Does God Kill Souls?

Last updated on: June 22, 2015 at 12:10 am by Mark Shea

Does God Kill Souls? 2015-06-17T10:25:30-07:00 Mark Shea

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A reader writes:

My question relates to Scripture where it says we r to not be afraid of the one who can only kill our bodies, but should fear the one who can kill our souls. First off, does this mean that fallen angels can possess or kill us pretty much at will? Secondly, does our immortal soul have exposure to the risk of being “killed” by God in hell? Any helpful hints in unpacking this?

The passage in view is this:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. (Mt 10:28).

My own take on this (subject to criticism from the Church and wiser heads than mine) is that this is a warning against fearing death more than sin. I am highly skeptical that Jesus means “God wants to kill you and destroy your soul, so watch it.” Nor do I think it has anything to do with angels. It is the sinner, not God or his angels, who destroys himself by cutting himself off from God who is all Life. The Church describes hell as the “state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed”. It is not so much something God does to the sinner as something the sinner does to himself. The damned makes himself into a thing which experiences the God Who is Love as unbearable to endure. The pains of hell are the pains of being a creature (or the remains of a creature) who has chosen to experience love, self-donation, and all goodness as hateful, disgusting, and repulsive. God’s will, forever, is life and love for us, because he *is* Love. He does not change. But we can change and make ourselves into things (I question whether the damned will even qualify as “persons” at such a stage) that are forever closed to Him who is Life and Love. My suspicion, along with C.S. Lewis, is that to be damned would be to enter the state of having been a human being, much ashes and hot gas are the remains of a thing that used to be a log. May God deliver us all from such a horror. Damnation is something that is, of course, up to the individual in the end. But part of Jesus’ warning is that damnation has a social aspect in that it is the tempter, far more than the persecutor who constitutes the great danger to the Church and the Christian. This means that it is the seeming friend, far more than the bloodthirsty enemy, who poses the threat. The frank and open enemy does not usually seduce us from our faith. So, for instance, ask yourself: have you ever in your life met a serious prolife Christian who, reading Nancy Pelosi’s silly drivel about Augustine and Aquinas supporting the pro-abortion position, said, “Say! This is powerful and persuasive stuff!” Has somebody ever beaten or humiliated you into accepting some evil they advocate? Nope. It is the seeming friend who tells us that, just this once, it will be fine to cut corners, to do evil that good may come of it. And when we think about our own life, isn’t that true? It’s my friends or people I took for heroes who taught me my worst habits and gave me moral permission to think and do all kinds of evil. It’s our friends who encourage us to raid the cookie jar and, later, the liquor cabinet. It’s our friends who introduce us to drugs, tell us it’s fine to skip Mass for the fishing trip, and tell us that what the wife doesn’t know about the hot secretary won’t hurt us. Over the past ten years, has it not been the “friends” of Catholics who have told them that torture is Teh Awsum and that we need it in order to save our skins from our enemies? Was not the whole of the abuse scandal due to perverted forms of friendship in which bishops were told by their friends the accountants and lawyers that it was expedient for one kid to perish than that the whole Church should suffer? The prostitution of conservative Christians to the Rubber Hose Right or the cowardly willingness of abuser-shielding bishops to try to save their skins by listening to their “friends” in the bean-counting and lawyer community instead of to the Holy Spirit (and the corresponding loss of credibility of Christian witness) has been a textbook example of why Jesus is simply right here. The thing to fear is not him who can destroy the body, but the one who tempts us to destroy body and soul in hell by telling us “Go ahead and do evil that good may come of it. It’s the only way to save your skin.” It is, of course, a temptation to which we are all subject and all of us have given in to it at some point or other. That’s why the warning is published in the gospel for the sake of the whole Church. But the good news is that while we, in our sinful madness, may want to capitulate to the crazy desire to fear death more than sin, God keeps offering us grace to avoid that and forgiveness when we fail. God is all love and all life. Even his judgments are ordered toward our salvation, not our damnation. If we end up destroying our bodies and souls in hell, it will be over his dead–and risen–body, not because he desires us to go there. Hope that helps.

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