Alma 42 of the Book of Mormon is comprised of the words of Alma the Younger to his son Corianton, whom he has been laying into harder than his first two sons due to the latter’s sexual sin, which undermined their missionary work: “for when they saw your conduct they would not believe in my words” (Alma 39:11). Apparently suspecting that Corianton is still trying to minimize the severity of his sins by minimizing the severity of divine justice in general, Alma says “ye do try to suppose that it is injustice that the sinner should be consigned to a state of misery” (Alma 42:1). He consequently spends the rest of the chapter belaboring the point that mercy cannot rob justice.
Not that Corianton was totally out of line to express that concern! Many a smart atheist and agnostic and even Church schoolmen have noted the massive disproportionate response of God seemingly punishing people for all eternity, all for the very brief actions committed in the cosmic blink of our mortal probations; at a bare minimum, it seems an injustice that the sinner should be consigned to an eternal state of misery. Heck, our own D&C 19:6-7 clarifies that “it is not written that there shall be no end to this torment, but it is written endless torment. Again, it is written eternal damnation; wherefore it is more express than other scriptures, that it might work upon the hearts of the children of men, altogether for my name’s glory.” That is, God Himself affirms that it is only the torment itself that lasts eternally; the people consigned to it are not actually supposed to stay there eternally, but only until they’ve served their sentence, so to speak. Corianton has good theological ground for pushing back on his father.
But then, it does not appear to be the eternity of punishment that most bothers Corianton, but rather the sheer fact of punishment to begin with. Is not God supposed to be a being of infinite mercy, patience, and forgiveness? Has He not commanded us to love and forgive one another? How then does eternal damnation square with such otherwise-humane commandments?
It’s a good enough question that C.S. Lewis took it seriously in his 1940 book The Problem of Pain; in Chapter VIII, he offers the following hypothetical portrait (which hasn’t felt nearly so hypothetical since the most recent presidential election):
“Picture to yourself a man who has risen to wealth or power by a continued course of treachery and cruelty, by exploiting for purely selfish ends the noble notions of his victims, laughing the while at their simplicity; who, having thus attained success, uses it for the gratification of lust and hatred and finally parts with the last rag of honour among thieves by betraying his own accomplices and jeering at their last moments of bewildered disillusionment.
“Suppose, further, that he does all this, not (as we like to imagine) tormented by remorse or even misgiving, but eating like a schoolboy and sleeping like a healthy infant—a jolly, ruddy-cheeked man, without a care in the world, unshakably confident to the very end that he alone has found the answer to the riddle of life, that God and man are fools whom he has got the better of, that his way of life is utterly successful, satisfactory, unassailable.
“We must be careful at this point. The least indulgence of the passion for revenge is very deadly sin. Christian charity counsels us to make every effort for the conversion of such a man: to prefer his conversion, at the peril of our own lives, perhaps of our own souls, to his punishment; to prefer it infinitely.
“But that is not the question. Supposing he will not be converted, what destiny in the eternal world can you regard as proper for him? Can you really desire that such a man, remaining what he is (and he must be able to do that if he has free will) should be confirmed forever in his present happiness—should continue, for all eternity, to be perfectly convinced that the laugh is on his side?
“And if you cannot regard this as tolerable, is it only your wickedness—only spite—that prevents you from doing so? Or do you find that conflict between Justice and Mercy, which has sometimes seemed to you such an outmoded piece of theology, now actually at work in your own mind, and feeling very much as if it came to you from above, not from below?
“You are moved not by a desire for the wretched creature’s pain as such, but by a truly ethical demand that, soon or late, the right should be asserted, the flag planted in this horribly rebellious soul, even if no fuller and better conquest is to follow. In a sense, it is better for the creature itself, even if it never becomes good, that it should know itself a failure, a mistake. Even mercy can hardly wish to such a man his eternal, contented continuance in such ghastly illusion.”
In this passage, C.S. Lewis presents us with a wicked man who gets away with everything without the slightest remorse of conscious; Lewis in turn suggests our very primal desire that such a creature should at long last be held accountable–in the next life, if nowhere else–does not arise entirely out of an un-Christian desire for revenge, but from a genuine innate sense that, as Alma taught, mercy cannot rob justice–a sentiment that even God Almighty shares. As Lewis continues, “The demand that God should forgive such a man while he remains what he is, is based on a confusion between condoning and forgiving. To condone an evil is simply to ignore it, to treat it as if it were good. But forgiveness needs to be accepted as well as offered if it is to be complete: and a man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.” This idea, that God should forgive evil without repentance, is I believe the one Corianton was entertaining, and that Alma was pushing back so hard against.
And at the risk of a hard-left turn, this is also why, incidentally, I’ve never been able to treat The Vandal’s old 1998 Skate-Punk track “People That Are Going To Hell” as a joke, at least not completely. Yes, it is the opener to their most light-hearted and joke-heavy album Hitler Bad, Vandals Good (back in an era when stating “Hitler bad” was so self-evidently obvious, it was considered a joke to even say so outloud); and yes, it has, like the rest of the LP, a sarcastic and humorous sensibility; but like most jokes, the song actually feels deadly serious.
“Some people are bad and they don’t give a damn/What they do or who they hurt” they belt out at the open, continuing throughout the song to succinctly describe the same sort of person that C.S. Lewis attempted to draw in The Problem of Pain: “Some beat their wives, some pull out a knife/And stab a person or two or three/With no repercussions and no one here can touch them/And they get away scot-free…” (Which again, not to belabor the obvious, but is a frustration I’ve been feeling all the more acutely since a certain serial adulterer/liar/rapist/racist/felon/etc. got away scot-free in early November…)
Yet what is even more intriguing, is that The Vandals arrive at largely the same conclusion that C.S. Lewis did over a half-century earlier, by declaring in each chorus some variation of: “But they don’t bother me at all/Cause I know quite well/When their lives are over and they’ve done what they’ve done/They’re the people that are going to hell.”
That is perhaps put more crudely and less eloquently than C.S. Lewis did; but whereas I largely read this track as merely sarcastic and mocking of divine justice when I was younger, I have lately begun to reconsider, that (as is so often the case) their sarcastic delivery is only a front, that they in fact mean every word that they say–as does Lewis–as does Alma–as does God Himself–and as should we all. Mercy cannot rob justice, and when, like Malachi, we feel that “It is vain to serve God,” that “we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, they that tempt God are even delivered,” it may not be fear-mongering at all but, paradoxically, a genuine comfort, to know that there is in fact a hell prepared for them—and a way out from the same if we sincerely repent.