Categories
Poems Spirituality

Beware of the Modern Pharisees and Scribes!

This is that time when anything you say can be held against you. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. It doesn’t matter whether you were fully aware of the weight of your words. And it doesn’t matter whether you were sick or writhing in pain when you said it.

People will form their conclusion about you. They will feed their anger and their fear and blame it all on you. And they will do these things without even asking your side of the story.

Why ask when they want to satisfy their wrath? Why shatter their prejudices when they are blinded by their self-righteousness?

People will throw stones at you as though you were the most evil person in the world. They won’t care because they don’t care. If they did, they would have given you at least the benefit of the doubt.

But in the name of justice, they do what is most unjust. In the name of truth, they believed in lies.

They disguise themselves as lambs when they are wolves ready to devour anyone getting in their way. They see no hope and so they drive everyone to despair.

Tell me, who is without sin or blemish among you? And who has the right to cast the first stone?

“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.” – Matthew 23:13 (NRSVCE)

Categories
life after death

Why is there eternal punishment in hell?

Many people ask
that if God is good,
why should He punish sinners
for all eternity in hell?
Isn’t this so much
and already unjust
in comparison
to the length of time
one has sinned on earth?

I believe that the eternity of hell
does not really depend on the weight of one’s sins
for no matter what the weight,
God can forgive us with His unfathomable Mercy.

No matter what the weight,
God can make us pay for it
and we can be released
after we have rendered what has been due.

But hell, as it is hell which is eternal
is not based on the weight
or in the multitude of one’s sins
but on the condition of one’s heart
when one has already received
all that is needed to be received
in order for the heart to make a choice

When the mortal man realizes
he is no longer mortal,
when the veil of time and space
had been lifted up and he sees,
when he becomes such a spirit
as the angels are,
he will render a judgment upon himself

and he will render an eternal decision
as the angels have made

Will he approach God’s Divine Mercy
and accept whatever punishment is due his sins?
Or will he despise all that is God’s
and turn to the light which is not Light
with those fallen stars
who will never
ever
bow down again
unto Him
who is just
and who is Love.