I'm going on vacation...and to hell.

I'm going on vacation and where I'm going doesn't have running water, much less the internets.

So, if y'all have written me and I haven't responded to you by the time you're reading this, you're probably not going to hear back from me until November 6th or somewhere thereabouts, although please know that I am keeping each and every one of you in the warm, fuzzy sub-cockle region of my heart.

In other news. I was told by a cubemate and otherwise nice, intellegent girl that not only was there a literal hell, but I was going there because I didn't believe the Bible was the inerrant word of God. She's a good woman with a strong faith, but doesn't seem to understand that the Bible wasn't created in a vacuum, and it's certainly not translated or interpreted in a vacuum. For example, there are a lot of outside documents that didn't make it into the bible just because they were too wordy (the didache). She also believes that all pagans and all traditions outside what we would identify as Fundamentalist Christianity are "bad. Completely bad." and no good can come of them. This whole conversation started because she asked me how I could like Halloween and love Jesus at the same time. I started talking with her about the origins of our modern holidays, and a lot of the traditions which surround them are "pagan" holidays because well...they had them first.

It really surprised me, and she was gentle about it, like she wanted me not to go to hell. Still, it me when she said

"There's a lot of good people in hell."

Yikes.