After giving my name to the first man holding a huge ancient book, I ask the other — the gatekeeper — where I can find the green room. He looks blank. “Where do your VIPs go?”
“There are only three,” he mutters.
I ask for my lanyard. Same blank expression. I press him, “A name tag?”
“There is only One Name in this country.”
He shows little concern when I ask him how people will know who I am. Then the thought occurs to me that this might not be a very organized affair after all. I turn back to the bookkeeper, watching as he continues to scan the book, which he holds like a feather. I repeat my last name.
He doesn’t remove his eyes from the pages. “It’s not in alphabetical order.”
“Excuse me!” The interruption comes from my taxi driver, who has stepped forward to try his chances. “Mr. Martin George Dart of Hackney Road,” he barely manages through quivers.
In half a second, the bookkeeper nods. “Yes, we have you here, Mr. Dart. Do go in.”
My mouth drops open in disbelief. My taxi driver removes his cap and presses it to his chest. His eyes well as he takes another step and then disappears.
Two Different Fames
The gatekeeper looks at me with sympathy. “Can’t you just let me in?” I beg. “I’m pretty well-known on earth . . . in the right evangelical circles, of course.”
“Fame in this country and fame on earth are two quite different things.”1
“Okay. Just take me to a place where I can find a wider sphere of usefulness for the talents God has given me.”2
He shakes his head. “It’s not like that. You are not needed here at all.”
“Not needed?” I gulp uncomfortably.
“Wanted — yes. But not needed. And there is no grand platform for your talents. Only forgiveness for having perverted them.”3
I recoil in shock. “Perverted?” I search his face, seeking relief. His eyes are small but crystal blue — pools of wisdom.
He returns my gaze. “When you started out, there was genuine concern for souls. But slowly you learned how to produce a response — even applause. In time you fully cashed in on the gospel, using Christ’s name as your means and merchandise to further your own popularity.”
I defend myself. “No! For the gospel I labored. Day in, day out. I traveled miles and miles, speaking and teaching till I was hoarse. I slogged through meeting after meeting. I exhausted myself. In ministry I gave, gave, gave!”
“Yes, you worked hard! You hardly just sat at the foot of the cross, resting. Instead, you churned out social-media posts, podcasts, books, conference messages. To keep your followers, readers, invitations, and prestige. In it all, were you really much different from those of whom Paul writes — preaching the gospel out of selfish ambition?4 Your endless teaching — it spoke the name of Christ, but you treasured mostly your own.
“There were sparks of sincerity, of course.” His hand rests on my shoulder. “I say this to help you understand, before you enter through the gate. ‘There is no heaven with a little of hell in it. We can’t retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.’5 This country cannot, and does not, tolerate self-idolatry.”
Enter Empty-Handed
His words are arrows. The pain is horrific, but I feel no anger. Only a terrible realization that everything he speaks is true. I see myself as I was on earth. One who traveled with a little box to serve as a portable stage. I can see now that my heart spent many of my earth-days standing on that little box, teaching, yet inserting my name over and over again.
I blush deeply. Alas! My self-promotion filled not just one street of milling shoppers and bystanders, but with the technological unification of the planet, my desperate advertisements of self echoed down feeds worldwide. Soapboxes constructed of software.
“You are not alone,” he says next. “Many even in quiet faithfulness long for recognition, tempted to bitterness when it doesn’t arrive.6 You wanted glory, and that was right and natural. The human life is rightly bent on making glory. But not for oneself. That’s where you went wrong. The glory is for the One Name. Even the Son, when ministering among us in our own humanity, did not glorify himself.7 How then could you seek glory for yourself? But you will see now. For it has been said that the kernel of what we were really seeking on earth, even in our most misguided wishes, will be here, beyond expectation, waiting for us in ‘the High Countries.’”8
I am on my knees, weeping. Despair rips at my heart. But then the bookkeeper suddenly cries, “Here it is! Your name! It was one of the last. You may go in now!”
Relief washes over me. “Thank you! Thank you!” Pleased to begin feeling myself again, I rise and gather my belongings. The officials look helplessly at me.
“Those must be left.”
“But what of my books? Won’t they be useful here?”
“No.”
“Can’t I take in my certificates? I paid the earth to have them framed. What about my robes? My titles? My subscribers? My accolades?” I hold them out like trophies.
My friend the gatekeeper shakes his head. “You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on this journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind.9 Will you be like the man who came and spent many years seeking the place in this country where his name resounds? He never found it. Because only One Name resounds here. He was devastated to find that all his earth-strivings were pointless. He was one of those who said, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do mighty works in your name?’ The reply was, ‘I never knew you.’10 This man’s disappointment was so bitter.” The gatekeeper’s eyes blaze. “Do not be that man!”
I nod mutely, terrified. And I enter. Empty-handed. There is a voice of welcome:
Come and see. He is endless. Come and feed.11
Doorkeepers
There is light. So much light. Yet it is different from light on Earth — it is Pure Essence. And the sweetest music — music ears were made to hear. And the lyrics — his Name. I walk, following the music to what seems to be its source. The center of this new country.
Doors loom before me, and a woman loiters there, almost unseen. She bows and greets me. “I am a doorkeeper. I stand here at the door before the courts of the Lord.”
If envy were possible in that land, I am sure I would feel it. John Milton foresaw her joyous labors when he wrote,
Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
Here is a soul that longs, faints for the courts of the Lord.12 She waits close to The Glory — unseen, lingering in the Presence. She is the lowly swallow nesting close to the throne.
The reality of it all floods my mind. There are no evangelical celebrities here, only doorkeepers. It comes with regret. Oh that I had lived with my heart more aligned with the psalmist! “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.”13 And I did dwell in “the tents of wickedness,” as my heart was bent on erecting my own royal pavilion. I grieve that the humility of Spurgeon was not mine. “If he shall leave me to be a doorkeeper in his house, I will cheerfully bless him for his grace in permitting me to do anything in his service.”
I wonder at my own slowness. If my eternity is to behold him on a throne of jasper and carnelian — to declare without ceasing his praises, holiness, and worthiness — why on earth have I cultivated habits so opposed to this? In my short, numbered days, why did I not practice my heart into being a doorkeeper? “Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple!”14
I do not delay; I enter — but alas! As is the case with dreams, one awakes at the most anticipated moment! But I wake with a new resolve: to live for the chief end of my Eternity. To practice my heart into being a doorkeeper. To be thirsty for the glory and presence of the One Name. Thus, heaven will be only a great satisfaction, not a great disappointment.
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (1946; repr., New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 119. As Lewis himself wrote at the start of The Great Divorce, “I beg readers to remember that this is a fantasy. It has of course — or I intended it to have — a moral” (see preface). ↩
Lewis, Great Divorce, 39–40. ↩
Lewis, Great Divorce, 40. ↩
See Philippians 1:15–17. ↩
Attributed to George Macdonald by Lewis (my emphasis). See the epigraph to The Great Divorce. ↩
See Derek J. Brown, “Pastor, Build His Platform, Not Yours,” The Gospel Coalition, December 2, 2019. ↩
See John 8:54. ↩
Lewis, Great Divorce, ix. ↩
Lewis, Great Divorce, viii. ↩
See Matthew 7:21–23. ↩
Lewis, Great Divorce, 84. ↩
See Psalm 84:2. ↩
See Psalm 84:10. ↩
See Psalm 65:4. ↩
Desiring God