Indeed, and this is the Christianity that terrified me so much that when I was the 10-year-old son of a Baptist pastor, I spent several months almost unable to sleep at night.

I believed it all. I believed that most of humanity was screaming in hell for eternity because they didn't know how to be saved or had never heard the message properly. I believed that most of my friends at school and their families were going to burn.

But worse, as their screams echoed in my imagination, I believed this was the order of the universe. I believed everything my church taught about the nature of God. I believed he had created humans in such a way that most of us would be tortured for eternity.

I believed that only blood and suffering could atone for sin. I couldn't stop thinking about the horror of it all.

So, I couldn't sleep most of the time. I would push my hands against my eyes, terrified of the demons supposedly surrounding all of us, and I would pray the sinner's prayer again as tears leaked between my fingers.

I was sure I had never heard the still small voice I was supposed to hear in reply.

Walking home from school on a cloudy day, I would stare at the sky and try not to cry, so afraid that Jesus was coming right now, and I would be left all alone.

This is Christianity for me. The terror, the torture, the evil built into the universe.

I finally freed myself from the horror of it all when I was about 16 and realized I was an atheist. Oh, the joy! Oh, the liberation! Oh, The blessed relief that the universe was not run by a sadistic monster!

Many years later, I realized that the Evangelical Christianity I was raised in was not the only kind of Christianity, I mean in terms of the sadistic nature of it all.

But to this day, when I think of Christianity, the very first feelings that enter unbidden into my mind are revulsion and fear.

And when I see an Evangelical Christian Church, I shudder.