Letter #199: Bedazzled by Brainwork

Analysis has a Purpose

Spensoir.

There’s a wonderfully hilarious 1967 movie called Bedazzled, never ever to be confused with the terribly unhilarious 2000 remake of the same name. The original stars the brilliant Peter Cook as Satan and Dudley Moore as the lovable shlub who sells his soul to him.

In one scene, Satan tries to demonstrate to the shlub how he came to fall from grace. He sits on top of a letter box. “I’m God. This is my throne, see…? Now, you be me — Lucifer… sort of dance around, praising me.” Cook obligingly dances around for a while, singing, “You’re wise, you’re beautiful… The universe — what a wonderful idea,” and so on. Until finally, worn out, he says, “Here, I’m getting a bit bored with this. Can’t we change places?” And Satan replies: “That’s exactly how I felt!”

The joke works because it captures what I believe is a flaw in our conception of heaven. We make it a place of completion, perfection, and therefore stagnation. An eternity of singing God’s praises? Who would not go mad?

This misconceived vision of a static paradise also informs the excellent German film Wings of Desire, and its American version City of Angels, in which angels in a peaceful but bland eternity envy humanity’s life amidst the stormy passion of time.

In an insightful piece in this month’s First Things, Professor Gary Saul Morson, a Russian literary maven, explores the credo of Fyodor Dostoevsky. “Dostoevsky describes the search for faith as a form of faith in itself… Such faith is not a state but a process, perhaps a never-ending one.”

“One problem with utopians, Dostoevsky repeatedly argued, is that they posit a goal for human life, a final state of bliss, and thus misunderstand the nature of life as people live it. In our experience of time, no moment is complete in itself. We always live into an uncertain future. If we did not, if everything were predetermined, then risk, achievement and striving would disappear. But human life is striving…”

This is why I imagine heaven differently: as an infinite journey toward knowing an infinite God. Perhaps that journey will be more peaceful than this life of ours, more like a flower growing toward the sun. But I don’t think it will be without striving and even a kind of dying as the self that knows God less becomes forever the self that knows him more.

Which brings me, finally, to my response to your letter. Analysis — taking things apart — working through interpretations to deeper meaning — theologizing and philosophizing — these are intellectual joys, no doubt. But only intellectual vanity mistakes them for ends in themselves. They have a purpose: life.

No one would deny a mechanic his pleasure in disassembling a car. But the point is to fix it or better it, to restore or improve the sweet sensation of taking a mountain curve with the wind at your window.

Life is movement. Process. Striving. And if life, then why not life eternal?

Love, Dad