The original date of publication for this essay is Sunday, December 13th. It is the 22nd of what’s intended to be a year’s worth of essays, published on Sundays. That intention, like everything, is subject to change.
Last week’s essay: On Christmastime, Which Lifts Us from Ourselves
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“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free-will, and of my own free-will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?” –A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
When we picture Hell, we often picture a fiery scene. A punishing scene. Dark. Hot. Physically tormenting. There are sources for this imagery. The Bible, especially in the Gospel, leans more on the gnashing of teeth, but it mentions flame. Milton presented the underworld as “one great furnace,” with only darkness visible. Dante posited an orderly, cruel Hell, with punishments tailored to the sins of those there confined.
I am no theologian. I am no expert on the matter of Hell. Yet this Christmastime, as Jacob Marley stomps through our lives once more, clanking aloud the music of his sins, Hell comes to mind, and I wonder.
There’s a salvation narrative that floats around out there going something like as follows: Mankind cannot conceive of what goes beyond these three or four dimensions. Mankind cannot conceive of the afterlife, whatever it is. Mankind cannot conceive of the world of God (to use a comparison I’ve perhaps used in these essays before, conceiving of God would require a leap like that of an ant understanding particle physics, though perhaps even that understates the distance). What we can sense, intuitively, is a connection with the good. For those who consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious,” this might be purpose, or love, or joy. For those who consider themselves religious, it may be all those things as well, but achieved by way of God. Salvation, this narrative posits, is Christians allowing Christ to connect themselves with the good. Salvation does not save us from a fiery Hell. Salvation saves us from the Hell around us, and from the Hell within ourselves.
As, again, no theologian, I’m in no position to endorse this theory. But I can remind that it has practical merit, at least in the earthly sense. The elegance of Dickens’s vision of Hell—a self-constructed, self-containing punishment, separating one from all that is good, and all that is joyous, and all that is purposeful, and all that is loving—is applicable to our lives. How often do we turn away from that which we know is right? How often do we delude ourselves in our “deciding” of what is right? How often do we forge these links on our own, Marley-esque chains?
And how often, too, do we break them? How often do we choose that which is good? How often do we buy the beggar a sandwich? How often do we offer a kind word to the weary cashier? How often do we remind ourselves of the humanity in a neighborhood that is not like ours? How often do we humbly reexamine that which our more immediate inclinations push us to declare true?
Ebenezer Scrooge’s salvation did not wait to take effect until after he died. His salvation was an earthly one. Ebenezer Scrooge was not saved just from Hellfire, if he was saved from it at all. He was saved from himself. He was saved from the Hellish temptations of this world. His chain was broken, and he was once again unseparated from what is good, what is joyous, what is loving, what is purposeful…what is right. Call it God if you’d like. Call it Heaven. Call it salvation. Or don’t, because that’s ok too. But as Jacob Marley clanks through your life and mine these next few weeks, let us not leave his message unheeded. Let us break these chains more swiftly than we build them. Let us liberate ourselves.
Let us save ourselves from Hell.
Next week’s essay: On Christmas Eve, Longfellow, and the Quiet Darkness
