24. The last Judgement

A Symphony for sensitive chords and hardened hearts

How can we understand those who "didn't make it", those false notes of history? The Son of Man will send His angels, and they will remove from His Kingdom all those who scandalise others and those who commit evil.

Would that we could put an end to these demands, and that the wicked and the evil-doers could be stopped in their tracks when the Son of Man manifests Himself! But what follows is far too much like a condemnation without appeal: they will be thrown into a dark pit. "There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

I'd love to understand how, at the awful moment of direct encounter with the living God, face to face with Jesus Christ the Judge - He who was their Victim - that they would be devoured by the flames of insupportable regret, shrivelled up with shame and gnawed by remorse. But must we speak of hell for all eternity? The question has often been raised. Since we do not have a parable, I'm going to tell you a story that happened to me, a lived experience!

I had just been involved in an accident in Peru, at an altitude of 4000 metres. A reckless driver, completely drunk, drove straight into our car, instead of passing us out normally. He made straight for our headlights like an insect for the light. The driver managed to swerve and so escape the frontal shock, but the left back wheel was buckled, and so we escaped being hurled into the ravine. Three hundred metres below, a beautiful mountain lake would have received us into its crystal waters, had not a tiny mound of earth held us back "in extremis".

The other vehicle, a small lorry belonging to an electricity company, was completely demolished, as it went on to crash on the side of the mountain. The driver, somewhat bloodstained by the broken glass of the windscreen, approached holding out his hand: "Break my arm!" he said. An Andes tit for tat? Indian cosmovision? So that the world can keep turning round, balances must be maintained and "because I broke your car, now you must break my arm." Thus equality is restored and justice is rendered. But how on earth could breaking this idiot's arm mend our car? We are in search of life, not of retribution in horror!

Let's apply this story to our subject. How could, grilling the torturers, cure or compensate for those tortured? How could the eternal suffering of Pilate, Caiphas, Herod, Hitler, Stalin or Pinochet, or those other evil men, rotters and assassins of history, compensate for the deaths of so many innocents?

I can't say that I'm happy at the idea of hell. I can entertain a hope that hell is empty. Does hell exist? I'm not saying yes or no straightway, but I'm convinced that if hell does exist, it is not a positive element in God's project. In fact, it runs counter to God's plan. It is therefore the failure of Christ, of Him who did not come to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved; who did not come for the just, but for the unjust, who came "to seek and to save that which was lost."

Therefore if hell exists, it is not God's making. So then if it does exist, it is man who is responsible. It is man who causes the world to be a suffocating place, a "hell on earth": man who cannot forgive, who is the cause of suffering, massacres life, kills love. It is inhuman man who creates hell and desires a godless world. But "the Word of God became Man, so that we might become God; He became visible in His body, so that we might glimpse an idea of what the Father invisible is like; He bore man's outrages so that we might have a share in immortality."

All salvation history is about coming out of hell: the exodus from Egypt with its oppression and genocide, the return from captivity in Babylon, the victory over hatred and death in Christ's Resurrection. So the question remains: Can our God who loves immeasurably, stoop to inciting reciprocity in those "evil brutes" which certain individuals are? I'm not referring so much here to delinquents, prostitutes or the tax cheaters - who will be the first in God's Kingdom - but to those who are clever, sure of themselves and of their rights; the doctors of the Law and other guardians of the Temple; Pharisees with pure hands and clean consciences and who never miss a Service; those who occupy the position of accusers, like Satan precisely! Here I want to offer a parable, a story which may help us to understand in some small way, the mystery of God's patience.

Imagine a huge orchestra: several millions of musicians, and at the centre, a very pleasant conductor. The music is not written in advance. As in classical Indian music or jazz, a soloist begins, and all listen attentively. He initiates both the theme and the rhythm, which is then taken up by the entire orchestra. Improvisation yes, but each instrument blends in beauty, harmony and in the rhythm of sounds. But lo and behold, in the orchestra there is a wicked undisciplined musician who refuses to lend his instrument to the general harmony; in short, his plan is to sabotage. He introduces wrong notes, tries to play the big fellow, and to entice other musicians into his game.

Then a strange thing happens! There is a gigantic competition of unheard-of-before musical virtuosos who rapidly blend in harmony: a fifth, a third etc. twelve-tone harmony and up to contemporary music, Olivier Messiaen and other geniuses. It meant integrating the false notes and reducing them to the simple effect of not unpleasant dissonances - even if the harmonics became more and more sophistocated-the effect being that what was originally a musical error, was eventually absorbed into a vaster ensemble, giving the impression that it was intended.

There were difficult moments, sombre and grave moments, tragic and chaotic times even, but the orchestra held firm. Gradually the break-away musicians began to follow the central conductor. Left to himself, the disturber got tired, discouraged, and abandoning his game, allowed himself to be impressed by the group's solidarity and fraternal connivance, as well as by the calm demeanour of those who resisted him. He finished by calling it a day, before eventually giving up!

For the end of my story, I'm hesitating between two possible outcomes: he flees, furious at having lost the battle to indulge in nail-biting for all eternity, or with a smile on his face, he begins to applaud, a gracious loser!