of rules were: "Love God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might," and "You shall have no other God but me," which, as a little kid, I tried to obey, in spite of the fact that Grandpa depicted God as being so vengeful and mean. I will confess though,that my effort to love God, stemmed more from the self-serving fear that He would send me to Hell if I didn't love him, than out of a true desire to obey his rule.
The second pair of rules were: "Love your neighbor as yourself" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." My understanding of those rules, as a four year old, was: If you "Play nice" with the other kids, they will "Play nice" with you. However, that understanding proved to be wrong, because even though I wanted to "Play nice," most of the kids I knew seemed to be more interesting in finding out who would be the "TOP DOG" and "LEADER OF THE PACK," instead of each kid doing unto others as he would have them do unto him."
The third rule was to: "Honor your mother and father." I didn't know precisely what that meant because my father had died before I really knew him. That, plus the fact that my mother seemed to spank me for every childish wrong I said or did, caused me to conclude that honoring my parents meant that I had to love and obey them, no matter if they were dead or how unjustly they treated me.
The fourth rule of "Judge not lest you be judged" I didn't understand at all until I became a lot more enlightened as to the correct meaning of the scriptures, which turned out to be a very significant rule, because if you judge another person who mistreats you, it allows the negative spirit in him (that caused him to mistreat you) to also come into you. You then become like that person, or you spend your lifetime trying to be different from him. In either situation he controls your life.
The fifth rule was to "Turn the other cheek." when someone mistreats you, as my brother (who was four years older than I) was always doing. He would make an ugly face at me, pinch me, or kick me beneath the table, when our mother's back was turned, just to irritate me into responding to him. Without considering whether I should obey the "Turn the other cheek" rule or not, I would instinctively defend myself by jabbing my elbow into his ribs or hitting him hard with my fist. He would then run to our mother, complaining that I had hit him for no reason.
My mother was the one who disciplined me since my father was not there, and she did so with a heavy hand (as that was the way her father had disciplined her). Not only did she spank me with my deceased father's belt for hitting my brother, she also degraded me by telling me I was a hateful little girl, and told me again and again that I was going to Hell if I didn't change my ways. Her injustice to me was further compounded by the fact that her ears seemed to be closed to my plaintive defense of: "But, Bubba started it." What was even more unjust: in my presence, she would give my brother a big hug, wipe his tears away and tell him how much she and God loved him for being such a good boy; her actions telling me loud and clear that I was too bad to be loved. I was four; my brother was eight.
Since I was the one on the receiving end of my brother's bullying, I knew he was good only when he was facing our mother and not good when her back was turned. I then burned with resentment and judgment towards her, not only for spanking me unjustly but also for her seeming "blindness" to my brother's faults. My judgment of her then created a hypnotic receptivity in me that allowed the negative spirit (that was in her) to be projected into my consciousness.
It then superimposed itself over my true selfhood and expressed itself as my "Bad little girl" identity. Since that false identity was created in me by my judgment of my mother's injustice to me, it needed her to keep on mistreating me and for me keep on judging her in order for it to continue to exist in me. Because of that, if she didn't have a reason to scold and belittle me, the negative spirit in me would cause me to say or do something to upset her into doing it. It did the same thing at school. By expressing through me as a chip-on-my-shoulder attitude, it challenged the bullies there to tease and hassle me. I then physically fought them, just as I had done with my brother at home, and for doing so, I was spanked by our teacher in front of the whole class.
Again, I faced the injustice of being degraded and punished for merely defending myself, which then became a pattern for my life. To keep from becoming even more judgmental and feeling guilty for being that way, I would then conform to and appease the very people that bullied and mistreated me. But, then that enabled them to take advantage of me and to make even more unreasonable demands on my time and effort to please them. I would again resent and judge the injustice, feel guilty for it, and the guilt would "feed" and sustain the "Bad little girl" identity in me. (There just didn't seem to be any way I could upgrade that negative identity.)
Had I not, early on, been exposed to all those biblical rules for human behavior by Grandpa, and knew in my heart that there was a way to be saved from such a negative lifestyle, I could easily have become a rebellious outcast in society--seeking to escape my guilt by taking drugs, drowning it with alcohol, eating myself into oblivion and possibly prostituting my body sexually. But, because I had those rules drilled into my head, I could not escape feeling guilty for my failure to abide by them, but in that instance, the guilt proved to be a blessing. It caused me to seek a more humane way to live.
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The understanding that came to me from that quest was to find out that by resenting and judging my mother's unjust treatment of me I had allowed the negative spirit that was in her, to come into me, It then masqueraded as my true identity and replaced my Creator's purpose for my life with its own self-serving agenda. Because I had given my allegiance to it and allowed it to control my feelings, thoughts and actions (even though it was done on the subconscious level), it had become my God. So, in that way I broke the first two rules of "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might" and "You shall have no other God but me."
All of the other rules for good behavior that Grandpa taught, then began to make sense to me, and I could see that if I sincerely sought to love God and to be obedient to his rules, his Holy Spirit would come into me and oust the negative spirit that had made a home there. And that is exactly what happened; The Holy Spirit did come into me; it did oust the negative spirit from me; and as my true God, it is now directing and energizing me to write articles such as this and to fulfill his purpose for my life.
So, now I find it easy to be obedient to God's rules: I can love my neighbor as myself; I can do unto others as I would have them do unto me; I can honor my deceased parents in memory; and I can TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, which means: that by relating to others who mistreat me with true love, patience and understanding, rather than resentment and judgment, I deflect their wrong back to them so they can then become aware of it. In that regard, it takes their attention away from seeing me as being the "Bad little girl" and focuses it on themselves. In being aware of their own shortcomings, they are then given a real opportunity to seek to be corrected of it.
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