The one I saw read, “Jesus is coming…and is he ever pissed off”
Religion is likely to be the catalyst for some of the worst parenting out there. Only untreated mental health issues appears to be worse…but it’s a short walk…
My mother prided herself on being a good Christian. She was also a toxic narcissist with untreated paranoid schizophrenia. Sort of like the Holy Trinity of shitty parenting. Your father and my mother should go bowling.
Religion demands strict obedience and strongly reprimands dissent or threats to its authority. The judgmental element is hard wired in…be good, go to Heaven…act out or act up and you go to Hell.
Humans follow the crowd. No one wants to be shunned for having their own mind, so in order to remain in the flock we develop these nasty little cognitive biases and distortions to make all of this authoritarian bullshit acceptable and normal.
Your siblings and likely your mother were merely enablers for your father. I doubt they’ve become anything different now.
The speech Al Pacino gave in The Devils Advocate sums it all up:
“Who are you carrying all those bricks for anyway? God? Is that it? God? Well, I tell ya, let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He’s a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do? I swear, for His own amusement, His own private cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It’s the goof of all time. Look, but don’t touch. Touch, but don’t taste. Taste, don’t swallow. And while you’re jumpin’ from one foot to the next, what is He doin’? He’s laughin’ His sick, fuckin’ ass off. He’s a tight-ass. He’s a sadist. He’s an absentee landlord. Worship that? Never!”`
This was never your fault. You were a child with no power in that system. You learned coping mechanisms and strategies to survive. You needed them then.
You don’t need them now. It’s highly likely that your father was a victim of abuse or neglect as a child as well. Generational trauma is real. It exists under the cover of “every parent is a good parent” and the societal distortion that we must never question how a parent raises their children.
I would suggest you stop giving him free rent in your head. You will never gain any acceptance or understanding ruminating on a shitty childhood…trust me. If they cared you’d have noticed by now.
You need to come to some radical acceptance of your childhood. What he did has no excuse or justification. You need to stop trying to understand or rationalize it and move on.
From my experience, no contact is best. If, for any reason, you do have contact with your family just grey rock them.
