The Ultimate Nightmare

“Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me….’” (Matthew 25.41).

Who of us has not been awakened from sleep by a horrible fantasy? That which we fear the most comes to provoke and intimidate us: Serpents or monsters, grotesque beasts or crawly, slimy things…thoughts of death, precarious situations, men come to kill us, or just ourselves, helpless to respond to the situation. But the ultimate nightmare is given to us in the passage above from the Bible.

Imagine yourself having died, approaching Jesus who is radiant in brightness. You go forward to meet Him, and He looks at you in confusion. “Who are you?” He asks. And you are surprised that He doesn’t recognize your face nor says your name. “I don’t know you,” He says. “Have we ever met?”

Then what will you reply? “Of course You know me!” But why would that be, if you really never knew Jesus? I spend a great deal of time at funerals where I meet so many whom I had never met before, especially in the Church. After the burial and upon returning to the post-internment meal as is the custom, the silence is broken by a statement something like: “My mother/father always prayed and attended Church.” Making it evident the speaker doesn’t imitate the parents. Will such persons at the time of meeting beyond this lifetime tell the Lord: “Oh, but you must know my mother.” That won’t do.

Can a mother’s tears and prayers, her pleas to the Lord, save her children? It’s not a simple question. One the one hand, we are aware of the overwhelming love which God has for all that He created. Especially each human being. If He loves the parent, will He not allow her or him to give birth a second time to the child she or he loves? Can Jesus, who used parental love for their children as an image of the great love the heavenly Father has for all His children, not be moved by the imploring of parents? One might presume it will happen.

On the other hand, however, such children are children no longer. To be fully human is to be free to choose either to know God or to go off in some other direction throughout a lifetime on earth. The Kingdom of God is for those who elect in this lifetime to find, follow, and serve the Almighty God revealed in Jesus Christ and manifested within the heart by the Holy Spirit. If a parent’s pleas were to be heard and in some fashion they were able to give birth a second time to their adult offspring, would it not in the long run be nothing more than a still-birth?

There is a falling-away time. We notice it among teenagers all too frequently. They attend Church, but against their wishes. They make a show of prayer, but in their hearts they are bored. They communicate only frustration and resistance. They stop trying to discover the Lord they never knew. Then the world lays claim to them, and whatever glow of recollection from childhood that warmed their hearts and put them in touch with the Holy Spirit is forgotten. If it reappears, say at a time of quiet reflection, the fact that it came from God is denied and dispelled. They are busy serving other deities—invisible ones who prefer to remain anonymous.

And so the command to “Depart from Me” is not as cruel as it may first appear. In fact, it is a liberating word. He is setting them free to do as they wish forever. God never obliterates what He has brought into being. As we learn from the actions of the loving father of the Prodigal Son who never set out after the young man, but waited patiently for his return, so the Lord sets at liberty any of us who may choose to spend eternity without a plan, a goal, a purpose, a direction, or a meaningful existence. That’s as good a description of hell as we need.