Notes from the Wayside: Lenten Reflection: A Crack in the Dirt

The following is the fourteenth in a series of reflections on The Great Divorce.
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A Crack in the Dirt

A reflection on chapters 12 and 13 of C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce

Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.

Luke 16:26 (NRSV)

She said, "If we're gonna make this work

You gotta let me inside even though it hurts

Don't hide the broken parts that I need to see"

She said, "Like it or not it's the way it's gotta be

You gotta love yourself if you can ever love me"

From "Whatever It Takes" by Lifehouse

Things like dating and romantic relationships simply don't come naturally to me, and this reality has caused me a great deal of frustration and anguish over the years. In college, having already suffered a lot of rejection and heartache, I became rather desperate and tried to glean some help from pickup artists and dating gurus. I only took advantage of the free email newsletters and podcasts that were offered - I'm way too cheap to shell out the money for paid subscriptions. Though this stuff might have motivated me enough to score some lunch or coffee dates with a few girls at my college, I think it ultimately did more to hurt me than it did to help me.

YouTuber Dean Leysen, who has spent a lot of time spoofing pickup artists, says,
Plain and simple, most guys get into pickup because they're insecure. What technique-driven pickup [gives you is] an act - a persona that sort of works in social settings. If you're getting into this because you're insecure or don't like the way you are or come across, technique-driven pickup is not going to help you: it's going to hide you. Instead of learning how to be confident, you're going to learn to be someone else... So you didn't fix your self-esteem, you basically destroyed it completely by accepting the idea that the only way to be socially popular is to not be you.¹

In my opinion, Leysen hit the nail on the head. Ultimately what I learned from pickup artists and dating gurus is that, if I wanted to go out on dates and have romantic relationships with women, then I had to pretend to be somebody that I wasn't. Unfortunately, I'm a crappy actor. The idea that I couldn't be lovable or desirable as I was only made me all the more jaded and resentful. If I couldn't be loved for who I was, then why even bother?²

The saintly spirit Sarah has come to the forest to meet her husband who has just made the trip from Hell, but she is met in the forest not by one ghost, but by two. One is a hideous, shrunken, deformed ghost that is "no bigger than an organ-grinder's monkey." The other is a tall, skinny, shaky ghost that speaks dramatically and makes exaggerated gestures as if trying to be impressive, like a bad actor. The dwarfish ghost is Sarah's husband Frank, and the actor ghost is a puppet he controls with a leash. Sarah only addresses Frank, but Frank responds to her, using the actor as a mouthpiece. The dwarf jerks the leash, and the actor speaks on his behalf.

Frank has expected to find Sarah miserable in Heaven without him: he expects that she will depend on him the same way she did in their earthly lives together. Sarah reveals that she now has all she needs in God's love. To Sarah, this means that they can now love each other purely and not selfishly, but Frank is dismayed.

Throughout the conversation, Frank uses his puppet to lay on the melodrama. Sarah begs him to let go of the leash and get rid of his mouthpiece. She says,
Frank! Frank! Look at me. Look at me. What are you doing with that great, ugly doll? Let go of the chain. Send it away. It is you I want. Don't you see what nonsense it's talking?"
Sarah tells Frank that there is no need for him to try to be impressive any longer.

Frank nearly lets go of the leash, but, in the end he grabs hold of it as if his life depends on it. Realizing that she no longer needs him as she needed him before, he begins to wallow in self-pity, trying to make Sarah feel sorry for him. He grows smaller and smaller until he is completely absorbed by the actor ghost. With the true Frank gone, Sarah says, "Where is Frank? And who are you, sir? I never knew you. Perhaps you had better leave me..." The actor ghost accuses her of not loving him, and Sarah responds, "I cannot love a lie. I cannot love the thing which is not. I am in Love, and out of it I will not go." The actor fades into nothingness.

Jesus once told a story about a rich man who lived a life of luxury and a poor beggar named Lazarus who lived on the street near the rich man's house. Though the rich man had more than he needed and probably passed by Lazarus every day, he never did anything to help him. Eventually they both died. Lazarus ascended to Heaven to stand at the side of Abraham, the ancestor of the Jewish people, and the rich man descended into Hell, presumably because of his indifference. The formerly rich man called out to Abraham, saying, "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames."

Abraham answered him, saying, "Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us."³

In Love Wins, Rob Bell suggests that the "great chasm" that separated Lazarus from the rich man was within the rich man's own heart. Even in the fires of Hell, the rich man never changed. Notice that the rich man did not ask to get water for himself; instead, he wanted Lazarus to drip water into his mouth, proving that he still believed that he was superior to Lazarus.⁴ He was too good to even ask Lazarus directly, so he asked Abraham to send Lazarus out to run errands for him. C.S. Lewis, in another of his books, writes, "I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of Hell are locked on the inside."⁵

Having just witnessed the encounter between Sarah and Frank, the protagonist asks his teacher why the residents of Heaven do not do more to help the ghosts of Hell than to just meet them when they get off the bus. He wonders why they cannot go into that "great chasm" from which they emerged in the bus. The teacher stoops down, plucks a blade of grass, points to a crack in the dirt and says, "I cannot be certain that this is the crack ye came up through. But through a crack no bigger than that ye certainly came." The teacher goes on to say that Hell is so small that the entirety of it could pass through the digestive tract of a butterfly completely unnoticed.

The residents of Heaven cannot go into Hell because they cannot fit into Hell.

Hell, the great town that went on as far as the eye could see, the town that seemingly kept expanding with each miserable soul who moved to the boundary, was located in a crack in the dirt. The cliff they rounded when they arrived in Heaven was just one side of that tiny crack. Not only were they flying as they rode the bus, they were growing. That said, perhaps Hell is not actually expanding but rather shrinking to make space for all the new delusions.

Sarah and Frank, in their earthly life together, did not have a particularly healthy marriage. Frank was a very insecure man (hence the dwarfish ghost) who hid behind machismo and manipulated Sarah with pity (hence the ghost with bad acting skills). Sarah had a need to feel loved and desired, and Frank had a need to feel needed. At some point Sarah learned to find her self-worth in the fact that she is a dearly loved child of God. Frank drew his self-worth from being Sarah's proverbial "knight in shining armor." Ultimately he would not let go of his facade, and he basically let the knowledge that she no longer needed him to save her from her loneliness destroy him.

Donald Miller, in his book Scary Close, writes that, after breaking off his engagement with his fiancee, he went through a week of group therapy. During that week, he learned that, at some point early in life one begins to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with oneself. In other words, early in life, a person learns shame. Don learned that, to cover up the shame, a person will construct a persona or "false self" that will hopefully make him or her lovable to others. The persona might be made up of good things like humor, intelligence, or talent, but it prevents a person from truly being known and loved.⁶

Every ghost who wishes to stay in Heaven must give up the thing that would keep him in his own personal Hell. For example, the ghost who had a lizard riding on his shoulder needed to give up the vice that had taken over his life, if he wanted to continue his journey in heaven. Similarly, Frank needed to give up the persona he had been using to hide his insecurity and to make him feel that he was in control of things. In the end, he wouldn't drop the act, allow his true self to be seen, and accept that he could be loved and desired simply for who he was.

A great divide separates Hell, the land of delusion, from Heaven, the realm of all Truth. Perhaps, by building walls to protect us, we are actually building the very walls of Hell around ourselves, walls that love cannot breach. The walls that protect us inevitably become our prisons. Love forces itself on nobody. Perhaps the only way to truly experience love of any kind - friendship, companionship, or even God's love - is to embrace vulnerability and allow ourselves - our true selves - to be seen and known.

Notes: