NSoC 17: Hell as Hatred

See Notes on this series...

Short, short chapter, but powerful. Merton pictures hell as a place filled with people who share only this: they hate one another yet cannot rid themselves of one another.

The fire of their hatred is fueled the detestable things they see in others but identify with themselves.

He contrasts that with the consuming fire of God, a fire of eternal joy for those who allow God to transform them, but a mortal enemy to those who won't. God's love, to them become "our torment and our destruction."

Merton explains this formula:
Love God more than self = finding him and his joy in all things
Love self more than God = find enemies in all things

Merton sees evil as "the absence of a perfection that ought to be there." He says that men are attracted to whatever good there is in evil acts, and there is just enough good there to act as bait in a trap. Sinners, therefore, hate everything because of all the deceit they've been ensnared by. He equates sin with boredom, and sinners with boring scourges who subject the world to their uselessness, citing especially H_tler, Stalin, and Napoleon.

(UPDATE: "H_tler" is typed that way because if I spell it normally my internet filter marks my blog as "Hate/Violence" and won't let me read it.)

Quiz:
Merton died in 1968. If he were alive today, who might he add to his list of "boring" sinners?