The Trappist Monk Thomas Merton and I are very different. He was deeply religious and was a brilliant writer, loved all over the world.

I’ve read his writing almost daily for at least 20 years, and he has guided and shaped my life in many important ways.

I always take something from him. He always makes me think. He speaks my mind in ways I cannot explain and has helped my search for spiritual life.

Yesterday, during my quiet hour, I read one of my favorite Merton Books, New Seeds Of Contemplation, and one of Merton’s best essays.

It’s called Hell Is Hatred.

Hell, he wrote, is where no one has anything in common except that they all hate one another and cannot get away from one another and their rage and unhappiness.

Okay, I thought, so hell is on the news, every day, on phones, cable news, television, and social media. Are we in hell?

I kept thinking of our country today and how it is, every day, coming closer to the hell he is describing.

I kept thinking of the people who hate anyone different, anyone from a foreign place, anyone who believes in the individual’s freedom to forge their own life.

They seem to hate people, believe that I hate them, think that you hate them, and seek to destroy their way of life. They are turning our civil system, which has run so confidently for several hundred years, into a living kind of hell if hell is hatred.

Our country is splitting into tributes, all of us thrown together in our fire as each side tries to dominate and push away the others with an enormous, unrelenting, unresolvable hatred.

We think they are worse than us, and they think we are worse than them.

We believe they seek to dominate us against our will and wish and they think and claim the same thing. I know there must be a way out, but I can’t see it yet.

“The tree is known by its fruits,” wrote Merton. “Study hell to understand modern man’s social and political history.”

I don’t think the world, for all its conflict, wars, and suffering, is hell at the moment. But I am drawn to the idea of hell as hatred. And sometimes, it’s getting too close for comfort.

Merton imagined two cities. “In the furnace of war and  hatred, the City of those who love one another is drawn and fused in the heroism of charity under suffering, while the city of those who hate everything is scattered and dispersed, and its citizens are cast out in every direction, like sparks, smoke, and flame.”

Watching the news, It sometimes feels like we are being punished by the vengeful god of the Old Testament is punishing us for failing to care for his most beautiful creation, the earth.

What attracts people to evil acts, I think, is not the evil in them but the good that is there, seen through the prism of lies, misunderstandings, ignorance, broken values,  and a distorted perspective.

The good pursued in that way – through hatred –  is a trick, peanut butter in a mouse trap.

When they reach out to take it, the trap is sprung, and they will be left with disgust, boredom, and of course, hatred. That’s a lonely, empty place, a sinkhole with no bottom.

Because there is nothing behind hatred but emptiness and frustration, there are no stirring goals, brilliant policies, or inspiring leaders: only more rage and more hate.

I get it; beneath hatred is a vast and empty hole through which the haters must inevitably fall because there is nothing beneath them to keep them standing. Theree is some old testament to m when all is said and done.

Hell is hatred.

We are supposed to love one another. We are supposed to care for one another.

We are supposed to reason with one another. We are supposed to value one another.

The Bible says so.

A world without compassion and reason is a hell all of its own.

I believe the truth will always come out.

I believe love will always triumph over hatred.  I think the haters will be punished for their cruelty and lies, and they will fail, as they most often have throughout human history.

We are meant to be good and value truth and compassion. Humanity will reassert itself, people of good hearts and sound minds have no interest in hell.

God, if he or she exists,  will punish haters, deniers, and those who substitute rage for morality.

I imagine they are in hell in their hearts, and their lives must be so harsh and empty.

Merton believes that “good” done out of hatred and anger is false and cannot prevail. He says hate will destroy the haters because there is nothing behind it.

You cannot, after all, live a life devoted to values that do not exist. Values always prevail over hatred, because values are the things people fight the hardest for.

Just wait and see.

“When they (the haters) try to cover the tedium of life by noise, excitement, hatred, and violence,” wrote Merton, “they become more than boring; they are scourges of the world and society. And being scourged is not merely something dull or tedious.”

It is, he suggests, hell itself.

Hatred is dull; hatred is tedious. Hatred is Hell.