Self-inflicted hell

In his book, "The Great Divorce," CS Lewis created an interesting view of hell. He described hell as a vast empty city in perpetual twilight. At first, people lived close together, out of habit, mostly. As time went on, they would quarrel. Rather than reconcile they would create a new house farther away. If being two houses away wasn't enough, they'd move four houses away, etc. etc. Hence the vast empty city.

The people of hell wanted to accommodate only themselves. So, they all separated farther and farther apart. The house lights of the old ones, like Napoleon, could be seen, like distant stars on the horizon, many years journey away.

While Lewis was careful to remind readers that his "hell" was fictional, not biblical, it seems to fit the current world of (living) mankind. Deep down, we really don't seem to want to be bothered by each other. Oh sure, we want others to listen to us but we don't want to listen to others.

Tens of thousands of people post video blogs to YouTube. Hundreds of thousands of people post their feelings and thoughts on blogs. The posts are sometimes heartfelt, sincere, lonely, sad, tragic or thoughtful. But to what end?

To be sure, people watch some of the videos, read a few of the blogs, but nothing comes of it. They don't avoid the blogger, like the priest and Levite avoided the wounded Samaritan. Rather, they just watch or read silently, like New Yorkers who pass by a hurt homeless guy on the sidewalk. They peer out of curiosity, but don't want to get involved. The spectacle entertained them a little bit, but they're just spectating, not participating.

Our world seems filled with the tragically lonely, yet even these lonely will step over the "homeless" they encounter. A lonely teen will wish plaintively for someone to talk to, yet if I were to reply, she would have no interest in talking to me. We want others to listen to us but we don't want to be bothered listening to anyone else. We're lonely, but we're equally as selfish. We don't want to spend the time to be someone else's social outlet. We want to express thoughts, but don't want to be bothered by other people's thoughts.

We, like the people in Lewis' hell, live far apart -- by choice. We're living in a self-imposed hell. The problem is that we cannot rescue ourselves from this hell, we can only rescue someone else. There's the paradox. Since we're only interested in our own rescue, we stay prisoners in the dark empty city.