C. S. Lewis The Great Divorce: Reflection

incomplete draft written several weeks ago, posted here as written originally


Oh, to be a genius like C. S. Lewis and to be clever enough to conceive something like The Great Divorce, a novel about a bus ride from heaven to hell. 


I'm reeling from all the thoughts Lewis spins into the fabric of the story, wondering who I am in the story (or perhaps, better, who I am not). I am frozen simultaneously in despair at the inherent brokenness of humanity the story illuminates and in awe at the grace and redemption the story paints as something so mysterious, so clear, and so real I yearn for it.


The story is told through conversations between those who are visiting heaven from hell and  inhabitants of heaven trying to convince them to stay. No one ever does stay, though; everyone chooses to go back to the bus and back to hell. And, amazingly, I think most of us make the same choice every day.


The two following condensed conversations represent me the most, I think, but every sketch has far too close a likeness to me for my liking...


The Elder Brother (See Tim Keller Prodigal God), the Earner of His Way

'I haven't got my rights, or I should not be here [heaven]. You will not get yours either. You'll get something far better. Never fear.' 'I'm a decent man and if I had my rights I'd have been here long ago and you can tell them I said so.' 'You can never do it like that... And it isn't exactly true, you know? You weren't a decent man and you didn't do your best. We none of us were and none of us did. Lord bless you, it doesn't matter. There is no need to go into it all now.'  

This was the substance of my first spiritual milestone in my life, around the age of 11 or 12 in Confirmation class. I always felt things inside me grind against each other when I heard the parable of the workers coming at different times of the day; it defied all my logic that God would give equally to those who did not work equally. I can see myself, even as a child, as a snippet from an old Shirley Temple movie when she asserts with a pout, "I'm very self-reliant. My mother taught me always to be that way." I can see myself, rooting on the heroes of Rand novels for their individuality and reliance on and love of self. "I recognize the right of no man to one minute of my time," Roark testifies, and I applaud his virtue of selfishness where selfishness means being firm in one's convictions and in need only of oneself and no other. But it's all a delusion to think that one can be totally self-reliant, that one can be good enough. That kind of thinking is accompanied by a life of justifying why one is truly good enough, why one has done exactly what should be done in all ways in all instances. It's impossible without embracing the idea that anything you choose to be right is, in fact, right. As in vogue an idea as that is, don't the very laws of nature contradict it? Don't all our senses of what is good and acceptable cry out that things are either right or not? Somewhere deep down in our humanity, we know there has to be something that is right and true, or we wouldn't have to come up with so many reasons for why our right or truth or lack thereof  is the correct right and truth. But I don't know how I arrived at this sentence... back to my original thought: the astounding thing that I realized at 11 or 12 was that my natural inclination was to assume that I was one of the workers to work all day. I was one of the ones who deserved what I got, and surely, if someone who worked only an hour was to get the same amount that I did, I should at least get a bonus. That's only fair... but at 11 or 12 my idea of what "fair" means was radically altered. Fair-- our whole country is based on the ideal of what is fair and what is the right of every person. We live in fear in public education of accidentally giving something to one that is not given to another, and we don't do anything-- take field trips, give rewards, have fundraisers-- that could be construed as unfair. My kids at school know the word oh-so-well and complain all the time that something is not fair when what they really mean is that something did not go their way, regardless of whether it was actually fair. But who really wants fair? We all say we want to be treated fairly, but that's only because we assume that what we have done in life and who we are merits treatment that we desire. But we think too highly of ourselves. Universally. We think we deserve all when we deserve nothing. I have had to realize that of myself many times in my life and embrace again and again the "beauty of grace," as Relient K sings, that "makes life not fair." I love the promise the Spirit makes in this passage: You will not get yours [rights] either. You'll get something far better. Why is it that we puny humans think we know what we want and what is good for us? Something far better is promised...

The Intellectual

'I am perfectly ready to consider it. Of course I should require some assurances... I should want a guarantee that you are taking me to a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness-- and scope for the talents God has given me-- and an atmosphere of free inquiry-- in short, all that one means by civilisation and --er-- the spiritual life.' 'I can promise you none of those things. No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmospheres of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God... hitherto you have experienced truth only with the abstract intellect. I will bring you where you can taste it like honey and be embraced by it as a bridegroom. Your thirst shall be quenched.'

There is a moment in the complete version of this conversation when the intellectual has completely dismissed the Spirit and rambles on, "I feel I can do a great work among them. But you've never asked me what my paper is about!" Why do I hate my job sometimes (a lot of the time/ most of the time)? Because I feel ineffective. Because I keep longing for something where I could finally do a great work. Where I could finally put my talents to use. There is always a nagging voice in my head, "You should be doing more. You were the smartest kid in your elementary school, a valedictorian, a Niswonger Scholar... so much has been given to you. So much is expected of you." There is always a scale in my mind weighing my pitiful accomplishments against those who have done so much more, all the Vanderbilt undergrads who won medals at graduation for accomplishing more in the past four years than most people do in a lifetime, other teachers who do better jobs or work in more "successful" or more "underprivileged" schools, or those who have gone home and are giving back like I'm supposed to... There is a reason I love John Mayer's question "Am I living it right?" The reason is because I know I'm not. Like this intellectual ghost, I am always trying to find ways to show that I am getting it at least partially right, and I'm always looking for the next opportunity or career that would allow me to fulfill-- finally!-- the destiny intended for me. And, then, there are always the questions. The questions. The questions. I constantly find more questions, more problems, and I fear that I am getting further and further from the answer all the time, but I don't know how to get closer to the answer when any answer I can get for one question inspires more questions in me. Oh for hope in an answer that actually exists. Most times I don't want there to be an answer for despair that I won't ever fully know it, for despair that makes me find reasons to justify not having to have an answer. But I do want an answer. And forgiveness for all the ways I perverted my talents and usefulness... perverted them into mirages of gods, idols, the things that I spend all my time trying to hone, perverted them into unworthy sacrifices, deluded into thinking if I could just use myself and what I've been given properly then my life would be justified.