Reflection This Week
HELL

   There’s an old song that laments the truth that “you always hurt the one you love, the one you shouldn’t hurt at all.” The second part of that is quite true: we should never, ever,  hurt the one we love. The first part is also, sadly, true: we do hurt the one we love. Not always, of course, do we so hurt; but we do so often enough, sinful and selfish creatures that we are.

   As great as is the hurt that we impart to the one we love, it becomes even greater when we realize just what we have done and whom we have hurt. It is hell, literally, figuratively and in every way possible. The pain is indescribable and indefinable but it is very, very real. Once we realize what we have done to the one we love, every fiber of our being aches and there is nothing that will either soothe or remove the pain.

   The pain becomes even worse the moment our beloved forgives us. But that forgiveness and that love are also what cause the pain to eventually subside and go away. The memory, of course, does not, and thankfully so, else we would walk down that path once again. We live in hell when we hurt the one, the ones, we love.

   I personally don’t believe there is an eternal hell because I believe God loves us and forgives us unconditionally no matter how sinful we have been in this life. Now I know this belief does not sit well with some of my preacher colleagues who think hellfire sermons will keep us on the straight and narrow. They don’t and they never have and they never will.

   What keeps us on the right path is our love for others. We don’t want to hurt those we love not only because we love them but also because we go through hell after we do. Once we’ve been through that kind of hell, we don’t want to go through it again. It is simply too painful.

   What I do believe is that we will all go through hell, or at least experience hell, when we die. At that moment when we will stand before God, encounter Absolute Love, and remember all those occasions when we had not loved Love, when we had been sinful and selfish and deliberately and knowingly so, we will be in hell. Our hell will be momentary but it will be real.

   It will be at that moment when we will fully realize just how much we hurt the One we loved and who loved and continues to love us unconditionally, the One we should not have hurt at all. It will be at that moment that we will experience hell for one final time. I don’t think God can spare us that momentary but very real pain because it will go with the territory, as they say. 

   There is never any escaping the hellish pain we experience once we realize the hurt our selfishness has caused. God cannot, will not and should not deprive us of this experience of hell. My suspicion is that that moment will seem like an eternity even as an eternity of God’s love will begin in the twinkling of an eye.   WJP.