My last post was a book review. The book was about sin, and the need to see the extreme horror of sin before we can appreciate the extreme wonder of grace. Just as soon as I finished that review, I picked up a book I had last read decades ago.
When I was a relatively new Christian I bought everything I could find by C.S. Lewis. Some of these books I have reread over the years. But his 1946 volume, The Great Divorce, seems to have sat idly on my bookshelves collecting dust. It seems like many years have passed since I last read it, so today's read was almost like reading it for the very first time.
Of course Lewis is one of those writers you can never get enough of, and reading any of his many works for the very first time is one of the great pleasures in life. Lewis of course was the great Christian apologist of the last century. The Oxford/Cambridge don began his career as a strict atheist, but a marvellous conversion resulted in him becoming one of the most important Christian apologists of all times.
His books have sold in the millions, and readers for the past 70 years have been greatly blessed by all things Lewis. His theological awareness was nicely combined with his first love – literature. Thus there are as many of his great Christian writings which are works of fiction as there are his non-fiction works. Indeed, it is hard to judge which is superior - his skill as a writer of fiction, or his mastery of non-fiction prose.
Poets can often effortlessly tell us things that theologians struggle with. Truths can often be portrayed more richly in fiction than in nonfiction. It is interesting therefore that the Bible presents us with a number of genres and literary styles. There is history and biography, but there is also poetry and song.
Conveying deep spiritual truths about God, man, sin and salvation requires as many forms of expression as we are capable of, since these are such very deep and mysterious truths. Thus Lewis used many literary forms to convey the deep things of God.
His many non-fiction works, such as Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain, include important discussions of the topics at hand. And the doctrines of sin and hell also feature in his other works of fiction, most notably, The Screwtape Letters.
But since it is The Great Divorce which I have just finished rereading, let me pick up a few themes from it. It was Jean Paul Sarte who said in one of his novels that "hell is other people". Surprisingly, as an atheist existentialist, he actually got this one right – it is a good description of how the Christian worldview sees sin and its consequences.
Sin is many things, but it is certainly all about selfishness. The more sinful we are, the more selfish we become. True community, replete with loving relationships, is what the triune Godhead is all about, and what we are meant to experience as well. But sin destroys all this. It makes true relationships and community impossible.
Thus Lewis starts his fictional account of hell in The Great Divorce by describing it - picturing it as a drab, grey town, where it is always raining, and is in perpetual evening twilight where "only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering".
Because of perpetual arguments and quarrelling, the town is nearly empty, as more and more people move further and further away from one another, at "astronomical distances". Thus the town will "go on spreading indefinitely … leaving more and more empty streets".
The book is about a bus load of hell's residents visiting heaven. Of course most don't even want to go, and of those who do, most want to quickly get back on the bus. And most want to import hell into heaven. We meet a number of hell's citizens in heaven, and their reaction to being there. In their reactions we see the tragedy of sin and the hellishness of hell.
Consider the citizen of hell who meets a former acquaintance from earth who was a murderer. The man cannot imagine why the murderer is in heaven. He never murdered anyone; he was a good person. He only wanted his rights. He never demanded charity. The redeemed murderer has to remind him. "You weren't a decent man and you didn't do your best. We none of us were and we none of us did".
But the hell-dweller can only scoff at such remarks, and head back to the bus: "I thought there'd be some damned nonsense. It's all a clique, all a bloody clique. Tell them I'm not coming, see? I'd rather be damned than go along with you. I came here to get my rights, see? Not to go snivelling along on charity tied onto your apron-strings."
Then there was the Christian leader who was so keen on the latest trendy doctrinal aberrations. He was a theological liberal who loved to debate, tickle his intellectual palette, and rebel against traditional orthodoxy. He thought he was being so very progressive and enlightened.
Of course he could not believe in such superstitions like a literal heaven and hell, and the idea of Jesus being raised from the dead was just too much for an intelligent modern to accept. He looked on those Christians who accepted such biblical doctrines as being quite "narrow".
He took pride in the 'risks' he took in being so theologically progressive. But his host in heaven turns the spotlight on him: "What risk? What was at all likely to come of it except what actually came – popularity, sales of your books, invitations, and finally a bishopric?"
'But I was sincere in my beliefs', the apostate protests. But he is answered, "Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. . . . But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent."
In this delightful book we meet many other residents of hell who took the bus trip. Lewis has a shrewd sense of human nature, as well as a keen understanding of biblical theology. His portraits of sin, and of sinners, are as incisive as they are devastating. He makes it clear that the unrepentant sinner really has no excuse for being in hell.
Indeed, some of the most famous Lewis quotes are found in this book, including this classic line: "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done'. All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find; to those who knock it is opened."
The current Christian generation does not like to talk much about sin or hell. Lewis reminds us of these awful biblical realities. But he also reminds us of the even greater realities of the love and mercy of God, and of his Son who came to rescue us from the bondage of sin and the punishment of hell. These are truths which we all must embrace and affirm. Lewis did it – and did it brilliantly - in his generation. Who will do it in ours?