I don't think that's correct. In Psalms, David writes, "Where can I go that Thou are not? Yea, even though I descend into the depths of Sheol, Thou art there."

I guess I didn't realize that this was a Christian website... To be perfectly blunt about it, I'm a little tired of hearing about the fire insurance prayer, or the magic spell that stamps a gold ticket to Heaven.

I've known people who've lived like hell, their entire lives, and at the last minute, accept Jesus, and voila!! They are guaranteed to go to Heaven. If God is perfect, God's justice must also be perfect, and there's no such thing as sowing wild oats on Saturday and praying for crop failure on Sunday. If God truly created a place of eternal torment, with no hope of reprieve, it would be a perfect God's admission of failure -- a cosmic wastebasket. It would also be a travesty of justice. No one, not even the most hideous serial killer, deserves eternal torment, and I find the entire concept ridiculous.

Also, which heaven? Paul writes, in II Corinthians, that he knew a man, (whether in the body or out is unknown) but such a one was caught up into the third heaven and heard things that were unutterable. A third heaven? This implies a first, second, and possibly a fourth or more.

I tried Christianity. With all my heart. For YEARS. It didn't work for me. I sought God everywhere. I wanted that close personal relationship that people stood up in church and boasted about. I would sit there and wonder what was wrong with me, or wonder if I were somehow defective.

Rumi, in the 13th century, wrote, "'Lo, I am with you always,' means that when you look for God, God is in the look of your eyes, nearer to you than yourself, or things that have happened to you."

When I read this, thirteen years of passionate, aching searching came to an end.

God is love. It says nowhere, that "God is love except when he's busy shoveling souls into Hell."