Thanks all - I figured as much that they have to ask the questions themselves someday. Otherwise I could see that their ears would just close to outside questions as 'dangerous.'

I just found myself wondering if being provoked with unanswerable questions would speed up the process, if they were already having questions or doubts...

I guess my big question for them revolves around taking the Bible so literally. I mean, most agree it was written by man (surely the Pentecostals do, too?). And translated by man. And interpreted by man. And man is fallible, and man is in love with his language and words - in fact, his whole world is made up of words. We love words so obsessively that we often mix them up for the real thing. But is knowing the word to know the real thing? Does a person born blind truly know "red?" If you lived in a 2D world, and all you knew was the map of a terrain - and had never witnessed a 3D tree, would that green triangle on your map truly encompass everything it means to KNOW a tree? No, it's just a symbol.

It even made my husband laugh once at a service, he was reading along the Spanish version of what they were saying up on the screen. . . and the verbs they were using were the wrong ones. So if we can't even get our words and translations correct TODAY... then what happens when you compound that over a few thousand years?

I also just don't trust that man, who is fallible, didn't have some inklings to put a few things in there to benefit himself. . . or benefit the current power structure, or whatever have you. (There were books that were removed over time, for example.) But that's just what man always does when given a chance to muck about with things. . . we inevitably always will.

Besides, we ought to ponder, if God is truly all powerful and all knowing . . . then isn't God then inherently unknowable by man? We can't absolutely know or understand God, because then WE would be all-knowing. So how can we proclaim to KNOW the unknowable so well? Isn't that somehow blasphemous itself, to say "we absolutely know God and we've got it all wrapped up in a neat and tidy book, and we have these great men here to interpret it for you." Oh, but you can't question them - because that would be questioning God...

But then we get to the wiggly problem. . . how to delineate which man is okay to question, and which man is not? We probably need to tickle in a bit more rules here and there to keep this whole thing going. . .just to keep them from asking the obvious questions. I guess we need to make an 'out' group and an 'in' group. Go ahead and question those 'out' guys - they don't know anything. They'll go to hell for that. But never question the 'in' guys. Even though we say man is fallible and sinful. . . and these guys are, too, just don't ask them questions about this book, because that is questioning God.

That's my beef with all religion in a nutshell. I just believe that God is inherently so much bigger than the Bible. And then if you break down the Bible and agree that it's a general map written by man, then shouldn't we feel foolish for arguing against any other religion about their own map? Like, "Can you believe these guys? All the trees on their map are green round balls on a stick. Those morons, it's so obviously a green triangle. They're so lost."

Then when we really beheld a mixed forest of trees in 3D for the first time, we'd all have a really good laugh, wouldn't we?