The Name, Part Two

Uglifier, Part Two

Can I help it if I generally listen carefully to what people are saying and question things that seem out of place? It has always seemed to me that people ought to mean what they say and say what they mean. It also seems that the more important the thing being said, the more closely scrutinized it ought to be. And that, therefore, people talking about eternal salvation or damnation ought to be taken very seriously indeed.

Where is Hell? I believe that it is in fact a real place, a fact which ought to motivate me more than it does. I also believe that people will go there, and the crowd will be larger than just the "really bad" people. So why is it that the one detail I recall from a discussion of that subject in a college-aged class at church, the one thing I distinctly remember is being told that, according to the Bible, and possibly in some way that we cannot see directly, Hell is down inside the earth.

It is good to have friends of like mind. Where once we sat close enough to talk under our breath to question such statements, we can now exchange a glance, and have an understanding that says "yes, I thought that, too." I have experienced and heard of them experiencing moments of disappointment when we looked for the other's glance and did not find them looking back.

But the question could be posed: if in fact the questions are important enough to disagree with, and if we are talking about lofty things in the spiritual realm, why keep the questions to ourselves? Why not challenge the idea, that others may at least benefit from the dialog as our questions are answered?

Possible Answer#1: Most of the teaching I know has been done in a lecture format. You receive instruction from those wiser, you do not talk to them about it. And even most of the discussions I have been in are very clearly directed at a different goal, and my petulant questioning in such circumstances was dismissed as "chasing rabbit trails."

Possible Answer#2: The question, while concerning lofty spiritual things, is usually not a keystone issue - it is usually an assertion made as an aside, not as a primary point. Why distract from the goal?

Possible Answer#3: It feels better to quietly question and feel smart than ask the question and have the answer leave me feeling the fool.

But, perhaps as a response to seemingly innumerable small questions, I find myself regarding less seriously the teaching I receive. We have limited time here, and I find myself more wishing that we reached out to the sick, the poor, the widows, the aliens. I like doctrine, and I have spent time discussing such matters, but a good friend would describe us for these sorts of discussions as pseudo-intellectuals.

And, at the end of all of this, I see the path the now more liberal mainline denominations trod. More and more time spent on social concerns, with matters of lofty supernatural concerns diminishing into the background. So where's the balance? I believe truth is important and ought to be defended, not ignored. Yet at the end of days, what matters more is what I did for "the least of these"