I was a physician for almost 40 years. In that time, I have seen a lot of pain……physical……and emotional. We all deal with it. We try to avoid it. But, we really don’t give it a lot of thought. We understand that pain is bad…….that there is mild pain……and severe pain. But there is an aspect of pain that we rarely consider…….the time course of pain. There is short term pain……..and there is chronic pain. In terms of misery, the duration of pain is a bigger contributor than the severity of the pain.
In my career……..and in my life…….the most miserable people I have met did not have the most severe pain. They were people whose pain was mild to moderate, but whose pain was long term. The most miserable of all had pain that was never going to go away.
This post is about the most extreme form of chronic pain……..eternal pain.
The Bible teaches many radical concepts. In terms of importance, the most important is the concept of a creator………a creator who loves us, who wants the best for us, and who has expectations of us. Arguably, the second most important concept in the Bible is the idea of eternity……..the idea of a place where time has no end…….where time, for all practical purposes, does not exist. This is closely tied to the concept of the soul…….that part of each of us that operates…….or will operate…… in eternity.
Pain……..joy…….eternity.
The Bible teaches that when we die, our soul will ultimately go to a place where time does not end. It also teaches that there is a division in eternity. There will be pain and there will be joy. And they will be permanently and completely separated, unlike our temporal world where we experience moments of joy and moments of pain. In eternity, there is a chasm separating joy and pain. In eternity, we will either experience constant joy……or constant pain……….paradise or hell.
We hear a lot about the severity of the pain in hell. But, I think that this misses the point. The worst part of hell will not be the severity of the pain……..it will be the fact that it has no end. There will be no hope for a better tomorrow.
Eternity + pain + lost hope = misery
This is a place that I really want to avoid. You may say that you don’t believe in eternity……..that you die and the lights just go out…….or that you go to a place that you have dreamed up on your own……..but you had better be right.
The threat of pain after death is real. Don’t focus on the details of the cause of the pain…….”will the coffee be cold”……..focus on the duration of the pain, which is ultimately the determinant of your misery.
‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’
A conversation between Abraham in paradise and a rich man in hell as told by Jesus, Luke 16:24-26