The Living Daylights
My journey with the spiritual abuse of sensationalism
By Anni Ponder
“There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear.”
I was 11 years old when fear took up its tyrannical residence in my body.
The evening started harmlessly enough. My mama was taking me to Wednesday night prayer meeting, which I typically looked forward to because maybe that cute boy would be there. Plus, there was usually a fun activity for the kids while the adults circled up a few rooms down the hall.
I had no idea this night would cripple me for years to come.
Walking into the nursery where the kids were already gathered, I saw Martha, the woman in charge of us for the night, plop a tape into the VCR. As the screen flickered to life, I thought, Oh, goodie. A movie. Maybe I can sit by the cute boy and perhaps his hand will find mine. It’s always the small pleasures, isn’t it?
But he sat by someone else, so I found a seat by another friend, trying to hide my disappointment. At least Martha could have brought snacks, I sulked.
As the story unfolded on the tiny screen, I forgot my frustrations and became engrossed in the narrative. The film, made a few decades back, when Christian sensationalism was at a fever pitch, depicted the story of a young woman whose husband was a faithful Christian who disappeared one day in the secret rapture. She had been on the fence about Jesus, and her husband had been trying to convert her, but she was just unsure. So—as I remember it—one morning he vanished while he was shaving. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as she walked into the bathroom to find the electric razor buzzing, and he was gone. The theme song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” reminded viewers that the protagonist had missed her chance, but there was still hope. She was stuck on the earth presumably for the coming seven years of tribulation, but if she turned to Jesus now, she could still avoid hell.
The specifics are fuzzy in my mind, but from what I recall, she spends the remainder of the film trying to avoid becoming one of the wicked who are thrown into eternal fire: she has to refuse the tattoo of the Mark of the Beast, and she must escape and live in the wilderness until Jesus’ return. At one point, she watches as her pastor—who somehow missed the rapture himself—is shot in the head for refusing the tattoo.
The last scene I remember is her running from an ambulance, a police car, and a helicopter off into the desert, while the theme song plays once more, reminding viewers to repent and straighten out now before it’s too late.
I don’t know how that sounds to you, but it positively terrified adolescent me. Chilled me to the core. As the credits rolled, I sat there motionless, scarcely breathing. I’m going to be chased by the police one day. Probably tortured for my faith.
You see, this wasn’t the first time I had thought about end-time events—far from it. I was raised in a church that emphasized a narrow and literal interpretation of the apocalyptic literature in the Bible (namely, the books of Daniel and Revelation), and I was accustomed to lots of talk and speculation about what would happen to us faithful few in The Time of the End, as we called it. Though we held some theological differences from the movie (we didn’t believe in the secret rapture, for one thing), there was enough resonance that I could picture myself in the young woman’s shoes. I had learned that soon—very soon!—there would come a time when my church would be among the outlaws of the day thanks to our particular set of fundamental beliefs, and we were bound for the torture chambers. There were graphic images of the martyrs of old burning alive, still holding onto their faith, and we children were told in no uncertain terms that we had a similar fate to look forward to. But if we would stand fast and not renounce our beliefs, Jesus would be proud of us and reward us in heaven.
Before watching the movie, these things made me pretty uneasy, but now my mind went into a frenzy. Suddenly, I could see it all coming true. There I would be, just like the young woman, running from authorities, sometimes narrowly escaping, always out of breath. I now had a setting and a soundtrack to go along with the theology I had learned in my church’s Revelation Seminars, and I began to panic.
I looked around the room. Martha was tidying up, and the others were going out to play on the lawn.
I couldn’t speak. Martha asked if I wanted to go outside, and I gave a slight nod. Once out in the cool of the night, I wondered how my life could continue. How long until we’re on the run from police? How will we survive in the wilderness? What if I’m caught? Will I have the strength to withstand torture? Does it hurt if you’re a martyr, or does Jesus spare you the pain?
The other kids were playing a game. How can they possibly play after what we’ve just seen? Don’t they know what’s coming?
I was shaking by the time the adults adjourned and my mama took me by the hand. Once in the safety of our car, I began to weep tears of fear and dread. I told her the whole story. She tried to console me with Bible verses and songs, but nothing eased the fear. My little heart beat wildly and my palms were sweating. The more we talked, the more worked up I became.
