Mixed Bag

Various thoughts and stuff so that is why it's a mixed bag. Commotion swirls around Rob Bell's book Love Wins. Subject of hell causing controversy?? Nooooooooo certainly not Riiiiggghtttttttttttttttt There are a few topics within Scripture that seem to garner this response. Young Earth/Old Earth. YEC advocates have been drawing a line in the proverbial sand declaring literal 6 day creation and literal adam & eve or else you are possibly not a believer. Some would draw the same line about the rapture, speaking in tongues, water baptism, you name it. Why is exclusivism the de facto position taken by so many??? I believe the earth is old. I accept i may be wrong. I do not see it as a test of fellowship or a deal breaker. I have read the apologetics on both sides. A point that YEC (young earth creationists) make i find persuasive is the numbering of each of the 6 days of creation in Genesis. Also how yom is used in all the places in the Old Covenant. If yom does mean *extended period of time* then is the 7th day, which was Sabbath rest, endlessly ongoing??? When do we get back to work?? I think there are ways to handle this and to interpret Genesis in a non-loteral way I am just saying I cede the point to those who make it. 1 Corinthians 13 the love chapter in Scripture, would seem to uphold Bells thesis that love wins. If love keeps no record of wrongs and never fails how then do we end up with a hell consisting of eternal conscious torment??? By a God who created us knowing it would happen??? Does that not make God into a more cruel sadist than hitler,stalin.pol pot all combined??? Of course I say an emphatic NO!!!!! But, the question lingers. A question I have, that just resides in a deep place inside, unspoken, is why does it have to take so long for love to win?? Why have so many atrocities had to happen??? People suffering in untold ways because an initial act of sin occurred. The deeper issue for me has always been, what awaits me??? I mean this in the sense I have gotten through life relatively unscathed. I am dealing with a heart condition which I guess qualifies as a form of suffering. But, will i experience even more so once I die because i didn't experience it like so many have, and lived in fear of it?? Neurotic I admit, but this has been how my consciousness functions to handle these type of issues. Anyone find a commonality at all??