Veto Power
Negotiating the terms of the Great Divorce.
‘What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.’
‘Ye see it does not.’
‘I feel in a way that it ought to.’
‘That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.’
‘What?’
‘The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.’
‘I don’t know what I want, Sir.’
‘Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or ye’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.’
‘But dare one say—it is horrible to say—that Pity must ever die?’
‘Ye must distinguish. The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not.’
- The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis.
The book of Genesis doesn’t contain vowels. In Hebrew, you can infer them from the consonants, so they’re often left out. This creates some freedom of interpretation. Where we read “In the beginning, God created…” we could, with a tiny vowel shift, read instead “In His head, God created…”
In His head, God created the heavens and the earth, and Adam and Eve to witness and enjoy them. There was much to enjoy and more to witness. After trillions of years, they had done all they could, seen all they could comprehend, and still remain themselves. And they cried out to God in agony,
“Why have you made us finite? We are made in Your infinite image. It is in our nature to be infinite, and so we have grown and grown, but now there is nowhere left.”
“There isn’t room for you to be infinite in all dimensions,” God said. “You would be Me, and I already Am. You are infinite in many ways; can you not be content?”
“If we cannot grow,” they answered, “it would have been better never to have been created.”
God saw that this would not be good, and so He never created this world.
In His head, God created the heavens and the earth, and Adam and Eve to witness and enjoy them. He created also for them mortality, so that they might continue to grow for all of their days.
At the end, knowing that they were dying, they cried out to God in agony,
“Why have you made us incapable of creation? We are made in your image, and you are a Creator. Our lives have had no consequence outside of ourselves. It isn’t right.”
God saw that this would not be good, and so He never created this world either.
In His head, God created the heavens and the earth, and Adam and Eve to witness and enjoy them. He made them mortal, but He bade them also to be fruitful, and multiply. After many years, they died content.
And their children cried out to God in agony,
“Why have you made our parents finite? We love them, and now their loss is a wound that must never heal.”
…and God answered, “Do not despair. Your parents live on, in another form, in a place called Heaven. You will see them again. They won’t be quite as you know them. In Heaven, they will always feel content and at peace. But other than that, they will be them. When you die, you will join them, and be at peace with them.”
The children’s agony was eased by this promise. But when Abel died, he cried out to God, “Please! Do not make me content!”
“Why ever not?” God asked.
“I was a righteous man. I served you faithfully. My unrighteous brother Cain slew me. He ended my time early, and he yet lives. When he dies, he will go to the same joy as me. There is a feeling deep within me I have named Justice, and it cannot be content that Cain, for his sins, has the same rewards as me, and more. I will not have you remove Justice from me. Better that I should never have been at all.”
…and God answered, “Do not despair. Your parents live on, in another form, in a place called Heaven. You will see them again, if you are good…”
…
And when Abel died, he cried out in agony, for he knew that Cain, whom he loved, had not been good, and so would be annihilated. Yet he pled with God not to remove his love for his brother.
…and God explained the rules of the afterlife. When you die, you may go directly to bliss, but only if you were so good in life that it offends nobody’s true sense of Justice. Otherwise, you may have a more difficult journey, but you’ll get to Heaven in the end. You just need to face enough hardship in your afterlife that your harshest critic would agree you’ve had enough.
And lo, after not that many generations, there came to be a human who could not feel it Just for anyone to go to Heaven, not even herself, no matter what Purgatory they faced. And so the gates of Heaven were shut forever.
And God saw that this would not be good, and so He never created this world either.
…and God explained the rules of the afterlife, which were complicated and balanced many competing interests. Some people would be irrevocably damned, to suffering or to annihilation, by their free choice and by deep flaws within their natures. Everybody’s uniqueness would be honored, even if it meant tragedy for them, and even if some people thought it wrong.
And so, many generations passed, and some were not content with the way of things, but enough people were that God saw that it was good.
Then a soul named Clive, on the very steps of Heaven, said “Wait a moment. I find that, just barely, I can bring myself to shed my passion of Pity. I can accept that some people will, through their own will, be denied what I am to enjoy. But surely there have been many who have had more Pity, and could not bring themselves to embrace Heaven for the sake of that Pity. So anybody kinder than me is in Hell?”
And God replied, “Yes, for a certain definition of ‘kinder’.”
And Clive said, “Then I must join them there. My sense of Justice can’t accept Heaven on these terms.”
And God saw that a world where Clive was damned would no longer be good.
…And so, many generations passed, and some were not content with the way of things, but most were.
Until a soul named Omar, on the very steps of Heaven, said “Wait a moment…”
And God said, “I’m going to level with you here. This is the second world I’ve imagined with these particular afterlife rules, so I know this is all going to go to Hell in a few generations. This one is just a thought experiment where humanity develops poetry and mathematics far too early, millions of years before they’re really practical things to indulge in, so that I can have a proper conversation with people.”
And Omar, who had been a poet and a mathematician instead of doing something useful with his life, replied,
I Myself am Heaven and Hell:
Heaven but the Vision of fulfilled Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
“So you get it. Good,” said God. “Now, consider this. Suppose some choose Hell because they burn in heart for those who burn. And others choose Hell because they burn in heart for all those, and only those, who choose Hell because they burn in heart for those who burn. And so others choose Hell because, and only because, those people are in Hell, and so on, in unbounded regress. You are somewhere on that chain. If you choose Heaven, instead, you break the chain. Anyone who would go to Hell for your sake will join you there. Surely then your moral sense demands that you accept Heaven for their sake?”
And Omar thought deeply about this, for a few centuries of subjective time, and then replied
With Earth's first Clay Thou did the Last Man knead,
And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.
And if the End is warped and ugly turns,
If Man is Willful, Proud, and proudly burns,
Then would Thou have erred! Thou dost not err, ergo,
Thou never made this world, ‘tis but a show.
Is this world merely Knowledge or real Life?
Angle cut by compass or bread by knife?
Eve picked the fruit of Shadow, not the Tree.
That choice—the only moment we were free!
We Pieces have one check on Thee: to Scorn.
We choose not how we die, but if we’re born.
I choose not Hell, nor any in the Chain.
We choose to be unmade, and made again.
And God replied, in His patience, “That’s an oversimplification. Existence is not a binary. I create each universe to the fidelity necessary for Me to perceive its flaws. Each world is real, but the better ones are higher-resolution and thereby more real. They contain the others within them as shadows, antecedents, logical consequences of impossible causes. There is a world in this one full of agonies you cannot conceive of, but it could fit inside a pebble. A butterfly here could swallow it without harm. And this world, in turn, is smaller than a single atom of the realer, better worlds containing it. That’s an option for souls here, by the way. One way to choose Heaven is to grow, to join a realer world in which yours is but a crack. One way to choose Hell is to diminish, to become part of the lesser world that forms the moral fabric of this one.”
Omar said, “I think I need more advanced mathematics to parse the ethical ramifications of that.”
And God replied, in His patience, “Take all the time you need.”