Road To Hell

Road To Hell

I am of a generation that was taught about life by maxims, clichés, and old wives’ tales. My grandmother, who came from the old country, was a font of quaint sayings that had a warning, often with a sting embedded, designed to keep me on the straight and narrow. During my seminary years, we had professors who were fond of pithy sayings. One professor kept warning his students by repeating “if this in the greenwood, what in the dry?” I never did figure that one out.

My all-time favorite, repeated by grandmother, the nuns and priests, was “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” If nothing else would make me stand up and take notice, those words with a little spin on them, put the fear of God in me. Raised in a church culture that majored in guilt and shame, that warning conjured up slippery, hot asphalt that lead to only one place, a firestorm of perdition.

Inquisitive about the source of this saying, I found that it was a misquoted medieval saint. The original went something like this “hell is full of good wishes and desires.” Not quite so scary in the original. Nonetheless, that adage has found a permanent place in my memory. Every time I promise to do something or be somewhere, a bell goes off and those words challenge my ability and desire to follow through.

I find it interesting that in our culture that doesn’t place much stock on a real hell, there is an accompanying lack of commitment to follow through on promises made and obligations met. It’s getting harder and harder to believe people when they commit and don’t show or produce. Maybe we need a little old-fashioned reminder once in a while.

As a postscript: whether the reader believes in hell or not, rest assured that there is no paved road just a slippery slope. I like these words of Jesus: “Just say a simple ‘Yes, I will,’ or ‘No, I won’t.’ Anything beyond this is from the evil one.”