I’m reading Marlowe’s Dr Faustus on the tube in the mornings. It’s part of my summer reading list for October. The play is about a man that sells his soul to the devil in return for living a brilliant life over the next 24 years. Selling his soul enables him to have the power to call on evil spirits to do his bidding and to grant him his hearts desires. He dreams about conquering the enemies of his country and becoming a ruler over nations, he is power hungry and lust thirsty.
The interesting part for me this morning was where he is signing the deed of his soul over to the devil. In order to make the document binding and legitimate he must write the deed in his own blood - as he’s doing so the cut on his arm keeps drying up making writing anything difficult. As he is watching the blood on his arm dry up he says “is this a sign?” and then he shrugs it off. (huge mistake!)
A little later Faustus asks Mephistopheles (the servant of the devil) where hell is, and he replies “under the heavens”, Faustus then tells him that he thinks hell is a fable. Mephistopheles had also told Faustus prior to this that as a fallen spirit he had seen the face of God and tasted the joys of heaven but now was tormented with ten thousand hells for being deprived eternal bliss.
Man, I just wanted to shake Faustus and say to him “Dude!! you’re talking with a devil and you STILL think hell doesn’t exist? He’s told you of eternal bliss and seeing God’s face!!”
We do this all the time though, we see God moving in a certain situation and it’s so awesome when we are on fire for Him, but as soon as we go through a desert we start questioning His existence and His presence in our lives. Even worse than that, is when someone has experienced the good times with God and tasted the joy of seeing Him move over something in their lives and then turned away from Him. It really breaks my heart to know that those people are in all effects - signing their life over to the devil and rejecting Gods goodness EVEN when they know better and have experience better. Unfortunately though, because those people are in a desert place (no one turns away from God when the going is good) they aren’t “feeling” Him in their lives and it’s an easy lie to trick yourself with.
We stop believing that the bible is the truth and we’ll happily live the rest of our lives in sin than live a life that will get us to eternal bliss. Faustus is happy to sign his soul away and have 24 amazing years because he doesn’t really think hell is going to be that bad, if it even exists - even though the spiritual world is right there in his face. That’s where faith comes in, because if we really knew what was going to be in store for us, I’m sure we’d all live our lives with a different attitude.
I saw a small clip the other day of an interview with a woman with terminal cancer. She said that 52 days was a long time when you were busy waiting for Christmas, but was too cruelly short when it was all the time you had left to hold you children and read them stories and be with the people you love.
For Faustus, 24 years seems like a great amount of time to have everything he wants, to heap up riches and fufil his lusts but if he really knew what a dammned eternity was going to entail, what torment he would have to endure, would he really have lived life the same way?
and what about us? life seems sweet now and sinning doesn’t really seem that severe, but will we still feel the same way at the end of our lives?