Lenten Reflection: What Good Is a Golden Apple?

The following is the seventh 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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What Good Is a Golden Apple?

A reflection on chapters 2 and 6 of C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on Earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:19-21 (NRSV)

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes you just might find

You get what you need

From "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by The Rolling Stones

I have heard it said that, when humans make plans, God laughs.  Is God laughing because we have the audacity to make plans when there are so many forces, visible and invisible, that are totally outside of our control?  Or is God, perhaps, laughing at the shortsightedness of our plans?  Sometimes we forget that, as finite human beings, we do not have the capacity to fathom the grand scheme of things, and so often we can see no further than our own small pieces of the puzzle.

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While riding on the bus, the protagonist struck up a conversation with another passenger who was identified by the "big man" as Ikey.  Ikey was taking the trip not with the hopes of possibly relocating, but rather to find some "real commodities" to bring back to the town.  Somewhere he has heard that objects at the bus's destination are somehow more real than the town's objects that can simply be imagined into existence.  By bringing some real items back to the town, he is hoping to make a name for himself by generating an economy, around which a society will hopefully follow.

In Heaven, near a massive waterfall, Ikey spots a tree on which golden apples are growing.  He slowly makes his way to the tree, over the sharp blades of grass, until he is blocked by a barricade of lilies.  A gust of wind blows several apples to the ground, and one falls on Ikey, knocking him down.  A few painful minutes later, he gets up and tries to gather the apples to take home with him, but, since they are all too heavy for a ghost like him to carry, he settles for the smallest which he has to drag as if moving a boulder.

Suddenly, the waterfall itself calls out to Ikey and says,
Fool, put it down.  You cannot take it back.  There is not room for it in Hell.  Stay here and learn to eat such apples.  The very leaves and the blades of grass in the wood will delight to teach you.

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One day, a wealthy and pious man approaches Jesus and asks, "Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?"¹  N.T. Wright points out that the Greek phrase translated into English as "eternal life" is zoe aionios, which literally means "life of the age."  In Jesus' day, the Jewish people believed that the Messiah would usher in an age of peace.  The rich man believes that Jesus is this long-awaited Messiah, and he wants to know what he must do to secure a place in the kingdom Jesus will establish so that he can enjoy the "life of the age to come."²

Jesus replies, "Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in Heaven; then come, follow Me."³  The rich man, who has already gained a lot in his life, has come to Jesus with the hopes of gaining something more, but Jesus pulls the proverbial rug out from beneath him with His answer.  Jesus tells him that, to get what he wants, he must first let go of something.

Jesus says that the rich man, by selling his possessions and giving the proceeds to the poor, will gain "treasure in Heaven."  Earlier, Jesus told his audience to seek "treasures in Heaven" which are eternal, as opposed to "treasures on Earth" which rust, fall apart, and get stolen.  In the Kingdom that Jesus has come to establish, generosity is treasured infinitely more than objects with a high price tag.  In this Kingdom, the wealth the rich man has accumulated is only worth as much as its potential to feed the hungry.

Basically, the rich man can have a place in the in the Kingdom of God right now if he wants it, but he has to give up the notion that a place in the Kingdom is some position of power or some privileged status and not a responsibility to serve others.

Not unlike the rich man who approached Jesus, Ikey has come to Heaven with a plan, and he sees the golden apples as a means to accomplish his plan.  The angelic waterfall basically tells him that he can enjoy all the golden apples he wants, but he has to abandon all hope of ever taking them back to Hell with him.  In Heaven, a golden apple is not some shiny object to buy and sell but rather a source of nourishment.

It is unclear whether or not Ikey actually hears what the waterfall says, as he keeps on struggling to take the apple back to the bus with him.  Perhaps it could be said that Ikey has tunnel vision, the ability to focus one's attention on a singular goal.⁴  Tunnel vision can help us to achieve our goals, as it helps us to block out all distractions, but it can also blind us to the bigger picture.  In a previous blog post, I mentioned that, in college, I joined a religious organization in the hopes of finding a girlfriend but never found one.  If I had been utterly consumed with that one goal, I would never have enjoyed the blessings God gave me through that group.

In the words of the great philosopher Mick Jagger, "You can't always get what you want."  Sometimes we can get exactly what we want, but we will first have to let go of something else in order to get it.  Perhaps we might even have to give up the reason we wanted it in the first place.  It's alright for us to make plans, but we must learn to hold them loosely, realizing that God might want something even better for us.


Notes:

1. Matthew 19:16 (NRSV)
2. N.T. Wright.  "Going to Heaven?"  Published in The Love Wins Companion.  2011, HarperOne.  pp. 33-35
3. Matthew 19:21 (NRSV)
4. Wiktionary: Tunnel Vision

The photograph of the apple was taken by Paolo Neo and is public domain.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.  The photograph was modified by Tony Snyder.