Why do religious teachers threaten people with fear of future punishment? (PK Answered 17)

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question why do religious people religious teachers threaten people with fear of hell and then make them do religious activities which simply exploit their money answer when religious teachers tell people to do some things and avoid some things that is not a threat that is a warning the difference between a threat and a warning is that when a person threatens something that means that person will cause the harm so for example if a gunda threatens if you don’t give me hafta if you don’t give me money I will beat you up and I will break your shop so that person is only going to cause the harm afterwards that is a threat whereas a warning is if a doctor tells that you have started getting TB now if you don’t take these medicines then your cuff will become unbearable blood will come out of your cuff and you will lose weight and eventually you may even die now the doctor is not causing all that to happen that is a natural process that is happening and the doctor is warning so threat means that which is going to happen that the threatener makes that happen whereas warning means that which is going to happen the person who is giving a warning wants to protect us and prevent that from happening and is telling us a course of action to do by which that can be prevented so when in the scriptures there is there are statements that we should do we should avoid certain activities and we should do certain activities the activities we are told to avoid that is not a threat that is a warning so when we do activities which are unhealthy which are undesirable which are sinful they bring bad consequences upon us in this world also we see that when people smoke when people drink that has hazardous health consequences so when scriptures tell us don’t do these things that and when religious teachers repeat the scriptural teachings that is not a threat that is a warning and to call a warning as a threat is actually to misrepresent people to misrepresent the reality and by misrepresenting reality we are misleading people now it is true that there are some people who may manipulate people some religious teachers who may manipulate people through fear so that those are those religious teachers are not the authentic religious teachers and the purpose is not so much to scare people into doing right but to warn them of the consequences of wrong and then give them the choice of what to do so if we don’t warn people if something is harmful and if it is not people are not warned that it is harmful then that itself is also irresponsibility so when scripture gives a certain guidelines do this don’t do this just like a road gives a signal there is a speed breaker over there go slow so now that speed breaker sign is not a threat it’s a warning so similarly in scripture there is warnings given about when we do wrong activity that will give wrong results that will give harmful results for the hurtful results for us and therefore we should avoid those activities so I am more importantly fear is only the preliminary level at which scripture talks to us just like a child when is growing initial child has some fear of the father which brings some discipline in life but another child grows that fear eventually is meant to grow into love so scripture doesn’t just talk only about fear scripture ultimately talks about love and we, scripture is not meant to frighten us from not doing wrong things it is actually meant to inspire within us the love by which doing the right thing becomes not only natural but it also becomes joyful it becomes an expression of affection for us so scripture is not meant to threaten us rather scripture is meant to guide us to bring the best out of us and to warn us of the consequences of the bad within us and thereby to encourage us to guide us to give up the bad and to bring out the best within us thank you Hare Krishna