Reflections on Hell

Several years ago when I still arrogantly counted myself among the Lord's chosen few, I took my wife to visit yet another church. We were dissatisfied with the lack of spiritual depth or discernment that we seemed to constantly encounter from those in pastoral and leadership roles. For quite some time we remained optimistically (I should say naively) hopeful of finding someplace where a demonstration of a higher level of knowledge and awareness might accompany any emotional zeal for God.

It continues to amaze me that those who claim to love the Lord the most insist on remaining the least read or the most ignorant in regards to this very person they claim to love. Church is not the place to have a restlessly curious intellect.

However, that is not the point of this article. I said all that to explain how we ended up one Sunday in the "Lighthouse Baptist Church." This was and still is an Independent Baptist Church of the "Sword of the Lord" variety. Very fundamental in both rhetoric and practice, none of the woman wore pants, and all the men had short haircuts. Based on the accents of most of the parishioners, there was a strong contingent from West Virginia dominating the membership rolls. To accuse them of being rednecks would be to state the obvious.

We ended up visiting this choice assemblage of elected saints because some friends invited us. They assured us that this place was where we could find the rest for our tired minds and souls. From the start of the service we knew we were in trouble.

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