when you going to make up your mind?

I kind of had a revelation recently that my relationship with god replicates almost exactly my relationship with my father. However many twists and turns I make, however much I try to do the liberal progressive christian thing it always comes down to gratifying the needs and desires of a demanding male authority figure in ways that deeply, deeply damage me, while ignoring my needs and desires in return for a simulacrum of love and nurture from him. A refusal or even a reluctance to fulfill and gratify those needs and desires results in rejection and a refusal of love and nurture

And it's not like I made this up that description pretty much sums up the god of the bible, the god of the old testament and even the god of the new testament who planned for his son to die so his desires could be gratified

I kind of feel like on the one hand I'm engaging in trauma reenactment to try and change my history, change my relationship with my father and on the other hand I'm just hanging on to this Christianity thing for fear of abandonment or punishment. I was talking to a friend and our conversation made me realise that even if intellectually you ditch the beliefs in eternal damnation, emotionally it can still be there deep down in some part of you. I think my fear of hell is in the same part of me where the belief that i deserved everything that my father did to me is stored. The place in me that still believes that i am an intrinsically bad person who deserves to be hurt and punished and that believes that any goodness, any nurture that is given to me must be paid for because I don't deserve to be loved or cared about

And just as I understand that my relationship with my Father is unsalvageable I'm beginning to understand that my relationship with any form or portrayal of the christian god is also unsalvageable. I don't think I can heal from one without healing from the other