Lenten Reflection: Hell Is Not Other People

The following is the second in a series of reflections on The Great Divorce.
For more reflections on this work, check out the hub page for the series.

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Hell Is (Not) Other People

A reflection on chapters 1 and 2 of C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.  For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help.  Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone?  And though one might prevail against another, two will withstand one.  A threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (NRSV)

You're too important for anyone

You play the role of all you long to be

But I, I know who you really are

You're the one who cries when you're alone

From "Where Will You Go?" by Evanescence

One morning not too long ago, I had a vision of Hell.  Actually, I wouldn't really call it a vision or even a dream for that matter.  I think it was really just a strange imagining of a half-awakened brain.  I noticed none of the things commonly associated with Hell: no lake of fire or devils with pitchforks.  There were only black clouds above me, red dust beneath me, and some ruins on the horizon.  Probably what was most noteworthy about my "vision" of Hell was the fact that I was the only person there.

I suppose it was really more of a revelation of my own fears than a revelation of the afterlife.

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The Great Divorce opens at a bus stop.  The protagonist has been wandering the streets of a dank, dingy town for an indeterminate amount of time.  In this town, rain is always falling, and darkness always seems to be encroaching, though, at the same time, the sun never fully sets.  The protagonist gets in line and waits for the bus, though he has no idea where the bus will take him.  By the time the bus arrives, half of the people who were in line when he arrived have left.  Some got into an altercations with other people in line, and some just weren't all that interested in getting on the bus.  Those still in line board the bus, and the bus lifts off from the ground and sails into the unknown.

The place to which they are heading is Heaven.

The place they are leaving is Hell.

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It has been said that "every journey starts with a single step."  Perhaps the same could be said about the journey of faith.  For the protagonist, the first step on the journey from perdition to the presence of God is getting in line at the bus stop.  But why did he take that first step?  Why did he get in line in the first place?  In his own words,
I never met anyone.  But for the little crowd at the bus stop, the whole town seemed to be empty.  I think that was why I attached myself to the queue.

In other words, he didn't want to be alone.

Getting in line at the bus stop would prove to be the start of a journey of faith, but it was not a journey of faith the protagonist was seeking when he got in line.  He got in line to be with the only people he could find in town.  A question I have pondered many times in my life is whether or not a person can truly find God if he or she actually seeking something else.  Must a person seek God for God's own sake?  Or can a person simply stumble into a journey with God, as the protagonist seemingly does?

I would argue that the desire to be with other people can lead a person to God, for I can personally identify with the protagonist in this story.

I grew up in the United Methodist Church, but the major spiritual influence during the first two decades of my life was the excessively strict fundamentalist school I attended from the second grade through my senior year.  My high-school graduation marked my escape from fundamentalism, but I never left Christianity behind.  I continued to attend my home church, which was from a tradition more liberal than the school I attended, but going to church was only something I did out of habit.  I wasn't very intentional about my faith at the time.  I knew that I needed to be a Christian if I didn't want to go to Hell when I died, but I wasn't quite certain I actually wanted to be a Christian.  I felt that, if I were to really sink my teeth into Christianity, I wouldn't enjoy my life very much.

One day, at the beginning of my junior year in college, I saw that the Wesley Fellowship, the United Methodist group at my university, was hosting an ice cream social, and I decided to check it out.  To be perfectly honest, I wasn't really interested in the group for purely spiritual reasons: actually, I was hoping that I might find a nice girlfriend.  That group meant more to me than I thought it would: in fact, I ended up staying involved with the group long after I graduated from college.  Though I never found a girlfriend within the group, I found something I craved deep within my soul - community.  I found Christian peers who showed me that a person could love God and love life at the same time.

I think that my time with the Wesley Fellowship somehow altered the trajectory of my life.  Attending the ice cream social that evening turned out to be the first step on my journey to become more than a Christian in name only, yet I had no idea that I was setting out on such a journey.

When the protagonist looks down through the window of the bus, he notices that the town stretches out as far as the eye can see.  He strikes up a conversation with another man on the bus, and he learns that the reason that the town is so large yet so sparsely populated is the fact that the people in the town simply cannot get along with one another.  People keep relocating just to get away from each other.  If one reaches the edge of the town, he or she can imagine more streets and houses into existence, so the town keeps growing and growing with each miserable soul that arrives.

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once famously suggested that "Hell is other people."  In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis seems to imply the opposite, that Hell is isolation.  Perhaps Hell is not other people but rather a rejection of other people.  Reflecting on the creation stories found at the beginning of the Bible, the great poet John Milton once mused, "Loneliness is the first thing which God's eye named not good."¹  The desire for companionship and community are, I believe, built by God into our very nature as humans.  If this is the case, then perhaps a move toward love and fellowship is a move toward God, and perhaps a move toward isolation is a move away from God.

So often, Christians stress the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but Jesus himself came to earth to build His Church, the worldwide community of all believers.  He said that "where two or three are gathered in [His] name," He is in their midst.²  Though a personal relationship with God is important, it is utter folly to neglect the communal aspect of our faith.  Somehow, our relationship to God is mystically connected to our relationships with other people.

The protagonist will soon learn that the journey he started is not one that he can complete on his own: he will need help.  In the same way, the journey of faith is not one that we are meant to travel on our own, for God created us for community.  If you, the reader, are not currently a part of a loving community of faith, I urge you to find one.  Personally, I would hate to imagine where I would be without the faith communities in my life.


Notes:

1. See Genesis 2:18.
2. Matthew 18:20 (NRSV)

The photograph of the bus stop sign was taken by Paul Brennan and is public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.  The photograph was made monochrome by Tony Snyder.