A couple of blog posts of interest.  First, Ryan Dueck on the problem of what kind of God would send people to hell:

What I often feel like saying about midway through one of these articles/podcasts [about hell] is this: Ok, let’s just temporarily bracket the question of what the Bible “clearly” teaches.  Just for a minute—we’ll come right back… We won’t be gone long, I promise.  The Bible is important, but let’s just take a step back and ask ourselves, What kind of God is this?!  If a human parent treated their children in the way that we describe God as behaving, how would we react?  If a human parent were to say, “I love you but if you do not respond in the correct way to my love, I will torture you” what would we say?  Mostly likely, we would want to see them locked up as dangerous, insane, or both.  Yet so many people seem to have no problem in affirming this sort of behaviour in God and calling it good news!  Indeed, some seem to virtually take pleasure in it!  It boggles the mind.

And Walter Russell Mead on the hurricane blasting the northeast US:

Hurricane Sandy is many things; one of those things is a symbol. The day is coming for all of us when a storm enters our happy, busy lives and throws them into utter disarray. The job on which everything depends can disappear. That relationship that holds everything together can fall apart. The doctor can call and say the test results are not good. All of these things can happen to anybody; something like this will happen to us all.

Somewhere in the future, each of us has an inescapable appointment with irresistible force. For each one of us, the waters will someday rise, the winds spin out of control, the roof will come off the house and the power will go out for good.