The Abyss of Non-Being – And a Cup of Tea

 

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:10

“Stand on the edge of the abyss and when you feel that it is beyond your strength, break off and have a cup of tea.” St. Sophrony of Athos/Essex

________

A group of people take a bus ride from hell to heaven. When they get there, they are surprised to discover that they themselves are ghost-like, mere wraiths, while heaven is quite solid, unyieldingly so. Their ghostly bodies do not even bend the grass beneath their feet. They are invited to stay – but to do so – something has to change. They have to change. They must go from ghostly to solid. That change happens as they choose to stay and travel further in. “Solid people” (we would say saints) come to greet them and help them on their journey. The catch – if there is one – is the discovery that, somehow, any number of them would possibly prefer hell to heaven, if it requires leaving behind their favorite treasure: a grudge, a sense of being wronged, a bitterness, a reputation that is meaningless, etc. The imagery, the stories, and the decisions are the stuff of C.S. Lewis’ small book, The Great Divorce.

I first read this work when I was 18. It imagery has stayed with me through the years. When I was studying the Church fathers who spoke of salvation and sin in terms of being and non-being, I could not help but think of Lewis’ imagery. It was inescapable. Images of the spiritual life are scarce, and those that we have are often less than useful.

My first introduction to Christianity came in my childhood. Those who were its teachers meant well. What they offered was a moral vision. There was a clear list of “don’ts” that consisted primarily of not drinking or not smoking (two things that all the adult males around me engaged in frequently). Not much thought or discussion was given to “do’s.” The result was a rather empty, moral take on the spiritual. Goodness was reduced to nothing more than avoiding a few foibles. How can you fall in love with such an image? Who would want to be good?

The teaching of the Eastern Church is often labeled “mystical.” In modern parlance, we might say that it is “experiential.” It is about what is real, true, beautiful, and good. Despite the occasional difficulty of its vocabulary, it is as simple and pure as the nature that surrounds us, or baby’s cry in the darkness of a Bethlehem night. It is stark and strong, courageous and humble, able to make the hardest heart weep and to raise the dead. Its iconic image of triumph is of God-made-man crashing the gates of hell and dragging Adam and Eve to safety and a return to paradise. No gate can withstand Him. Its deepest mystery is that of love.

In our modern parlance, love is often as thin as sentiment, little more than how we “feel” about someone or some thing. In Lewis’ tale of hell and heaven, a mother arrives on the outskirts of paradise, wanting nothing more than to be re-united with her child. Strangely, in the conversation that ensues, we discover that she wants the child on her own terms, and means to take him back to hell with her. It is a parable of love’s distortion. To possess another as one’s “own” is not love at all. It is hell in a clever disguise. The brilliance of Lewis’ imagery is to strip away the language of sentiment and portray it in the stark light of Love Himself. That was a love that went to hell to bring us up to heaven. The other would drag us down from heaven to make us prisoners of sentiment in hell.

I suspect that many of our cherished phrases carry the same dark reality. The most rampant and widespread acts of violence are those carried out in the name of some perceived “value” (I hesitate to say “perceived good”). Public figures never describe their actions under the heading of evil.

This points to another aspect of Lewis’ imagery: its reality (portrayed as “solid”) serves to underscore the nature of what is real and true. What is real has a real existence. It is neither sentiment nor idea. In the Scriptures, there are two recurrent sins that are specifically enemies of reality: murder and lying. Murder seeks to destroy that which is, eradicating a human life. Lies seek to undermine some other aspect of reality. To lie is to make oneself out to be God, to claim a power that does not belong to us.

Christ said this of the devil:

“He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)

The adversary hates not just our existence, but existence itself. For that which truly is, is the gift of God. It is that which God sees and says, “It is good.” The adversary, both murderer and liar, hates even his own being – but lacks the power to make it end. As such, he becomes the parasite, the one whose only power comes through trickery and deceit.

To my mind, this is very much at the heart of our modern temptations. Modernity has championed humanity’s power to control events, mistaking technology for creation itself (only God creates from nothing). Our technology goes astray when we seek to redefine reality itself, an increasing danger in our culture.

St. John wrote:

“This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have communion with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have communion with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” (1 John 1:5–10)

To be in the light “as He is in the light,” is to walk in the way of truth, of reality itself. As difficult as it may be to bear, we do well to see that anything other than the truth is a burden that would rob us of our very being, drawing us into the darkness of the abyss of non-being.

We were not created for such. Step back. Have a cup of tea.

 

About Fr. Stephen Freeman

Fr. Stephen is a retired Archpriest of the Orthodox Church in America. He is also author of Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, and Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond Our Shame, as well as the Glory to God podcast series on Ancient Faith Radio.



