|
S i d e b a r
A PRIVATE VERSION OF HELL
By MICHELLE L. ARNOLD
|
|
|
|
Adventists say the damned will be annihilated body and soul by the fires of hell. After all, including Satan, are destroyed, hell will cease to exist. The length of time a person suffers in hell before annihilation is decided by the degree of his wickedness. It could be said that the Adventist doctrine of hell is sort of like the Catholic doctrine of purgatory—only in reverse.
Adventists claim that their doctrine of eventual annihilation is more merciful than for God to consign people to hell for eternity, but which would be more merciful? For God to provide a place of purgation where people can expiate repented sin before entering heaven or for God to torture and then annihilate everyone not perfected in righteousness (Matt. 5:48) and unclean (Rev. 21:27) at the moment of their deaths?
Adventists believe that a man’s body and soul are indivisible. He doesn’t have a soul; he is a soul. At death he lies insensate and unconscious in the grave—he "sleeps." The spirit, which is the life-imparting principle given by God, returns to God who gave it.
When resurrected, the sheep will go to heaven and the goats will go to hell. The sheep will receive immortality and incorruptibility so that they will never die again, and the goats will be destroyed.
Since my mid-teens I had struggled with mental illness. I never attempted suicide, but I craved death and contemplated suicide because I wanted to "sleep." To my mind, that was peace. One of the main things that prevented me from actually going through with it was the fear that I would fail and be worse off than I already was. Of course, I innately, intuitively, and reasonably feared God’s judgment. I had heard of mortal sin and knew that suicide was one of the worst sins you could commit. If there was such a thing as mortal sin—as I know today that there is—I knew suicide would be a mortal sin.
So I plotted it out. Taking what I had been taught to believe about the nature of death and hell, I worked out the logical conclusions to what appeared to me to be a satisfying end. At death I would "sleep," and I desperately craved that. "Sleep" was what I most wanted. On the Last Day I’d be resurrected and face judgment. Either God would excuse my sin because of my illness, and I’d go to heaven, or—what I knew was far more likely—I’d go to hell.
But hell wasn’t eternal. Although I feared the magnitude of suffering there, I also knew that I was an experienced sufferer, and that might help me endure hell. I knew that in the end I’d be annihilated. Annihilation was eternal nothingness, yet that was my vision of eternal peace.
Praise God that his bountiful grace rescued me from that. He rescued me from myself.
I’m sure that Adventists would be horrified by the conclusions I reached as a result of following the logic of their doctrine in my despair. Many of them are sincere, devout Christians who follow God to the best of their ability according to the graces he gives them and the light they have. They believe that eternal hell is unworthy of a merciful God. In their appreciation for his mercy, they forget about his justice.
If I had successfully committed suicide and gone to hell, it is clear that it would not have been the fault of the Adventist Church. My damnation would have been solely my own fault, because I was choosing myself and my desires over God and his desires for me. I would have been echoing the ancient cry, "I will not serve." The Adventist doctrine would have been the tool I grasped at as I worked out my destruction.
But the Adventist doctrine must be false, because a just and a merciful God would never have provided such a loophole for me to slip through in my pursuit of having my own way despite his law. Could such a loophole exist, we would have to deduce that God is not omniscient, but that would reduce to saying that there is no God. No Adventist admits that, nor any other theist for that matter.
God’s justice demands that sin be accorded a proportionate penalty. I doubt anyone could reasonably conclude that just punishment is served by God punishing me for a time but eventually being forced to annihilate me, which is what I wanted (or thought I wanted) all along.
Michelle L. Arnold writes from San Diego, California, where she serves as a Catholic Answers volunteer.
|
[TOP]
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
