Parable of the Speedy Arrest

A man seated in a glass case is not put to such embarrassment as is a man in his transparency before God. This is the factor of conscience.

By the aid of conscience things are so arranged that the judicial report follows at once upon every fault, and that the guilty one himself must write it. But it is written with sympathetic ink and only becomes thoroughly clear when in eternity it is held up to the light, while eternity holds audit over the consciences.

Substantially everyone arrives in eternity bringing with him and delivering the most accurate account of every least insignificance which he has committed or has left undone. Therefore to hold judgment in eternity is a thing a child could manage; there is really nothing for a third person to do, everything, even to the most insignificant word is counted and in order.

The case of the guilty man who journeys through life to eternity is like that of the murderer who with the speed of the railway train fled from the place where he perpetrated his crime. Alas, just under the railway coach where he sat ran the electric telegraph with its signal and the order for his apprehension at the next station. When he reached the station and alighted from the coach he was arrested. In a way he had himself brought the denunciation with him.

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Sickness Unto Death. p. 255
Parables of Kierkegaard. p. 37

This passage has been on my mind lately. A number of people are having intellectual difficulty accepting the existence of a literal hell.

I have no interest in defending the doctrines of hell, or citing evidence to confirm it, or discussing (philosophically) what hell is. I think my behavior before knowing Christ has suffeciently demonstrated the existence of a literal hell.

I am drawn to this passage in Kierkegaard particularly because modernity has no understanding of what inner anguish is. And it has no interest in it. It just understands physical suffering regardless of who deserves it, and it is totally indifferent to the quality of their faith.

The difficulty for the critics of hell is that every person holds sway over an invisible court with which they are continually condemned over and over. They didn't learn this from the noisy Baptist preachers or any "third person" as Kierkegaard says.

The matter is just that many, many people carry the weight of their imperfect actions on their shoulders and it is slowly killing them. The reality of this weight has nothing to do with what can be shown on the outside (microscopes, reporters, opinion polls). It has everything to do with what is going on inside.

Jesus once said everyone who sins is a slave to sin. A man can live his entire life on the surface and never breath a word of his hidden guilt, but this does nothing to negate the guilt inside the man. This does not make his suffering any less real, for he is truly a slave.