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9 responses to “The Abyss of Non-Being – And a Cup of Tea”

  1. panayiota Avatar
    panayiota

    When I get confused and step outside the reality of Christ I actually feel like I’m falling down into the abyss.
    Happens constantly.
    Lord have Mercy.

  2. Carolyn Avatar
    Carolyn

    We had an odd church service yesterday (an Appalachian Baptist) leaving us with a strong impression of what a dysfunctional church looks like.
    The whole article but specifically the last paragraph truly helped me think about what my mindset should be and not get caught up in emotionalism that does not have any clarifying truth. We were not caught up in it during the “service “(if you could call it that). But I have been perplexed and unsettled by somethings said…and now I see it. I see, and am reminded again, that God works in clarifying light and… “As difficult as it may be to bear, we do well to see that anything other than the truth is a burden that would rob us of our very being, drawing us into the darkness of the abyss of non-being.

    We were not created for such. Step back. Have a cup of tea.”

    As a side note. My daughter at Berea College has been attending St Nina’s and the church in Nicholasville…she absolutely loves it.

  3. Edward Avatar
    Edward

    If I might, two comments.

    Lewis’s idea that there are souls who would prefer hell to heaven does not make a lot of sense. This is the free will theodicy which is used by people to disparage the idea of Universal Restoration. It presents the idea that a soul can see that which it has been looking for all of its life in sin and wickedness, and yet reject it upon seeing it. I don’t think we understand fully the idea of coming into the presence of something so wonderful, so beautiful, so marvelous, and so loving, that the most precious thing to us – our sin – becomes something that we find repulsive. Louis’s idea comes from the fact that here on earth. We have never been captivated by something so overwhelming that everything else falls away and we are enchanted by it. He is using an earthly judgment of our senses to try to describe heavenly realities which are beyond description.

    You state that no gate can withstand him, yet we are constantly told that the gate of man’s so-called “free-will” (no such thing exists as “free will,” but that is a discussion for another time) will be able to withstand the intrusion of a beauty which is beyond our comprehension and the love which we have desired all of our lives, even the most sinful of us.

  4. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Edward,
    In that book (which I recommend reading), Lewis portrays himself as one of the “ghosts” – a soul who takes the busride. The solid person who meets him (to help him) is none other than George MacDonald (who was famously a universalist). They have a small conversation about the topic which is not ultimately resolved. Though MacDonald chides Lewis for being more interested in proving God than in just loving Him. So, all of that is to be fair to Lewis.

    I don’t think that Lewis is trying to make a point about the apokatastasis. Rather, it is a book for the present moment. We frequently choose hell to heaven and that’s very much what he has in mind.

    I want to be saved – and yet I often turn away from the sweetness of that union for something that is ever-so-much less.

    I have no doubt about the love of God nor the will of God. Both are overwhelmingly for my salvation. And I would also agree (as I said in the article) that no gate can withstand Him. Mind you, “Lo, if I descend into hell, Thou art there.” Christ rescues me from hell again and again, and I know he always can and always wills that.

    Nevertheless, I find it pastorally (for my own soul as well), wise to follow the Fathers and take care that I not abuse my freedom and reject Him. That image is sobering, and the Church does not neglect to remind us in its hymnody (as did Christ in His preaching).

    But I leave the debate to others. I have hope and will not rest until my hope is gained. It is enough.

  5. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Carolyn,
    Fr. Justin Patterson (at St. Athanasius in Nicholasville) is among my favorite priests. He loves his people – is deeply patient – and has such a pastor’s heart. I pray your daughter blossums in that fertile field!

  6. Jordan Avatar
    Jordan

    I think about this book and the scenes you describe a lot. I see them played out in my life not infrequently.

  7. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Jordan,
    I think Lewis is at his best when he is engaging in a narrative (such as in his children’s books, or in this text) rather than when he is doing argument (as in Mere Christianity). At a certain point in his life (after crashing and burning in a formal debate at Oxford) he swore off doing apologetics and turned back to fiction and narrative. I cannot do apologetics – my brain/emotions get tied up in a knot and become useless. When I’m writing, I sometimes am able to cross into something like a “poetic mode” and my heart is able to write more freely.

    Lewis, at his best, speaks to me quite wonderfully. The same can be said for various lives of the saints. Nothing is as eloquent as a life rightly lived.

  8. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    It´s so hard to get the penal, juridicial, legal notion of sin out of my head.

    It really is about being and existence … not about guilt and moral infraction.

    Thanks again.

  9. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Matthew,
    It’s deeply engrained in our culture. Of course, what we fail to think about is that the threat of violence ungirds all of our laws. The violence is quite ontological – but we politely overlook that aspect of things in the name of being civilized.

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