God spoke to me mostly after disputes with others: family, teachers, or other children.  For years, God’s voice seemed entirely fair to me.  In a calm, reasoned voice, an adult voice that I could trust, God told me, without malice or ill will, and without apparent bias, that I was right.  Yes, in those years, God was always on my side.

Whether I’d been reprimanded by a teacher or teased on the playground; whether I’d fought with my little sister or been scolded by one or both parents; God was always there, ready to speak the moment I retreated to solitude.  In calm, patient, measured tones, God would tell me I was right, and my temper would be soothed, even if resentment lingered.

I don’t remember exactly when I started to question this voice as the voice of God.  But, when I was nine years old, I started to realize that God spoke mainly in my own words.  It would make sense for God to use only words I knew – God wanted to communicate with me, after all, and knew everything about what I knew – but he also tended to use my own style, and there was really no reason for him to do that.

Then, to use a recently-popular political phrase, God flip-flopped.  If my opinion on a dispute changed, so did God’s – or so did the voice’s.  Every once in a while, I’d realize I’d been wrong, and the voice would get right on board with me, while still defending my character.  Then, I began to notice that the voice would often echo my thoughts, sometimes word for word.  My faith in the voice unraveled quickly after that.

One day, when I was nine years old, sitting in my bedroom, I made the voice sing Mary Had a Little Lamb.  He didn’t want to.  I had to force every word.  But there was no doubt that this was the same voice, the one that had confirmed my correctness countless times in countless disputes, singing:

Mary had a little lamb.
His fleece was white as snow.
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.

I stopped after the first verse.  It was enough.  The voice never spoke to me again.  The silencing of that voice never had a big effect on my faith in God.  In the next few years, my faith would become stronger and more comforting than at any other time in my life.  But I never had a direct line to God again – at least not to his voice.

In recent years, I’ve wondered if I shut off something valuable, a connection to my inner self, maybe even a bit of God within me just learning how to express itself, but I don’t really think so.  It may have been a crutch my self esteem needed at some point, but I think I dispensed with it at about the right time.  I don’t think there was ever much substance to it.  It didn’t increase my awareness of myself or of others.  It just calmed, soothed, and, to a point, kept me entrenched in my own opinions.

That voice is something I never forgot, for whatever reason.  I don’t think I was really hallucinating – it was rarely much louder than a thought.  I never believed that my ears were directly involved in hearing the voice.  Though some would dispute it (I’m still very good at arguing, and occasionally, very occasionally, show a slight stubborn streak), I do think that silencing the voice when I did taught me to question my own views on things, to realize that my current perspective might not always be the most enlightened one.  I might not be perfect at remembering that, but it’s a start.

In visions long ago, I saw a room, much like an executive office, suffused in bright white light, almost too bright to look at.  Into that office walked a young version of my mother, just thirty-five years old at the time, her face filled with quiet concern.  Before she spoke a word, I knew where she was.

She was in Heaven.  When she had died was not apparent, and I drew no conclusions from how young she looked.  In heaven, if she wanted to be young, I guess she’d be young.  I also knew where she was in Heaven.  She was visiting God.  This was where God met those who wanted to meet with Him – where he held “office hours”, I guess.  How much of that room was a physical part of Heaven, and how much was symbolic, was of no concern to me.

God was not visible, but was clearly present in the room.  When my mother spoke, God’s voice answered.  It was a deep, male voice, straight out of the movies.  She spoke first.  “I’ve been waiting for my son,” she said.  “I’ve been patient.  But he should be here by now.”

There was a long pause.  Finally, God replied, “Yes, not too long ago, your son left the world.”

“Then let me see him, please,” she replied.

There was a shorter pause, then, “You don’t want to see him, my sweet child.”

“I have to see him.  He’s my son.  I can’t be happy not knowing.”

“Very well,” God said, relenting.  There was a small door in the middle of one of the office walls, toward the bottom.  It resembled the door to a crawl space on a house, and was no taller.  God caused the door to open.

Inside, it was dark.  A single figure was visible inside, as a silhouette outlined by yellow flame.  His eyes were flame.  His hair was flame.  His mouth was a gaping black hole surrounded by a beard and moustache of flame.  He was writhing in agony, and seemed completely unaware that the door had been opened.  He was an adult version of me.  Even behind the moustache and beard, and even with the dark spaces between the flames, the face was unmistakable, like an animated line drawing in burning yellow.

The door was closed.  My mother walked away in peaceful silence.  I don’t know how bad being in Heaven allowed her to feel.  But it didn’t matter, because I always woke up at that point, ending the dream and any need to develop the story further.

