Here's a question for you from The Great Divorce. Later in the story, George MacDonald meets up with the narrator and becomes the guide into Heave. He says that, “all that are in hell, choose it." Do you agree with that?
Is it attitude, faith or works that is argued in the story as the way to becoming a solid person in Heaven? Maybe it's all three?
(References are about page 69-75 in HarperOne's most recent printing.)
6 comments:
All three are aspects of who we are, that is true. Faith is reflected in attitude and actions. Actions and attitudes are motivated or informed by faith.
I do agree that when we look back it will appear to us that we have been in heaven all along. For one in hell, it will always have been hell, and always will be hell.
Eternity is now, and eternal life is a different kind of life, not just a greater duration.
I agree with Mushroom. All three will be seen to be in the end different parts of what is one thing, like the colors of a prism.
The people in hell in C. S. Lewis's novel, The Great Divorce, are depicted as delusional, fearful, egotistical, yet there are Christians who believe all the "right things" who also fit such categories.
Lewis admitted in letters that he wanted to be a universalist like McDonald but could not because of the sayings of Jesus about hell. If Jesus said THAT, then Lewis said he had to believe it. But that's not true at all, because it would have been odd for a first century Jew like Jesus, especially an apocalyptic-minded Jew like Jesus, to NOT have spoken about "eternal punishment." But that doesn't mean it's true. It simply fit the day and age in which Jesus lived. See the small book, Salvation and Damnation by Dalton.
By the way here are some universalistic thoughts along the line of Lewis's "spiritual mentor," George Macdonald, whom Lewis included as a character in The Great Divorce:
". . Jesus said for us to love even our enemies. We were His enemies at one time and He came down into our hell.
"And what shall we say of the man Christ Jesus? Who, that loves his brother, would not, upheld by the love of Christ, and with a dim hope that in the far-off time there might be some help for him, arise from the company of the blessed, and walk down into the dismal regions of despair, to sit with the last, the only unredeemed, the Judas of his race, and be himself more blessed in the pains of hell, than in the glories of heaven? Who, in the midst of the golden harps and the white wings, knowing that one of his kind, one miserable brother in the old-world-time when men were taught to love their neighbor as themselves, was howling unheeded far below in the vaults of the creation, who, I say, would not feel that he must arise, that he had no choice, that, awful as it was, he must gird his loins, and go down into the smoke and the darkness and the fire, traveling the weary and fearful road into the far country to find his brother?–who, I mean, that had the mind of Christ, that had the love of the Father?”
EXCERPT FROM “I BELIEVE” BY GEORGE MACDONALD (C. S. LEWIS’ “SPIRITUAL MENTOR”)
I believe that justice and mercy are simply one and the same thing… That… hell will… help the just mercy of God to redeem his children… Such is the mercy of God that he will hold his children in the consuming fire of his distance until they pay the uttermost farthing, until they drop the purse of selfishness with all the dross that is in it, and rush home to the Father and the Son, and the many brethren, rush inside the center of the life-giving fire whose outer circles burn.
___________
See also what I found on the web by Shana, a teacher of autistic children (and big MacDonald fan):
A Christian brother told me that when we are in heaven we will have no concern for those who will be burning in what he believed to be eternal hell. But if we are to “love our neighbors as ourselves,” how can this be true? God has said that He will have “all” come to Him. Is any heart so dark (and without the slightest flaw or crack) such that the light of Christ could never penetrate it? Does not emptiness abhor a vacuum, and what could be more vacuous than a heart trying to keep itself pumped up with lies and deceit which have no substance of and by themselves. Surely such vacuous hearts cannot avoid being eventually filled with the only solid and substantial Truth that is, was or ever will be?
Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Will He not continue to seek out and save all of the lost? Will we have the love of Christ in heaven? MacDonald’s words were a blessing for me to read.
Hi Edward:
You know a friend of mine once observed that there could not be light without darkness - there could not be good without evil and in this instance I would submit that there cannot be heaven without a hell. It is one of the realities of God - that in order to love Him we would also would have the ability to hate Him. So, if you can 'choose' God (not that any of us really do that on our own) then you can also not choose Him. Lewis would say that Hell was simply an existence without God - the choice to live without His Presence - which would be much like his book. Our responsibility on the planet is not to decide for God who is going to Heaven or Hell but encourage everyone to choose Him. God can figure out the rest. But we do The Lord of Heaven a disservice to state 'well in our modern knowledge we know better' about Heaven and Hell. If Jesus said there's one, there's one... regardless of what we think about it. Lewis's treatment of the subject is excellent - you don't have Christ in your life, you are living in Hell - and that's just reality.
God gave me reason to trust Him and I developed faith.
It changed my attitude and eventually my behavior.
C.S. Lewis is one of the most important writers that ever lived. I don't know that there was ever a greater apologist.
We are all chained by ourselves. We are already damned. We have to follow the path of freedom - the atonement - or we will never be free.
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