I was raised to believe that everything was demonic. Sort of.
With a Catholic mother, guilt and sin and repentance and all that wonderful Catholic stuff was ingrained in me.
My father, however, was a different story.
He’s religious too, but in a different sense to the usual view of ‘religion.’ He does identify himself as a Christian, in the sense that he believes in the monotheistic Christian God, Christ is our savior, Satan is all evil, reads the Holy Bible- that sort of thing. But he doesn’t practice the belief as other Christians do.
After my parents got divorced and were remarried a year later to their current spouses, my father began going to my step mom’s church. But it wasn’t really a church, at least not in the traditional sense. It first began in someone’s house, specifically my step uncle’s house where they’d gather to hear the message of the Lord preached by my step great uncle. They eventually rented a room in the Senior Center near Santa Rosa Ave. Most of the people there were related. The people who were not were introduced to it by one of the family members. As you can guess, it wasn’t a very huge crowd. But every Saturday morning- yes, Saturday not Sunday- everyone would gather in this room to hear the word of the Lord. As a kid during the time, I would go into another room with all the other kids where we’d usually color pictures of ourselves holding hands with Jesus. We were brilliant artists, to say the least. It was all quite normal with only a few differences. My father became stricter but he was strict as is, with or without religion. But I could tell as a child there was something different about this church than any other churches I’ve seen or gone to, especially when comparing it to the Catholic Cathedrals I would go to with my mom. When we all prayed at the end of the message, many of the adults would cry full heartedly and some would speak in tongues. But I’d take that any day than the constant sitting and standing up shenanery that goes on during Catholic mass.
It all drastically changed when my father told us he was moving to Colorado. The reason being that God told him to. My brother and I were eight and ten years old and mostly living with my mother at the time. My father wanted us to move with him along with our step mom and step sister but he lost the case during court. We had been to Colorado before to go to a church that was connected to ours in California. The pastor, or rather the prophet as they call it, there is the leader, for lack of a better word. He began the church in California and Colorado and later went to Argentina to begin one there. There’s a couple across the globe in which he is all connected to. Their belief is based on an Apostolic foundation where they are essentially preparing for the End Times. Their belief is a bit extreme and abnormal. I’m not trying indicate if it’s right or wrong, but it’s definitely different. The message begins with people openly talking about some of things they struggle with in life that, to their belief, is demonic. Sometimes it can be very personal. Everyone knows a lot about each other which makes them very close and feel like family rather than people you see once a week. I’ve known these people now for ten years and I do consider them like family.
The parts where I struggle with the most is their view of how everything is pretty much demonic and therefore should be restricted from one’s own life. I’ve had countless of books taken away from me because of this belief, I’ve had clothes and jewelry that had certain symbols thrown away because of this belief, so on and so forth. With my dad, dressing “modestly” was always the biggest struggle, especially in recent years. My dress, shorts, skirts all have to be an appropriate length, wearing black nail polish or too much of black clothing was looked down upon etc… Luckily, I’m 18 years old now and my father doesn’t have too much say when it comes to what I wear especially since I only see him once a year. But for my step sister, I see all the rules she must live by. For example, the church doesn’t allow any girls under 18 to wear a two piece swimsuit. And there’s plenty more of other rules or guidelines these children and even the adults must live by. Excuse me, not must, since they believe we all have the freedom to choose- but not without consequence if you choose incorrectly.
So it’s interesting, almost humorous, for someone like me who was brought up with this view of everything being demonic and constantly hearing about Satan’s evil influence in our daily lives, to be taking a class about the history of Satan. I’m sure to them choosing to take such a course is demonic itself, because it makes you think and where there is thought, there is doubt and the ability for Satan to easily trick you with that awful thing called logic and a brain that God gave to us.
