On the Cost of Lies
Even what seems a small thing, like bearing a false accusation, or spreading a false panic, may be a great and weighty thing indeed. Should those who scorn forgiveness be forgiven?
I know personally of two cases where, because an impressionable woman was deceived into believing the transparently absurd smears brought against Justice Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings, she broke off a childhood friendship of many decades standing or she sought a divorce from her husband.
Obviously, in both cases, there were other contributing factors, but in both cases the mesmerism of the lie being told about a political figure utterly unrelated to them was so hypnotic, that the impressionable woman could not countenance, could not understand, and could not tolerate any difference of opinion, neither from childhood friend nor from husband. Friendship and marriage turned to hate, and that was prompted by this lie.
None of the newsmen nor politicians who spred the false accusation will ever know the names of these people whose lives they wounded by spreading enmity between friends and family.
But there are worse things lies can do.
I take this quote verbatim from a random stranger on the Internet. I neither vouch for its accuracy nor question its accuracy: the reader is invited to use his own judgment. But I do not doubt that there are myriad cases of this kind. Capitalization and spelling is as in the original.
“I saw patients die who refused to come to the hospital because of the fear-mongering in the beginning. I had a cancer patient who had been in remission for over a decade. When he came out during the scamdemic, I could not convince him to come to the hospital for his chemotherapy. He died in his home 3 weeks later. We had a cardiac case that was postponed because the patient tested positive on an RT-PCR test with NO SYMPTOMS. His pacemaker failed the same week and he died in his sleep. All preventable and all because of the fear-mongering media.”
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My comment:
The doctrine that a lake of eternal fire awaits the souls of sinners in the next life is the most hateful of all Christian doctrines. If there is no limit to divine mercy, why cannot it not reach the damned?
Many a man, including myself, are profoundly disturbed by the vision of a universe where eternal punishment without parole is possible.
But there are times, almost, when I grasp why such a hideous doom would be visited, even by a loving God on his beloved children, when a proud and stubborn soul calls that doom to himself, loving, serving, and embracing death while scorning and hating salvation.
Let me add here a quote: ” For God made not death: neither hath he pleasure in the destruction of the living. For he created all things, that they might have their being: and the generations of the world were healthful; and there is no poison of destruction in them, nor the kingdom of death upon the earth: For righteousness is immortal: But ungodly men with their works and words called it to them: for when they thought to have it their friend, they consumed to nought, and made a covenant with it, because they are worthy to take part with it.” Solomon 1:13-16.
An interesting doctrine, and one I rarely hear Christians discuss: God made man, and placed him into the world. Man made death, and invited it into his world.
We made the covenant. How shall we escape, except by the love and mercy of heaven?
If those do not resist pride, do not humble themselves, and hence reject the offered mercy are granted it equally with those who resist pride, humble themselves, and accept mercy, what merit is there in resisting pride? What point is there in accepting the mercy?
For that matter, is a mercy imposed on the unwilling rightly called mercy? A maiden who rejects a suitor, but is forced into his nuptial bower unwillingly nonetheless would not be called a wife, for he would be her ravisher, not her bridegroom.
Those of us disturbed by the vision of a universe where eternal punishment without parole is possible, should, perhaps, contemplate how much more disturbing is the opposite.
More disturbing far is universe of atheist or pantheist or theosophist, where no punishment awaits such potent, far-reaching, heedless, anonymous, and insolent evildoers, cushioned, in this life, from all earthly criticism for their deeds.
Bad enough it would be if evil life ends in comfortable oblivion, dreamless sleep or vacant nonbeing.
Worse by far it would be if, instead, await endless cycles of reincarnation, life after life of evil after evil, without end and without point. If all the cycles are pain, this is the same as hell; if pleasure, as paradise; if nirvana, as oblivion.
Worst of all it would be to find, instead of punishment, immeasurable reward in eternal joy awaits the sinner, so that his evil pride may swells to fill infinity.
Many are those headed for damnation, deeply dyed in sin, who, at the last moment, at the last breath, repent and seek life unending. Such men are willing to bend their pride to the divine will, which wills only their good.
But what of those who would rather die than admit wrong? What of those who prefer hell to bowing their pride? What of those who love their sins more than their souls?
But even if conditions of the afterlife should be far different from what mortal man imagines, this much must be said: if the evils evildoers visit by their acts upon the innocent, even upon remote and unknown strangers years or generations later, are not revisited and returned in equal measure, and all whom they wronged put right, then the afterworld is as empty of justice as this one.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
