We’ve been getting a large dose of this, and I think it important that all of us try to understand the defect such poor creatures are suffering under – they are very nasty, but our duty is to help them if we can, and the one way we can’t help is by arguing with them. So far gone in dishonesty and varied vileness, arguments won’t reach them – only example. Pity is our best approach – and here is a quote from C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce to put it into perspective:
We met several Ghosts that had come so near to heaven only in order to tell the Celestials about Hell. Indeed this is one of the commonest types. Others, who had perhaps been (like myself) teachers of some kind actually wanted to give lectures about it: they brought fat notebooks full of statistics, and maps, and (one of them) a magic lantern. Some wanted to tell anecdotes of the notorious sinners of all ages whom they had met below. But the most part seemed to think that the mere fact of having contrived for themselves so much misery gave them a kind of superiority. “You have led a sheltered life!” they bawled. “You don’t know the seamy side. We’ll tell you. We’ll give you some of the hard facts’ – as if to tinge Heaven with infernal images and colours had been the only purpose for which they came. All alike, so far as I could judge from my own exploration of the lower world, were wholly unreliable, and all equally incurious about the country in which they had arrived. They repelled every attempt to teach them, and when they found that nobody listened to them they went back, one by one…
This curious wish to describe Hell turned out, however, to be only the mildest form of a desire very common among the Ghosts – the desire to extend Hell, to bring it bodily, if they could, into Heaven. There were tub-thumping Ghosts who in thin, bat-like voices urged the blessed to shake off their fetters, to escape from their imprisoment in happiness, to tear down the mountains with their hands, to seize Heaven “for their own”: Hell offered her cooperation…
Empty, fearful and without hope, some people feel a desire to bring their misery to others – that if by some mechanism they could make everyone as miserable as they are, then life would seem better in a relative sense. By being patient and loving towards these poor wretches, we’ll give them their opportunity for a change of heart – we can’t make them do it, and by our own power we can’t ensure it happens…but just paying them out in kind won’t help them, and will hurt us. So, keep this all in mind when you see the really nasty comment…pass it by, or respond with gentleness; the nasty comment, itself, will disappear in the by and by…but, meanwhile, we can do a good deed.
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