So, we were essentially both dreaming of superpowers, if you count my "impromptu exorcism" feat as a superpower. Which means, I think, that we remained pretty normal kids! (Unrelated comment: On those occasions as a kid when I actually imagined having comic-book superpowers, for some reason it was the Plastic Man / Elastic Man / Mister Fantastic "super-stretching" that appealed to me. I know, I know, I can't imagine why someone would want that over flight or super-strength or X-Ray vision, but there you go...)
Your comment on "as if someone could see what I was thinking" does touch on a chilling aspect of religion: the sad submission to God's "thought police" role, fearing that too many bad thoughts could earn eternal punishment. I don't recall evidence of my being overly messed up mentally by that; in the long run, even a kid has to realize that it's impossible to squelch all "bad" thoughts, and has to accept and forgive some amount of them in himself. Yet the worry still popped up often... It's a feeling of always being graded by an omniscient teacher, completely silently, with no chance to appeal the grade, or even know the grade status in progress until the final pass-fail test. Even if the kid learns to somehow minimize that worry, years and years of living with it can't be healthy.
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Render unto Caesar
Godspeak
Hands that help are far better than lips that pray.
So, we were essentially both dreaming of superpowers, if you count my "impromptu exorcism" feat as a superpower. Which means, I think, that we remained pretty normal kids! (Unrelated comment: On those occasions as a kid when I actually imagined having comic-book superpowers, for some reason it was the Plastic Man / Elastic Man / Mister Fantastic "super-stretching" that appealed to me. I know, I know, I can't imagine why someone would want that over flight or super-strength or X-Ray vision, but there you go...)
Your comment on "as if someone could see what I was thinking" does touch on a chilling aspect of religion: the sad submission to God's "thought police" role, fearing that too many bad thoughts could earn eternal punishment. I don't recall evidence of my being overly messed up mentally by that; in the long run, even a kid has to realize that it's impossible to squelch all "bad" thoughts, and has to accept and forgive some amount of them in himself. Yet the worry still popped up often... It's a feeling of always being graded by an omniscient teacher, completely silently, with no chance to appeal the grade, or even know the grade status in progress until the final pass-fail test. Even if the kid learns to somehow minimize that worry, years and years of living with it can't be healthy.