Hell and Donald Trump

 Donald Trump, with his usual delicacy, seems to have spent most of Christmas telling various parties to "go to hell." or, more picturesquely, "rot in hell." No, I'm not going to link to any of his posts. 

Perhaps Donald Trump has never pondered the possibility that he himself could one day find himself in hell.  If you flinch at the notion that anyone should go to hell, then ponder these prophetic words of C. S. Lewis:

Picture to yourself a man who has risen to wealth or power by a continued course of treachery and cruelty, by exploiting for purely selfish ends the noble motions of his victims, laughing the while at their simplicity; who, having thus attained success, uses it for the gratification of lust and hatred and finally parts with the last rag of honour among thieves by betraying his own accomplices and jeering at their last moments of bewildered disillusionment. Suppose, further, that he does all this, not (as we like to imagine) tormented by remorse or even misgiving, but eating like a schoolboy and sleeping like a healthy infant—a jolly, ruddy-cheeked man, without a care in the world, unshakably confident to the very end that he alone has found the answer to the riddle of life, that God and man are fools whom he has got the better of,that his way of life is utterly successful, satisfactory, unassailable. ...

    Supposing he will not be converted, what destiny in the eternal world can you regard as proper for him? Can you really desire that such a man, remaining what he is (and he must be able to do that if he has free will) should be confirmed forever in his present happiness—should continue, for all eternity, to be perfectly convinced that the laugh is on his side?

This imaginary person in The Problem of Pain reminds me of Donald Trump. Such a man, argues Lewis, challenges the assumption that no person should go to hell; challenges it by recruiting our sense of justice to argue with our (possibly over-developed?) sense of mercy. 

Well, it challenges me.  Trump, and to a lesser extent, his minions (like Elon Musk) challenge daily my sense of mercy.  What a disheartening time we live in.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: The quotation is from The Problem of Pain (New York, 1947), pp. 108-109.