Wrestling with Scripture

When I was much younger, I was asked to come along for a prayer meeting, it was my first so I went with a bit of hesitation. Everything was going well, until the person conducting the meeting, asked the congregation to pray in tongues. It was literally the first time I heard about it and being curious, I took a look around the room only to end up terrified as I seen people's hands trembling and heard them speaking in a language I couldn't understand. That day I decided I would stop going for any further meetings as I didn't know what to make out of that experience. I remember thinking, they got to be making it up, how is this even possible? Growing up, I struggled to understand how we profess to believe in One God, when there are three persons of the trinity, God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. One explanation which really helped me came from a priest who asked us to think of the trinity as an olive tree. Imagine God the Father as the roots, Jesus as the branc

We profess our Christian faith by reciting the Creed, However I know many people feel uncomfortable reciting one particular statement from the Creed which is "He descended into Hell". They often think it is some mistake and needs to be changed. However, all it needs is a little understanding of the concept of Hell aka Sheol in Hebrew or Hades in Greek. Before Jesus opened the gates of Heaven, by his death and resurrection, it was believed that both the righteous and the unrighteous went into a common place called the realm of the dead known as Hell/Sheol/Hades. It was thus named because it was deprived of the vision of God, they were still awaiting the Saviour. While we often imagine Hell as this dark and steaming place flooded with devils, it basically refers to an absence of God and that's exactly what the realm of the dead signified. Although both the righteous and unrighteous were to abide there, it was believed that their experience there was very different,