A Spiritual Spring: Part IIIA -- The Big Heck

 As I write, Part III is getting too big. I'm afraid people won't get around to reading novella-sized posts. But I told you last time that part III would contain certain details. So what's the solution?  Why re-labeling, of course. Nobody said Part III couldn't have sub-chapters...


 The Big Heck

Hell is a problem.

It's played a big role in my doubts about the Christian message. I frequently have mulled over just how disturbingly sick and deranged the traditional Christian notion of hell seems to me. I could rant about it to you in the strongest terms if you liked. I've wrestled for a sense of divine permission to believe lighter, less horrific pictures of what goes on with hell. I could argue to you on their behalf if asked.

But God's word to me on this, as I hear him, is neither "you're right, Tom, those traditional views are deeply flawed and you shouldn't believe them", nor "you must fully believe all those things about those views that you resist, and do it now", but rather,

 “In repentance and rest is your salvation,
   in quietness and trust is your strength,
   but you would have none of it."

See, for all my knowledge and airs of sophistication, there's a heck ( a hell?) of a lot out there I don't understand. There's a heck of a lot that no human understands, that maybe we can't understand. I suspect a great deal concerning the afterlife is part of that Big Heck. Though not quite all of it for Christians.

So will this ignorant child throw a tantrum about it? How big of a deal will he make of what he doesn't understand? I think it's reasonable to share my issues with God and with friends, to ask for help and see if any sturdy answers are available. But in the end, there's an invitation to "quietness and trust". Will I have some of it?

I've decided I think I will, thank you. I think I'll choose to trust God with the problem. That doesn't necessarily mean giving up all hope that reality is more agreable than the traditional views suggest. But it does mean being open to the notion that those terrible things really are true, being willing to believe it if God would have me believe it, and being ready to move ahead in faith and hope with whatever God gives me on the matter. And it means repenting of the way I had let the matter suck the joy and peace out of life when it doesn't seem like God would have it do that.

It's an interesting sort of choice for an agnostic-ish person. Maybe my inveterate challenges such as the hell stuff do point to the Christian theological system being utterly flawed and thus not underwritten by any living God who happens to be out there. Maybe the value of faith and trust and the emphasis of my ignorance can be slapped on to patch every logical hole conceivable in all sorts of great falsehoods, and maybe that's basically what's going on. I wouldn't be shocked. Nor am I inclined to blame you if that's what you think is going on.  I could choose to trust in my own reasoning more than in the God who Christians know.  But quietness and trust seems... better to me. There are risks and benefits in trusting, and risks and benefits in not trusting, and in this case the former looks like the better deal.

The reappearing and reapplying of this verse to me and the resolution that followed were part of my Spiritual Spring.