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August 25, 2004
The Great Divorce
I have been reading The Great Divorce by CS Lewis this week. It touches on ideas about heaven and hell, and questions many preconceptions that Christians hold. I borrowed this book, but I think I need to get my own copy so I can mark it up when I reread.
I don't even know how to describe this book. For starters, it is fiction. Written a bit like some of Lewis's other Sci-Fi novels, this book uses a narrative story to ease along some very difficult notions about what heaven and hell really are. We follow the main character on a journey in a solid world where he is but a ghost. Even walking on the blades of grass cause great pain, as he is not substantial enough to crush them underfoot. He is exploring a world where even a simple light rain could be fatal.
Along the way, he meets "Solids" as well as others just like him, Ghosts. He overhears many conversations between different pairs of Solids and Ghosts that show much of human nature, sin, and love.
There is the mother that cannot let go of her dead son, claiming that her great love is what caused her never to change his room. She uses his memory to abuse her husband and daughter, all the while claiming it her motherly love was too great for the others to understand. That only she truly loved him.
There were many other equally blind characters in the book, but I won't ruin them for you. I really recommend this book, as it is a quick, easy read. Towards the end, there was one quote that really stood out to me.
Only the Greatest of all can make Himself small enough to enter Hell. For the higher a thing is, the lower it can descend -- a man can sympathize with a horse but a horse cannot sympathize with a rat. Only One has descended into Hell.
Entry posted by byscuits on August 25, 2004 10:24 AM
Comments
Yippee! I'm so glad you posted on this.
I love the way his Solids and Ghosts expose humanism, which says "man is the measure of all things". In the end we don't validate the Truth, it validates us. Post-Christianity chooses to see what it wants just like the rest of us.
I still hold to what I said: I think this book has so little to do with the afterlife, and so much to do with how we live today. Each interaction is about a person promoting their version of reality, in the presence of Truth itself. What else is sin, than subscription to the EnemyÕs lies at some point? Yet each time we do it, we escape reality and it escapes us.
Thank goodness for renewing our mind.
Comment posted by Jill at August 25, 2004 11:59 AM