There’s another dream I had during the same period.  This one, I experienced first hand.  I saw through my own eyes.

I approached the gates of Heaven, having died.  The manner of my death did not enter into the dream.  I was vaguely relieved to be approaching heaven.  My mother was there to greet me.  She embraced me, and then we sat at a table, similar to an outdoor restaurant table, outside the gates of Heaven.  I was facing the gates, and she was across from me, with the gates to her back.

We each had a bowl of baked beans to eat.  I’ve never liked baked beans, but I noticed that these were not at all bad.  I enjoyed the meal.  I felt warm and happy inside.  The scene was bright and stunningly beautiful.  I could see the souls in heaven, blissfully happy, praising God.

We finished our meal, and my mother paused, then, with a sad smile, she said softly, almost whispering, “Goodbye.”  I didn’t know what to say.  Before I could think of a response, and before I could figure out what it all meant, my chair and the table tilted back, and slid downwards, as if down a steep, invisible hill.  My mother remained motionless, watching me slide away, and I felt intense heat on my back.

Then I knew what was happening.  That’s when I woke up.

I had both of those dreams many times when I was twelve years old.  I alternated between them without any recognizable pattern.  I was aware that certain minor elements of the two stories were incompatible with each other, but I also knew that this didn’t matter at all.  I didn’t (and still don’t) know why my mother was in both of the dreams, except that I was always pretty sure that she would get into Heaven.  A psychologist might have a lot of things to say about this.

But my mother’s presence wasn’t an overriding concern, either, back then.  The age of twelve was when, for me, the concept of Hell really hit home.  It wasn’t just a place where “bad people” go.  It wasn’t just a place where there were flames to watch out for, or a place you could ever leave.  It was a place of intense and unrelenting pain, eternal punishment for anyone who didn’t have the faith necessary to be saved from Hell.

I did not suffer from a lack of imagination at age twelve.  I had no illusions that I’d ever get used to it, ever find a drop of water to cool my tongue.  I cried bitterly about it, but didn’t share about it for a long time.  I didn’t know how to get the faith I needed, and I was sure I didn’t have it.  I was a single heartbeat away from a fate so much worse than death that I’d be yearning for oblivion less that ten seconds into my eternal experience there.

When I finally did share, it was in much less graphic terms, expressing the fear that I didn’t have enough faith.  At first, I was advised to use the Biblical prayer, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”  (Mark 9:24)  That, by itself, didn’t help much.  I prayed that prayer through my tears, never feeling an answer, or having much hope that an answer would come.

Eventually, however, I shared that frustration, and I allowed myself to be convinced that, if I was that worried about it, I did have enough faith.  It turned out to be the helping hand I needed to pull myself out of the hole I’d dug myself into.

 So my teenage years were pretty happy ones, spiritually.  The anguish and terror of my dreams never left me, but I became grateful for them.  They were what lead me to find my faith and my salvation.  Whenever doubt crept into my mind, I dismissed it as quickly as I could.  Even now, I harbor no resentment toward those who helped drive home the concept of Hell – or at least I know I shouldn’t.  I have no doubt they believed what they were saying, and they just wanted me to avoid ending up there.

A vivid and terrifying model of the horrors of Hell has been available to me these past thirty years.  For most of that time, for one reason or another, I’ve felt the threat wasn’t an immediate one for me, but I’ve also never had any illusions, during that time, about what people believe in, when they believe in Hell.  A discussion of the afterlife can never be purely intellectual for me, much as it might sound that way at times.

There are a number of ways discussion could go from here, but I’m going to cut it off, and start from a different direction, in another post.  My goal in this post is to show something of how the concept of Hell shaped my spiritual experience, and I think I’ve accomplished that.  I expect to refer back to this several times in other posts.  I don’t expect many people will have to re-read this one too many times.

There are similar verses in Matthew and Mark.  I guess I don’t really believe the threat, or I wouldn’t risk posting some of the things I’m posting here.  But I do have some respect for the consideration it calls for.

Now, I’m not about to claim that my writing is so persuasive or compelling that it will seriously test a strong faith — or even a weak faith.  But, if you’ve found happiness in a faith that I cannot hold, I have no desire to shake that belief, even a little bit.

My purpose in these posts is to share with people strong in their beliefs, or open to changing them.  I lost something very precious to me some years ago, and I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to get it back, and what form it might take if I do.

If any posts appear in the “Spirit” category without the millstone picture, I consider them “safe for all viewers”.  Otherwise, proceed with caution.  This is the only warning you’ll get.