I have a friend who is very dear to me, who used to be a baptist, then was on her way to becoming a Catholic, but then fell away to agnosticism. I desperately want to answer her charges, because I have a hunch that she could be possibly converted back. Her main issues are that if God exists he likely isn’t the Christian God, and she can’t seem to get past the idea that hell is a cruel place that God sends people to for no good reason. I tried to explain that it is only by rejecting God does one go to hell, but she thinks eternity is too harsh a punishment. If anyone can answer this or give me resources, I would be enormously grateful.
I think she has this backwards. Hell is not a place to which God sends people. Hell is a place to which people go to avoid God. St. Therese of Lisieux, one of the Doctors of the Church and worthy of belief, maintained that everybody in hell is a volunteer. It was her position that, at or around the moment of death comes a moment of absolute, total clarity. Every sin we ever committed is made clear in all its ramifications and effects. No rationalizations. No excuses. It’s all right there. That experience, she said, is jarring to say the very least. We can no longer deny. Then, God extends to us His forgiveness and overwhelming love. We see that it is not a deserved love, but a love freely and gratuitously extended, and is total. But to accept it, we have to admit the truth of what is clearly and inescapably true; we are totally dependent on His mercy and His love. For those who choose to accept His mercy, He welcomes to His life forever, and we live bathed in his infinite love.
Some, however, fully realizing that if they reject Him, they will live “cocooned up” in themselves forever; worshipping themselves as the god they have chosen; knowing full well the inadequacy of that and knowing full well what eternity really means. And yet, they choose themselves and, in that moment of total, utter clarity, choose to hate Him. That hate is heartbreaking to Him, and we know it, and know that hate and defiance is eternally hurtful to Him and we know it is and mean it. And why? Because we cannot accept the justice of His judgment of our acts; our pride cannot accept our dependence on His mercy and His love.
Now, it’s kind of hard to imagine anyone choosing hell like that, totally knowing what it means; what we are losing and what insisting on self-worship will mean. But Lucifer did just exactly that, so it’s not so unimaginable. If we think about it hard enough, we can just barely imagine someone doing it. We have known or read of people who were so self-absorbed, so self-worshipping that they might just be capable of that.
St. Therese said she would not fear hell even if she had committed every sin there was to commit, and why? Because she loved God. What could she give God? Herself. That’s what God really wants. He just wants us.
She told the story of the king and the rabbit. The king is out hunting. A rabbit breaks from cover and tries to escape the king. The king pursues. The rabbit tries every trick, every strategem, every speed, every mode of escape he can think of. Still, the king gets closer and closer. Finally, exhausted, the rabbit is trapped. The king is before him. What does the rabbit do?
He leaps into the arms of the king. The king has pity on the poor creature and the rabbit is saved!
The king, of course, is God. The rabbit, of course, is us.
Therese was famous for her “Little Way”. She accomplished no great things, and attempted none. But she decided that everything she did, she would do for God, as an offering to Him. She often undertook disagreeable tasks for that reason alone, and never spoke of her “secret”. She gave Him her “little gifts” like a child gives a crumpled flower to a parent. In that way, she developed her love for God…jumping into the arms of the king. She was not afraid of God in the slightest way.
