I came across this sad, but very believable, comment on The Internet Monk today:

When I was a kid I spent part of my time in a Christian private school. I remember they used to send my home with “archaeological evidence” of the ark being discovered in various places and I would spend hours at home with my GI Joe action figures having them discover the ark under the living room furniture.

It was nice and fun until they sent me home one day with all this information about how someone had drilled a whole deeper than anyone had ever drilled into the earth and had heard the sound of the “souls in hell” screaming in pain and anguish while being eternally burned. I was in 3rd grade. I had nightmares for weeks.

Not long after that one of the teachers took me aside and told me that I needed to witness to my parents (my dad had long hair and my mom wore blue jeans) because they were headed for hell.

I went home terrified and in tears yelling at my parents for not going to heaven with me. That was about the time I got pulled out of that school, luckily, and sent to public school.

What’s funny, is what my old teachers didn’t know. That I spent all my weekend nights playing in bars as the drummer with my dad’s blues band from the time I was 9 years old. I wonder what they would have thought of that one. heh.

Wow. I’ve been somewhat sheltered, and blessed, in my Christian experience. I have been blessed to have been in churches that have allowed diversity on secondary matters. Even in the fundamentalist Baptist church I attended in college (a church to which I am indebted to for many good things), I wasn’t excommunicated for questioning young-Earth creationism. Some people thought I was a bit odd, and just plain wrong, but they still accepted me. I guess that isn’t the case everywhere.

Grace and peace