The other day I posted a thread from Facebook that led me to the brink of despair.
Here’s one that proves that Facebook can be a source of light as well as darkness. A friend of mine, Paul from Pluto (Pluto, Mississippi), writes the post, and Cory Dupont and I share some thoughts as comments …
THE POST: … if hell is eternal punishment for evil, and evil is according to classical metaphysics non-being, then how can hell be any kind of entity at all?
… and Divine Mercy, though often hidden, is the Reality that overcomes that Nothing. That last comment of mine is something I want to expand upon.
***
When we sin, we seek some sort of evil. Evil, properly speaking, is the absence of good. It is a kind of “nothing”. It is “naught” – which is what it means to be “naughty” in a sense.
But no matter how “naughty” we are, no matter how much we pride ourselves on what we’ve built – our corrupt and teetering Earthly City, which stands against the solid and eternal City of God – it all comes to naught. As Shakespeare wrote …
The sceptre, learning, physic, must
All follow this and come to dust.
And St. Paul points to this great mystery – the mystery of the Futility of Evil when he quotes the prophet Isaiah, saying …
For it is written, “As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” (Rom. 14:11)
In other words, at the End of Time, God will proclaim in our hearts what J.R.R. Tolkien echoes when he says …
… no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.
Even our sins, then, and their futile consequences, ultimately stand as a witness and a tribute to the Reality that God has made, to the Reality that God is. In spite of ourselves, we sinners show that we can only deny God and His plan by turning toward nothing, toward evil, toward the Unreal. All sinners will therefore sooner or later bend the knee and confess to God in spite of ourselves, for that’s the way the cosmos is structured.
And we will do this not only then, at the Coming of Christ, but occasionally we do it even now, typically in moments of silence, of despair or anguish, of great regret – moments when the silly game we play is revealed to be the utter waste that it is. To quote the atheist John Lennon (who often got it right) …
All my little patterns and schemes
Lost like some forgotten dreams
Seems that all I really was doing
Was waiting for you
Just like little girls and boys
Playing with their little toys
Seems like all they really were doing
Was waiting for love
We flatter ourselves with our worldly accomplishments and pursuits. We flatter ourselves with our sins. But we are only “little girls and boys” being naughty. And even when our naughtiness comes to naught, we find ourselves bending the knee and confessing to God, by the very futility of our attempts to turn away from Him.
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