“There was a creature came here not long ago and went back – Sir Archibald they called him. In his earthly life he’d been interested in nothing but Survival. . . . It grew to be his only occupation. . . .

It drove him mad if ever he saw anyone taking an interest in anything else. . . .

Well, in good time, the poor creature died and came here. . . .
This country was no use to him at all. Everyone here had ‘survived’ already. . . .
There was nothing more to prove.
His occupation was clean gone.

Of course if he would only have admitted that
he’d mistaken
the means
for the end
and had a good laugh at himself
he could have begun all over again like a little child and entered into joy.

But he would not do that. He cared nothing about joy. In the end he went away. . . .

There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing about God Himself… as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist!

There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them?

Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor?

It is the subtlest of all snares.”

~ George MacDonald, the Scottish “Solid Person”
The Great Divorce,
C.S. Lewis