"to hell and back"
CNN Breaking News:
-- David Evans, one of the three men exonerated today when the final charges in the Duke lacrosse sex case were dropped, said they went "to hell and back" and he hoped changes to the legal system would be made as a result of their case.
Just got that in my inbox. Then, I got to thinking about it....
It seems that Mr. Evans has a considerable underestimation of 'hell.' Not to be too harsh on Mr. Evans, but it seems to me that we have used that term, 'to hell and back' with such abandon that it has really lost it's meaning.
I suppose that returning Confederate Soldiers immediately following the American Civil War were probably justified in using the hyperbolic (extreme exaggeration) term. I suspect that they used it with the understanding that they were unable to adequately put words to the horror of their experiences, but knowing that a true "hell and back" tour would have been unimaginably worse than their own experience.
On the flip side, it seems to me that the more mature in Christ a person is, in my experience, the more likely they are to use expressions typified by, "that was pretty bad," or "that was ugly" to express an experience of the same level of physical, psychological and emotional discomfort that Mr. Evans termed "to hell and back."
Funny how Christian maturity works that way....
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why limit it to christians?
avoiding hyperbole is not specifically christian.
it is wise. and all wisdom is ultimately divine.
but i know jews and atheists that are mature, avoid hyperbole.
heck, a good writer knows when to use hyperbole.
maybe because of the obvious
I think that probably the primary reason I focused my comments on Christian maturity might, possibly, be for the very simple reason that this site is all about Christian maturity....
Beyond that, I don't see the avoidance of hyperbole common among 'mature' atheists that I know and am aware of. Most of the atheists, and I have to assume they are 'mature,' that I know are always hyperbolic about Christianity, and seem not to be able to be otherwise. The two most widely read atheist authors (Dawkins and Dennet) make their living on hyperbole, and see unable to engage in any other way. One of the most widely read atheist voices on the net is P.Z. Myers, the all hyperbole all the time guy. (And, I don't intend to be hyperbolic in those statements.)
As to Jews, I probably agree with you. Buddhists? I would expect that to be the case, but I don't know.
But, since the main goal of this site is to make mature Christians, I don't think it out of line to not bother with details outside of our scope.
Does that make sense?
The sun is white, not yellow.
We have no idea. Have you ever been to the surface of the sun?
Joshua
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Hey, where did that Grace Juice go, baby?
The sun is white, not yellow.
No idea about what?
Sorry
I am sorry about that, really I am. I had a conversation with Jody about this subject too because he didn't know what I meant by my title. I was emphasizing the heat of the sun. My only point in my earlier post was to say that hell is worse than we can imagine. Total removal from God. That is all I can say and all I know.
Joshua
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Hey, where did that Grace Juice go, baby?
yeah, well
well, it's more complicated than that, as well as being more simple than having to visit the surface of the sun. If you follow that kind of thinking, all too common among many modern day Christian "apologists," Christianity isn't believable because you haven't, personally, seen Jesus raised from the dead, either. In the same way that we can trust reliable, historical witnesses, we can trust the reliable observations of the world (universe) around us that God gave us the senses to explore directly, as well as the ingenuity to find ways to observe it indirectly.