It’s nice to see that Mark of GospelDrivenLife is back home from his “fishing” vacation.

He read C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce several times while he was gone, and provides some excellent insight, excerpted below:

Lewis says up front that this book is a fantasy, a dream. It is not theology, per se. No, there are no bus rides from hell to heaven. No, the damned are not met by the saved as they get off the bus and they are not persuaded to remain in heaven by them. But the imaginative dialogue serves more purposes than can be served by mere prose. Art and poetry have a place in the teaching of truth — and this book is art and poetic as well. He develops a few things so very well.

First, Lewis unmasks the dismal pettiness of sin. Whether in the bickering folk in line for the bus, or the image of hell ever expanding as people fight with each other, or the portrayal of pride, or apostasy, or self-righteousness, or manipulation, or lust — Lewis manages to make real that sin is a perversion of who we were made to be. There is nothing pretty about sin. It deforms and ultimately shrivels the soul that it owns, turns the grumbler into a mere grumble. There is nothing beautiful about sin.

Second, Lewis shows the abounding joy of heaven. At every point in the book, even when offering correction, the “bright people” are full of delight. The theme of the delights of drinking truth, seeing God, forgetting the past in a massive awareness of grace, ending all past feuds at the feet of the Savior, and the transformation of earthly appetites into glorious desires leading to God — these are developed in the succession of events in a way that makes me thirst for that great day.

Third, Lewis sees heaven as the sanctification of our full humanity, not a denial of it. The characters in the presence of God, sinless and free, are not less human for their purity but more so – and the damned are feeble beings, unable to walk across the grass because it pains the soles of their feet. They are mere shadows. Some, as they refuse to heed the embracing call of glory, actually disappear. A man captured by lust yields to the killing of this red lizard upon his shoulder — and the lust, now dead, is raised as a fierce and beautiful stallion. The guide later comments that if lust redeemed becomes a stallion, what would the purified love of a parent for a child become?

Well said. As Mark later states: “If the joys of heaven are at all what Lewis describes, it certainly brings to life the glory of God, the greatness of our salvation, and the promise of Jude ‘faultless in his presence with exceeding joy.'”

I recommend you go read the whole thing. Actually, go read The Great Divorce first, if you haven’t already. Then go read the whole thing. 🙂