Not the figurative one, the literal one. And to be technically correct, I haven’t been physically there; I’ve been immersed in the concept of it.

I’ve been reading many authors, including those in the Bible, and am beginning to realize that I don’t know much about hell. I guess you could say I don’t know a hell of a lot about it. I find that strange because I thought I knew everything about it.

I must thank the detractors of Rob Bell and his book on Hell (Love Wins) for generating this interest.

Like so many of the tenets of belief in the Nazarene, what you may initially perceive may not necessarily be the reality. We are far too quick to shoot first and sort it all out later. This is true not just on this topic but on so many of those things we call doctrines and theology.

This has created many walking wounded. It has sent many running in the opposite direction, disgusted, abused and angry. It has guaranteed that countless others will refuse to hear the offer.

Some will not hear what I’m saying and will put words in my mouth that I’ve not spoken nor implied. That is sad.

Hell is very real. Do we even comprehend what that means? Is it necessary to make it the reason for accepting heaven? I fear that such a stance is a doctrinal faux pas.

Misconceptions, illusions, outright lies and then, suddenly, the light comes on. The look on their face is priceless. The change that comes about in their life is nothing short of miraculous. Keeping it can be work.

Oh, what complicated webs we can weave!

Destroying the lie of who we think we are can be difficult; living as who we really are can be downright impossible.

Unless the lights come on. And the door stays locked after the “guest” is escorted out.

I’ll be explicit… I am the Gate for the sheep. All those others are up to no good—sheep stealers, every one of them. But the sheep didn’t listen to them. I am the Gate. Anyone who goes through me will be cared for—will freely go in and out, and find pasture. A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.

You cannot do it by yourself. Cell life. Its a necessity.

Whatever you want to say about Wright, you can’t say he is an intellectual slouch. I love his take on this whole stupid (yes, that is how I feel about it) cat fight over Bell’s Love Wins.

Some of you perhaps think I’m a bit smitten (or vexed) by all of this. Au contraire. I love the fact that, whatever Bell really believes, he’s stirred up a hornet’s nest and is getting folks all upset about their faith.

Touché!

So here’s Wright on Bell and Hell…

Wright on Hell & Bell from The Work Of The People on Vimeo.

The end has come!

Oops!

Followers of an Oakland radio minister who predicted that Saturday would mark the start of the world’s last days waited in vain for a religious homecoming that never happened.

After driving across country from Maryland with his family in the hope of being taken up to heaven in Rapture with a crowd of fellow believers, Keith Bauer admitted his disappointment Saturday as he stood in an empty parking lot outside the locked Family Radio headquarters in Oakland.

“I was hoping. I think heaven will be a lot better than this earth,” the 36-year-old trucker told a knot of reporters who outnumbered visitors at the grimy hub of worldwide speculation about the world’s end at 6 p.m. Saturday.

San Francisco Chronicle, May 21. 2011

I’ll have to admit that I’m actually feeling sorry for them. How many put all of their faith in this event, endured all sorts of sarcasm and ridicule for that faith and now, since it didn’t happen, will lose that faith.

That has the potential to be a really good thing…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnrJVTSYLr8

WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE NEXT WEEK!

Whew! I said it. Glad that’s off my chest now.

Depending on your position, maybe dying is a bit extreme. According to the “prophets” boldly proclaiming this day of judgment,  being “caught up in the air” is probably more accurate. Maybe being judged. Maybe being at least very uncomfortable for a few months.

A week from this upcoming Saturday —May 21 — the rapture of believers will occur, followed by no less than the destruction of the universe on October 21, 2011.

There goes the World Series.

One of their leaders, Harold Camping, has already had one swing at the rapture pitch. He predicted it would occur in September 1994. Oops.

He’s convinced he’s got his eye firmly on the ball this time, however. He says he has figured out the Bible and that it “guarantees it,” just like the billboard says.

I wonder if he’d entertain the possibility of an interview on May 22?

Cool story.

When I was a kid, I used to have a garden. The first time I planted the seeds I couldn’t really fathom what was going to happen. It didn’t make any sense how a small seed that looked deader ‘n a door nail could do anything. To my wild delight, within two days, sprouts were bursting through the soil. I marveled at the growth of the plants, going out every day to check on how much bigger they’d gotten. Image my joy when I actually started pulling corn off the stalks and watermelons off the vines.

Valuable lesson learned.

A few years back I was having a conversation with some people and I was asked if, given a choice, would I elect to receive one million dollars at the end of a month or would I rather have a penny doubled every day for the same 30 days. When I heard this, I knew that the penny doubled everyday must have been the better choice to go with as it was a little obvious to me that it had to be a trick question of some sort. But I didn’t realize how much better it would be. The 30 days would yield an astounding $5,368,709.12! More than $4,000,000 better than the mere million.

