C S Lewis: Great Divorce
“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..”’ C S Lewis, The Great Divorce.
The Great Divorce is Lewis’ classic study of the difference between living in heaven and living in hell. In hell, people become more and more isolated and separated from each other until communication is lost. Before the great distances develop there is a bus stop where groups of people in hell are given the opportunity to go to heaven on a tour bus ride to decide if they might like to live there instead. Spoiler alert! Only one person decides to stay in heaven. The rest return to their life in hell. It is a choice.
With each character, Lewis describes what keeps each of us in hell. My favorite is the bishop whose intellect keeps him in hell as he must go back to hell because he is scheduled to give a lecture that he does not want to miss. Other characters remain in hell because they cannot recognize joy, others see all the difficulty in life as someone’s fault, some stay connected to their material goods that mean the most to them, some find people “beneath them” in heaven, one sees heaven as a trick, and an artist must return to hell to preserve his reputation.
The Great Divorce is a great study for a book group especially in Lent for people to share with each other which of the characters they most identify with. Lewis hands us a mirror to see where in our life that we do not recognize that we are still controlling the show and living in a hell, where we have forsaken the gifts of heaven on this earth.
Joanna joannaseibert.com