Exclusion From Eternal Life

Despite the many stupidities involved in doing so, the general evangelical world continues to trivialize the idea that eternal death is a deterrent to sinful inclinations or worth referring to as a punishment at all.  Other annihilationists have refuted many of the contradictions, fallacies, and errors this trivialization entails, but some of the ramifications are never explicitly brought up.  Those who mistakenly believe the Bible teaches eternal conscious torment for all unsaved beings display enormous disparities between their actions and their professed theological claims not only with regard to the punitive nature of death and annihilation, but also with regard to the nature of pleasure.

Evangelicals might say that a relationship with God grounds the greatest pleasures while treating annihilation--and the inherent banishment from these pleasures within annihilation--as if it is hardly a punishment for sin.  Moreover, they might even selectively live in appreciation of morally legitimate pleasures, only to not even consider the connection between a spiritually fulfilling life and the prerequisite of existence.  I scarcely ever see an emphasis on the relationship between existence and pleasure get explored in the specific context of conditional immortality and annihilationism, much less in the broader context of hell and divine punishment.

This is hardly surprising to a rationalistic Christian, of course.  Christians have historically tended to reject the positivity of pleasure according to a Biblical worldview and have even more overtly rejected the Biblical doctrine of conditional immortality, making it unlikely that contemporary Christians with a gratuitous respect for church history would ever connect these dots on their own.  Even for such Christians, it should take hardly any time for them to admit, when pressed, that the lasting death of one's consciousness means a permanent exile from even the most basic or important pleasures.

While bodily pleasures can be quite powerful, one could experience at least some pleasures as a disembodied consciousness--in other words, all pleasure requires a mind to experience it, but not all pleasure requires a body.  Pleasure cannot be experienced without conscious existence.  The permanent death of consciousness is the exclusion from not only eternal life, but also from whatever joys eternal life might contain and the chance to ever experience those joys again.  Never again to experience intellectual, spiritual, social, or sensual pleasures, an annihilated person is exiled from existence itself, cut off from Yahweh, the source of all contingent minds (Acts 17:25 and 17:28, 1 Timothy 6:16).  There is no opportunity for life to be savored; there is no chance to mend one's relationship with the being that sustains all life.

What person who has experienced or craved genuine pleasure would so casually dismiss the loss associated with eternal death?  What Christian who understands the potential depth and pleasure a restored relationship with God allows for would so casually pronounce the second death a trivial punishment?  It is stupidity that keeps most Christians from embracing conditional immortality, not a love of truth or Scriptural doctrines.  Any Christian who truly desires to have a deep relationship with God or to relish legitimate pleasures of other kinds would never scoff at the thought of annihilation.  No intelligent Christian pits Biblical Christianity against the mere pursuit of pleasure, and no intelligent Christian would trivialize the pleasures of a sincere relationship with God by pretending like the second death is of little to no consequence unless it entails endless torment.