This Thursday I got to go on a refreshing bike ride and sit by the beach with with my buddy Jack:
C.S. Lewis’ full name is Clive Staples Lewis. Wow. No wonder he abbreviated it. But to his Inkling friends he was known as Jack. Read his books. All of them. Especially Mere Christianity. Or watch Shadowlands to see Anthony Hopkins act out his life in a cinematically distorted way.
My dear friend Basil gave me this book last year, and I’ve finally gotten around to reading it. I had no idea The Great Divorce was an allegory. I expected it to be more of a general abstraction with specific examples like Mere Christianity. But it’s more like a cross between MC‘s satisfying philosophical themes and the humorous but ruefully true meditations on the spiritual realms in The Screwtape Letters.
I love it so far. It’s making me think about the afterlife in a while different way. It’s also raising some questions in my mind about my current view of the afterlife, and how that view affects the earthly life. For example, I have every reason in scripture to believe God is kind and gracious to give each of us a fair chance to either choose Him or reject Him (see Romans 1 and like any other page of the Bible). But Lewis’ book makes me consider just how blatant rejection of God really is.
Here are some of my thoughts as I’m reading this book. I’m still working through a lot of them. I’d love to hear any insight you guys have after reading through mine.
Rejection of God: Temporal and Eternal
The way we wrestle within your heart is often blatant to you, even if you’ve blinded yourself to God’s inevitable part in those wrestlings. Even when no other human being is aware of how you fight with yourself.
When first you submit to slavery to the sinful nature, it is a conscious choice — although it most often starts as a very subtle, seemingly inconsequential choice. This subtlety is part of what makes evil so enticing: You don’t have to sell your whole soul to the devil all at once, you just have to let him chip away one small piece at a time. Yet even far down the road of sin, it’s quite an obvious sensation when you’re not living according to what you were made for.
The more we submit to our pride, the more blind we choose to be. That choice, however, leads to a depletion of our sense of freedom. When we repeatedly choose sin over righteousness, we begin to feel helpless, victimized, confused, bitter, and most of all, numb to the horror of our own evil ways. This numbness can cause us to commit evil acts without even thinking, with increasing intensity over time. The more we give into sin, the less conscious effort sin requires of us. The more we give into sin, the more our hearts crave it. The more we give into sin, the more natural it seems to disobey God.
Yet we were made not for self-preservation, but for sanctification — a purging of self so the glorious One can enter in. Fighting for one’s own rights wearies the soul. We were created to lay down our rights for his sake in exchange for something better in return. The latter is the only way our souls will find rest.
I’m convinced there are myriads of times in our lives when God, who sees our hearts, gives us chances to turn from our sin, to leave this path for good. During these times, there are three choices:
1. Continue down the same path.
Eventually, the numbness will return when the sin nature just takes in a little bit more of its drug of choice. (see James 1:15-15)
2. Altering the path somehow,
while still leaving room for the sin nature. This path is usually a resolution to “get your life together.” Of course, that choice is still rebellion against God. Instead of choosing His path, you are essentially asserting that “I would rather rescue myself than accept God’s charity.” You continue believing you are your own savior, and letting your evil-poisoned heart attempt to direct you on good paths. This may keep you numb for a few years or so. (Matthew 5:29-30)
3. Complete surrender.
This surrender involves admitting that each and every sin you commit is evil, unexcusable, and repulsive to God. It means admitting that you, in and of yourself, are hopeless to overcome your own evil ways, no matter how good you may resolve to be. It means surrendering to the reality that you need a savior, and that Jesus is the only sufficient type of Savior, that all other saviors have and will continue to fall short. It means believing — with your attitude, worldview, and your actions, in due time — that Jesus the sole source of hope and purpose for your life: Him alone, nothing and nobody else included.
Many of us (in fact, most of us) will live our whole lives cycling between 1 and 2 in different creative ways. These are the people who are making a conscious choice to exist apart from God. They make this choice consciously, and often subconsciously as well, throughout their lives, multiple times, through a series of daily choices of thought and action. Only those who choose step 3 will be atoned for, will be given escape from the sin nature, will be given escape from the gates of hell.
(Like the first two steps, the third step ends up becoming a lifestyle, only this habit is brought about by the Spirit of God, who has entered that individual’s heart to eventually and completely take the place of the sin nature. Even the sheer ability to choose step 3 originates in Him and not us.)
Eternal Damnation: What Makes Hell Bad
Lewis’ depiction of hell is interesting and sensible in many ways. The entrapment and the suffering in his hell is very much self-inflicted. It is an exacerbated version of the slavery to sin we can experience here, the kind I described above.
