The Great Divorce

I'm reading The Great Divorce again. I think this makes it the fifth reading of the C.S. Lewis classic. I love this book. It's one of Lewis' easier reads, in that it is only around a hundred pages long and the stories of the characters are all fairly self-contained.

This book makes me think. A lot. It's important to note that Lewis never says that this view of the heaven/hell relationship is theologically accurate, or that he even thinks that this is what it will look like. But it still makes me think.

It makes me think that the view of hell that we've gathered from Dante and other forms of mythology have snippets of truth, but they miss the biggest tragedy of hell. The absence of love. This is something that Lewis points out clearly in his book. It's also a theme of God and His words through Paul in Romans that "they were given over to dishonorable passions." This scares me more than the fire and brimstone.

This also goes back to the cross. It wasn't the physical beating, terrible as it was, that hurt Christ the most. What hurt Christ was the absence of the love of God when all the sin of the world was placed on Him. He had never felt shame. Now He felt all the shame of the world at once. All He had known was close community with the Father. Now that community was temporarily cut off.

As terrible as I think hell is, I don't think a fear of it is what should force people to follow Christ. See, I believe heaven is filled with people who love Christ passionately, not people who are scared of hell. There is a huge difference. Heaven is the opposite of hell. While hell is a place devoid of God's love, heaven is a place filled with love.

Giving this thought helps to drive my life. I want people to feel love. So I love here, now, in preparation for what is to come. At the same time, I believe many people choose hell daily by refusing to love. This should make Matthew 25 some of the most terrifying words in scripture. It drives me daily. Am I a sheep or a goat? Do I feed the hungry? Do I clothe the naked? Do I visit those imprisoned in life? Or do I bring hell to earth by ignoring the suffering around me?