“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."
- Revelation 3:15-16
Theologically incorrect as Dante's Inferno can be, this passage is very thought-provoking:
The sighs, groans and laments were at first so loud
Resounding through starless air, I began to weep:
Strange languages, horrible screams, words imbued
With rage or despair, cries as of the troubled sleep
Or of a tortured shrillness - they rose in a coil
Of tumult, along with noises like the slap
Of bearing hands, all fused in ceaseless flail
That churns and frenzies that dark and tinless air
Like sand in a whirlwind. And I, my head in a swirl
Or error, cried: Master, what is this I hear?
What people are these, whom pain has overcome?
He: This is the sorrowful state of souls unsure
Whose lives earned neither honor nor bad fame.
Now heaven expels them, not to mar its splendor
And Hell rejects them
Mercy and justice disdains them...
To me, this is not so much a picture of what happens to those who are apathetic and lack commitment after they die as it is a compelling portrait of the emotional and psychological state of people who "don't seem to care." If you've been overcome by pain, doesn't it seem natural to withdraw? To become dead to those things which could hurt you? And what is more sorrowful than to live in fear of what injury could be done to you if you were passionate and alive?
It's been said that the hardest thing in this world is to live in it. I'm so thankful for the compassion of God, because it is what brings us shrinking, cringing beings into abundant life.
"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor,
and the day of vengeance of God;
to comfort all who mourn..."
- Isaiah 61:1-2
