In C.S. Lewis’ novel, The Great Divorce, he depicts a kind of metaphorical bus tour of Heaven , Hell, and a kind of in-between place, much as did Dante in his Divine Comedy. For Lewis, the aspect of Hell that he emphasizes the most is that of privation, or the separation from anything that is good. While Lewis did not reject the language of positive retribution or destruction that the Bible speaks of, it is the idea of the “outer darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth” that depicted the awefulness of Hell to him. 

As part of this tour, he described the people building houses with walls, but the walls only kept other people out and did nothing to protect the one within from the weather. Further, he depicted hell as a place utterly devoid of community. When someone would move nearby, those already there would quickly move away to avoid interaction with others. Lewis understood, as did Aristotle, that humans are social animals and separation from others is a most difficult thing to face — something that was a suitable part of God’s eternal and righteous judgment.

Yet, what strikes me as odd is that as a society, we are doing everything in our power to create that context here in this life, in this case, through the many labels that have been assigned to people, putting them into ever-smaller groups in both church and in society. We use terms like liberal and conservative, which have meanings, but don’t always define a person’s specific view. Most of us fall across a spectrum that falls between the far left and far right. In matters of religion, there are fundamentalists and liberals, orthodox and Neo-orthodox, evangelicals, confessionalists, Reformed or Arminian, pentecostal or cessationist, post-mil, a-mil, pre-mil, pan-mil and a wide range of in-betweens. I sometimes describe myself as a Confessionally Reformed, a-mil with post-mil sympathies, supralapsarian, paedo-baptist, creedo-communion, presuppositional in the Clarkian school of thought, sola psalmis, Christian with certain theonomic sympathies. And, I imagine that some of you, dear readers, either don’t know what all of these distinctions mean and others may be outraged by some of them.

My point is this: labels can be useful when understanding a person’s thoughts and motivations, but they are destructive when they just create walls between people that prevent constructive conversation. Socially, we see the same thing happening. People have created numerous “gender expressions,” which tend to put people into boxes that separate them from genuine community with anyone who does not hold their exact set of preferences. Largely, this generation has grown up being told they can be anything they want to be. Even in the church, this has been taking place as people often misquote Philippians 4:13. Paul saying that he can “do all things through him who strengthens me” does not mean that Paul could flap his arms and fly. It does not mean that he could breathe underwater. Similarly, people with lousy eyesight are not going to become Air Force fighter pilots even if that is what they most “want to be.” 

Humans thrive in community and one of the reasons that the American Experiment has been so wildly successful (at least culturally and technologically) is because people of varying backgrounds have been able to come together to share ideas, cultural traditions, and to meet shared goals while also sharing a commitment to Truth (both in natural law and in spiritual law). Yet, today, as labels arise, as “personal truths” supplant the idea of absolute truth, we create chasms between ourselves, our ideas, and our cultural distinctives that do not belong if we are going to live in a united society.