In part because of perpetuated myth, and also in part because of Christ’s description of hell, I’ve always thought of it as a, well, a fiery place. Full of suffering.
Scripture implies that Hell is “hell” primarily because God isn’t there. James 1:17 says everything good comes from the Lord. If hell is separation from God, it means there’s absolutely nothing good there, no qualities even remotely similar to the characteristics of God. That means no creativity. No light. No color. No love. No happiness. No hope. Just loneliness, fear, and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions and billions of years of loneliness and fear.
Lewis doesn’t claim that his allegory explains what hell is actually like. But his story has showed me one aspect of hell I hadn’t considered before, that seems congruent with Scripture: Everyone who goes there, well, they chose to be there. They were given their options, and yet they chose their sinful desires over their creator. And that’s what they got. It’s perfectly fair. They are not innocent people. They aren’t even good but just slightly “imperfect” people (none of us are!). They are people who have been completely given over to their desires. Just like when you’re stuck in an addiction or an unethical political scheme or a double life up here, both suffering and sin will occur simultaneously in hell.
None of us is systematically immune to subjection to hell, because it’s something we all deserve (Romans 6:23a, Matthew 5:22, Psalm 143:2). It is only faith in the gracious, undeserved, sufficient atonement of Christ that will save us from this eternal fate (John 3:16). If you have put your faith in Him, you are no longer subject to eternal damnation. But whether you have received the gift of eternal life or not, it’s a gift. And I can guarantee you have done nothing in your life that has earned you even an inch of proximity closer to Heaven (Ephesians 2:8-9, Psalm 103:10).
Evil and Suffering
I also think it’s safe to say that, in Hell, there will be both evil and suffering. But how do suffering and evil relate on earth?
Secular culture portrays suffering as the unforgivable sin. Our culture claims, “Avoid suffering. Be as happy and as well-off as possible, as long as you’re also helping relieve other people’s suffering. Sleep with whomever you want; just make sure you don’t get a disease, because, by golly, you deserve to be happy, but not to suffer. Study whatever you want and work wherever you want; but the second you’re mistreated or you suffer at work or school, you must complain, sue, and/or leave.” (For some reason, we have also worked into the system that if you suffer, you should get money for it. What a weird world.)
I’m not saying it’s not worth fighting for justice. But I am saying there’s a difference between sin and suffering. And confusing suffering with sin will only lead to more injustice and lead us away from redemption.
It’s not inherently bad to suffer. It is inherently bad to sin.
Suffering happens to all of us. Sometimes our actions earn it; sometimes they don’t. Suffering doesn’t pay for our sins — suffering is often a consequence of our sins, but suffering has no power to justify our sinful actions.
Do we deserve to suffer? I don’t know. Do we deserve to feel comfortable? No. Do we deserve to exist? No. Do we deserve a chance at eternal bliss in place of eternal suffering? Absolutely not. Thank God we don’t always get what we deserve.
Sin’s consequences are temporary satisfaction and eternal suffering. Righteousness’s consequences are temporary suffering and eternal satisfaction. Let’s put suffering in its proper place. Make your choice, and don’t complain, because you’re only getting what you chose.
Great Divorce has showed me more that Hell is not a place of suffering for the innocent, but for the guilty. Hell is not just suffering. It’s suffering that is largely self-inflicted. Of course, this doesn’t make it any easier to think about; and you can bet God is still distraught beyond human understanding that people reject His offer and would rather let evil rule them than Him.
God doesn’t want any single person to be in hell (2 Peter 3:9). He is very patient with us, and He gives us many days and many choices. He wants us to choose Him. He reaches out to us almost constantly, but we often choose to ignore Him. My love for people also drives me to reach out to people with a similar attitude, telling them of God’s great love for them and pleading with them to finally choose step 3. But no matter how much I share this truth with people, many of them will choose to reject it over and over again. Thank God for His patience, persistence, kindness, and love for us that no amount of rejection will ever deplete!
Life is full of choices.
So what does this mean in the meantime? Well, as Mr. Lewis says, God intends to fully intends to purge you and me of every “hair and feather” of the evil inside our hearts. I can drag my feet, or I can let him start now. But the more I comply with Him, the less days I’ll spend in despair and selfishness, and the more I’ll spend reflecting His face and sharing my treasure. (As Mark Darling says, you grow only as fast as you obey.)
Isn’t it amazing that God gives us the right to choose? Every single day?
You may have chosen long ago to make Jesus Lord over your life… but is He still Lord of your life today? Surrender is a choice. Surrender is a habit. Whether you’ve chosen God many times or never before, each day is another choice.
Whatever you choose, choose it with all of your pieces.
Or you may just lose a right eye or a right hand along the way. 😉
