This Is Hell and We are In It
Brian Zahnd, C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, and our modern digital hellscape
This past month I’ve been reading through pastor Brian Zahnd’s excellent new book The Wood Between the World: A Poetic Theology of the Cross. In one of the latter chapters he references C.S. Lewis’ classic The Great Divorce and its depiction of hell:
In The Great Divorce, a theological fantasy novel on heaven and hell, C.S. Lewis imagines hell as a gray, dreary town where the inhabitants are eventually separated from one another by vast distances because they cannot overcome their alienation toward one another.
I haven’t read The Great Divorce in quite a long time, so I’d somewhat forgotten about Lewis’ unique analogy, which is so different from our usual Dante-inspired images of flames, demons, and torment. I decided to take a quick dip in to refresh myself.
In first chapter of the story, our unnamed narrator is taking a flying bus out of the gray, rainy town that is hell and begins to chat with fellow passengers. As they rise above the town, the narrator observes:
We were now so high that all below us had become featureless. But fields, rivers, or mountains I did not see, and I got the impression that the grey town still filled the whole field of vision "It seems the deuce of a town," I volunteered, "and that's what I can't understand. The parts of it that I saw were so empty. Was there once a much larger population?" "Not at all," said my neighbour. "The trouble is that they're so quarrelsome. As soon as anyone arrives he settles in some street. Before he's been there twenty-four hours he quarrels with his neighbour. Before the week is over he's quarrelled so badly that he decides to move. Very like he finds the next street empty because all the people there have quarrelled with their neighbours-and moved. So he settles in. If by any chance the street is full, he goes further. But even if he stays, it makes no odds. He's sure to have another quarrel pretty soon and then he'll move on again. Finally he'll move right out to the edge of the town and build a new house. You see, it's easy here. You've only got to think a house and there it is. That's how the town keeps on growing."…."And what about the earlier arrivals? I mean — there must be people who came from earth to your town even longer ago." "That's right. There are. They've been moving on and on. Getting further apart. They're so far off by now that they could never think of coming to the bus stop at all. Astronomical distances. There's a bit of rising ground near where I live and a chap has a telescope. You can see the lights of the inhabited houses, where those old ones live, millions of miles away. Millions of miles from us and from one another. Every now and then they move further still.”
As I read this description I thought, “Well if that isn’t a description of our modern social media hellscape, I don’t know what is.”
In America these days, we may not be million of miles apart from each other physically, but ideologically it sure feels like it. I don’t think I really need to elaborate much here—we’ve all been inundated with an endless stream of analysis and opinion pieces over the last 6 or 7 years about how badly America is divided, and particularly how social media is driving extremism, polarization, and isolation. So many of us have been dreading another contentious election cycle that we’re now legitimately afraid could break out into outright violence (once again).
It feels like staring into the edge of the abyss. Because in some ways it is.
One thing Lewis (and Zahnd in his wake) explores elsewhere in The Great Divorce and other writings, is the idea that heaven and hell are states that begin now, in our mortal life, rather than just spiritual eternities we are placed in after death. Lewis writes elsewhere in The Great Divorce:
Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why...the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven, and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.
Zahnd writes in a blog post entitled “Hell…and How to Get There”:
In The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky introduces Eastern Orthodox theology and wisdom into his novel through the saintly character Elder Zosima. In his mystical discourse on hell, Elder Zosima says, “I ask myself: ‘What is hell?’ And I answer thus: ‘The suffering of being no longer able to love.’” Jean-Paul Sartre famously said in his existentialist play No Exit, “Hell is other people.” Elder Zosima’s response to Sartre’s cynicism would be, “No, hell is the inability to love other people.” Dostoevsky’s Zosima seems very close to how we should understand hell. It has something to do with a wrong reaction to the very essence of God: love. We might even say that hell is the love of God wrongly received. Hell is not God’s hatred of sinners; God has a single disposition toward sinners, and that is love. God is always the loving father of both the prodigal younger son and the resentful older son. He always loves them both. Hell is not God’s hatred; rather, hell has something to do with refusing to receive and be transformed by the love of God.
So what does this all have to do with America and politics and social media again?
I grew up most of my life suppressing my anger because I was taught that anger was a destructive, sinful emotion to feel. About 7 years ago I began a process of therapy after a dark time, and found permission to be angry. And oh, did the floodgates of anger open. I felt like I had to rage against and point out every injustice and immorality and hypocrisy, and those flames were stoked by listening to other people rage online against injustice.
Let me be clear about something here. I do think that we have an obligation to point out injustices and wrongs, and call those in power to account for abuses. And I’ve come to learn the freedom of giving myself permission to feel all my emotions.
But for me, my anger was starting to burn in an unloving and dehumanizing way. I started to realize that just telling people how wrong they are doesn’t lead them to change their mind. It usually just entrenches them further in what they believe. I started to realize I was developing an us vs. them mentality. I realized I was become cynical and it was poisoning so much of my life.
As Lewis or Zahnd would probably put it, I was, in a small way, becoming hell on earth.
Now, my point here is not to end by saying that I’ve changed and now I’m such an incredibly loving, non-judgmental person. I’m trying to work on it. I’ve had to cut down on my social media and unfollow some accounts that were just constantly churning me up. I’m learning to feel my feelings, including my anger, but also trying to lead with love in my relationships with people.
These days I’m often reminded of another quote from Lewis, this one from his book The Weight of Glory:
It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
I hope this year we can all learn a little more how to help each other along on the road toward heaven, and may we see the kingdom come here on earth, not by earthly power or who we elect to office, but in our love for each other.
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