Quite a difference.

Here’s the reality. A small kernel of divine truth has the ability to do the miraculous, the impossible, the astounding. Most folks will write it off, demean it, even try to keep you from accepting it, sometimes at any cost. Simply saying that truth is a lie doesn’t change truth. It will transform you, take you where you can’t possibly imagine and create the someone you could only dream of. Only the violent will embrace it; only he who has nothing to lose or she who is desperate will succeed at internalizing it.

It can be scary…

I’m not sure why those who are not Christian would really have any inclination to become one. The feeding frenzy that occurs when someone says anything that is not “correct” in terms of the status quo, Christianly speaking, is horrifying. We are quick to condemn the Islamic response that is so brutal when someone is perceived to go contrary to a particular facet of a particular branch of a very diversified politico-religious system. We use words like “intolerant,” “unjust,” and “uncaring;” we explicitly and implicitly castigate them for such “unbelievable” points of view and belief.

Yet, THAT is exactly who we have become.

We so easily write off that part of the world who doesn’t believe that particular facet of a particular branch of a very diversified politico-religious system to which we adhere. That is at least understandable. What is disturbing is the way we consume our own.

Years ago as a pre-teen, I visited a friend of mine on a farm. She was showing me some newborn piglets. They were lying in thick, stinky mud. Mama sow came over and began nudging them with her snout. Six of the eight got up, moved over and stood expectantly; two seemed to have difficulty getting up. Mama began stomping them, killed them and then began eating them! I was horrified! My little friend simply said, “That happens all the time.”

That repugnance all those years ago is the same that I’m dealing with now. As my friend ruminated, it happens all the time.

The most recent manifestation is the Rob Bell phenomenon that is occurring. If you don’t know who Rob Bell is, you probably want to simply stop reading and just say, “There goes Joe, again.” If you know who he is, you know what I am referencing.

In our flavor of Christianity as marketed in the West, theology trumps love, “correctness” trumps Jesus, every time. It has nothing to do with right or wrong, though we loudly proclaim it does. Tell the person who hasn’t “made a decision” to “accept Jesus in his heart” that we do it because of love. Tell the person who has run from “church” because of the hypocrisy and hate that it our obligation to present truth. They’ll willingly embrace it.

Not.

I’m afraid we’ve ripped the “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” right out of the Word. In our fervor to present Jesus, we do everything to protect him; in our desire to find truth, we become keepers of the law; in trying to find salvation, we run the lost away.

Really. I’m disturbed…

Mammoth Cave is the world’s longest known cave, with more than 392 miles of interconnected passages—so long that if the second and third longest caves in the world were joined together, Mammoth Cave would still be the planet’s longest cave and have more than 100 miles left over!

Not to overuse the word, but that’s big!

I’m discovering that Galatians falls into the same category, on both accounts (big and stories under every verse).

The issue Paul addresses in the book is big, just like Mammoth Cave. Brazilian author Alcione Emerich calls it Contaminação Epiritual (Spiritual Contamination). He recounts a story of a church that purchased a notoriously infamous night club and turned it into a church. Another church in the same town began to slander the church and its efforts, even bringing lawsuits against them. Several leaders of the ‘nightclub church’ managed to get an audience with the pastor. They explained that they were saving the lost, restoring families, feeding the poor and helping the community; the pastor of the attacking church responded that he preferred that the notorious nightclub were still in the facility and that the church had never existed.

That, in the proverbial nutshell, describes what Paul is addressing in Galatians. I love his take on the whole thing:

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.

Commentary over…

Instant, impenetrable darkness.

He said nothing. Some of the fellows begin to freak out. Still he was silent.

When he finally spoke, he said, “It’s been 60 seconds since I turned off the light. Your eyes have already adjusted to their maximum size in order to allow light in. There is absolutely no light here, none. You are in total darkness.”

It was really very freaky.

Then he struck a match. BOOM! Instant light! Every eye in the group was immediately focused on it. Our eyes quickly adjusted to it, took it in and could begin to make out all the cave around us. Quite an impressive lesson.

Saturating myself in Galatians, it becomes obvious that we so often do exactly what I did at Carlsbad Caverns: walk out of the light into the darkness and then turn the light off.

The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: “The person who believes God, is set right by God—and that’s the real life.” Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping, a fact observed in Scripture: “The one who does these things [rule-keeping] continues to live by them.”

I’m ready to turn the light back on…