Of course they feel that way. They believe they’ll go to hell if they don’t. The whole religion is built on fear.
Discussion
I fear nothing. I have incredible peace and joy.
You must be a fool then
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Proverbs 1:7
The Aramaic translation of “fear” is great reverence or respect. So humbled you can’t be in his presence. It’s not actually being scared.
It's actually the opposite. It's hope, or should be. Many other religions are fear-based.
Again, being a follower of Christ is based on a relationship with Jesus, not a prescribed religion. (Even if that's what it was corrupted into.)
Hell isn't even a biblical concept. Its literally made up. Where people think the Bible talks about hell, it says "lake of fire." That's an Egyptian concept that has been wildly taken out of context. Rebirth is entering the lake of fire. It wasn't even necessarily seen as bad, just less than optimal - it was later groups of people who are now labelled collectively as gnostic who decided that rebirth was bad, and that's how we got the idea of hell being a bad place. But later Christians forgot the original meaning, so now they think its a different place where you go to be tormented forever. That's already happening. Its here, now. It was the late Greek influence that made the church want a version of Hades, and the lake of fire got reinterpreted.
Similarly, heaven was never a separate place that you go to. Jesus said unambiguously where heaven is - right here, right now. These are not opposite concepts. They are the same.
Jesus would say he’s basing his beliefs on love? A radical idea in his time.
OP said the texts were bastardized and mistranslated. You’re confirming his stance.
That's correct, though "mistranslated" isn't quite as right as misinterpreted.
Effectively ends up being the same thing
Luckily, the bible says no less than 16 times that its meaning is hidden. Well, not so explicitly, but basically.
Why would god intentionally hide his message?
I can't say with certainty that God did. These books were written by human hands.
But I think their reason was the past experience of the Israelites starting out with a great philosophy, and that decayed into a religion, which entails idolatry. Ezekiel makes it clear that the loss of meaning is not okay. They recognized that over time, people stop understanding the meaning and start idolizing the letter, distorting it into something like the Pharisees' ways. Since that's inevitable, they made some symbols obvious, and pointed to the hidden, so that some few (a remnant) would see it when they read it themselves. That remnant is the true church. Every single church you've ever heard of is a false church. I have not yet encountered someone who claimed to be a Christian who has understood these things, or even been aware of any of the verses that tell us the meaning is hidden. Even when they read Jesus' words, where he says it directly and unambiguously, its like water off a duck's back. They aren't called, so they can't see it.