I hardly slept at all that night, and the few moments of sleep I managed to get were marked by vivid nightmares. When morning came, my first thought was one of dread: I am going to be tortured for my faith one day. The terrifying scenes from the film and the haunting song jumped in front of all other thoughts and played on an endless loop. All day long, as I tried to focus on school, chores, and piano practice, every-other thought was one of sheer terror. It was a waking nightmare I couldn’t escape. And it didn’t let up.
For the next year-and-a-half, I lived in almost constant panic. The nightmares were horrendous—the sort of world-on-fire chase scenes where my feet were made of concrete and hideous villains were after me. Every morning, as soon as I would wake, my first thought would be about my impending persecution and doom. They’re going to come for me one day! I’ll have to be tortured for my faith! The song from the movie played on repeat in my mind, and I imagined every stranger as a threat. When someone would come to the door to deliver a package, I would hide. I didn’t want to talk to the nice salesperson behind the counter at the drugstore. I hid my face when we had to ask someone for directions. I fully accepted the belief that one day, everyone would be on the hunt for anyone from my church, because the whole world would view us as the cause of all the trouble. And so, I reasoned, if any stranger were to learn of my faith, they would probably file that information away, and one day (which we were taught over and over would be very, VERY soon), that stranger would remember me and turn me in to the authorities.
I was nauseated all the time. My whole body ached. I had this feeling of heat and pressure in my legs. I’m sure my immune system took a hit from all the stress, because I was always sick with something. My adults were pretty worried about me and tried to intervene. My papa sent me a long, handwritten letter about how I could trust Jesus. He told me in great detail the story of Lazarus, the guy Jesus raised from the dead, in the hopes that I would come to have peace and understand that Jesus is Lord of all, even death. All that did was remind me I was going to die.
Other adults tried to help as well. My beloved teacher tried to encourage me to trust God. My mom’s best friend talked with me for hours. Nothing helped. I just went further and further into my paranoia. My mom enrolled me in therapy. My counselor tried to listen and help me unpack this, but there really isn’t any relief for a terrified adolescent who knows without a doubt that their doom is coming soon, that it will be incredibly painful, that they will likely be abandoned by family and friends, and that they cannot give in because Jesus is counting on them to spread the faith. Seriously, what can you say to that?
And so I suffered, feeling all alone, and found no relief. It was honestly worse than experiencing my parents’ tumultuous divorce. It was hell.
The living daylights were scared right out of me.
I wish I could tell you what finally lifted the fear, so that if you know somebody dealing with this kind of thing, you could share it with them. But I really don’t know what helped. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I found myself thinking new thoughts, and having longer breaks from the ones about persecution. On occasion, I would pursue some scene in my imagination that wasn’t frightening, and then come to the happy realization that I had not been thinking about The Time of the End for a little bit. I almost didn’t know what to make of it, because for that year-and-a-half, I had really only had one thought, repeated endlessly. Gradually, I started to thaw.
As much as that was a relief, the fear still lived in my heart, and whenever anybody even mentioned something about the end times, or I heard a succession of musical notes that resembled the song, or a preacher stood up and opened to the book of Revelation, I was immediately back in panic mode. That response didn’t go away until much, much later in my life, not until after I came to peace with the idea of my own mortality, which is a beautiful story for another day.
Why am I sharing this now?
Because I want to say something to the Christian community. I want to remind us all that this kind of fear-mongering is poisonous—I would even go as far as to say it is a form of spiritual abuse. I know it is often done in the hopes of winning souls to Jesus, but I would posit that anyone who is scared into Christianity is made a slave of fear. And that’s the opposite of love.
Now, more than ever, Jesus’ followers need to take seriously the apostle Paul’s words about dwelling on good things: whatever is pure, lovely, and of good report. The world is so full of fear and violence, our collective thinking so focused on everything that could possibly go wrong. The anxiety is crippling us. Terrorizing ourselves with doomsday prophecies and worst-case scenarios keeps us in defensive mode and demoralizes us.
What if, instead, we determined to think and speak about goodness, about love, about joy? What if we took Paul seriously and trained our minds to focus on excellent things? What if we stopped scaring folks to Jesus and instead tried to imitate our Teacher, whose magnetism drew in the masses?
Maybe, instead of being scared to death, we could help create a world that is unafraid to live.
Maybe we could be the living daylights.
