We can only imagine what it would be like if we did not have to struggle with concupiscence. Sometimes it resembles a kind of schizophrenia or madness. Indeed, it often perplexes us as to how a person can seem so holy and moral and yet struggle with addictions and dark desires. This duality has been explored in Robert Louis Stevenson’s STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. While many speak of it as an allegory for good versus evil, in truth, it is not so simplistic. It is true that Hyde signifies the bestial, the lower nature, the part of us about which we are ashamed and seek to keep secret or “hide,” (note his name). But Jekyll is not the paragon of virtue. Rather, he is the ordinary man who earnestly seeks a place in civil society and to act appropriately. In other words, Jekyll is “every man” struggling to keep rational control and to master his concupiscence. The impulses he resists, Hyde follows. The wicked designs he brushes aside as repugnant, Hyde celebrates. The passions he denies, Hyde fully realizes. Hyde is evidence of what a person would become if human intellect and will were so damaged that no resistance could be mustered against base desires. While we might imagine that Hyde is the most free, such would be untrue. Hyde has lost control and thus his self-dominion and freedom are forfeit. The work is fiction and yet we live in a world populated by Jekyll and Hyde and those in-between. The most libertine parade a freedom that is a sham. They are slaves to their appetites. Their passions own them instead of the other way around.
Those who are closer to Hyde than Jeckyll would give greater weight to proximate ends over and against the supreme good and our ultimate end. The rapture of sensual gratification is wrongly preferred to general happiness and the joy of being in right relationship with God. By contrast, Christian man and woman are called to self-discipline. The directives of Scripture, the moral formation of the Church, the pursuit of virtue over vice and the acquisition of grace are the factors in living our moral discipleship. We are part of the animal kingdom but we are not animals.
I am befuddled as to how all this will translate with perdition. If even the souls of the damned will be given back their bodies, then would this necessarily mean that the animalistic and the craving for sensual gratification would follow them into the afterlife? Is it possible that God would strip away the senses from the flesh, leaving the damned only with memory and imagination about the sensual? Might there be as many hells as there are damned— a colloquium for meaningless intellectual blabberings for some, a gluttonous feast for others and a licentious brothel for many more? I really cannot say. The usual description for hell refers to torment and fire. Maybe the fire or pain to the senses is eternal because what it seeks to cleanse refuses to be purified? The sins of the flesh are rooted in pride. The question in my mind is what does God allow in hell? Will he permit blasphemous and lewd conduct? If not, is this inhibition part of the price paid by the fallen? Is it akin to an alcoholic wanting a drink and never being able to have one? The sins of the flesh are readily connected to idolatry or false worship. But the afterlife forces one to see the truth. I have a hard time imagining the damned and the demons worshipping Satan in an infernal parody of heaven. We might pretend to be God, but men are only weak creatures. The devil may play the part, but there is nothing truly creative about him. He can only distort and corrupt. While God still loves him, it is not love that binds the damned to one another. What does provide for their union? I suspect it has to do with need and hunger and the divine withdrawal.
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