One of my favorite C.S. Lewis books is The Great Divorce. It’s not a book about marriage or divorce at all, as you might think. It is a counter-argument to the belief that there can be a marriage of heaven and hell—that bad things can “turn into” good, and that the concepts of good and bad are not really different. In this allegorical tale, Lewis takes theological license, and constructs a world where people in hell can take a vacation to heaven, and to stay there if they so choose. The narrator, possibly Lewis himself, encounters a number of souls in hell, and while their situations are all very different, we see the same trait in almost all of them: they choose to refuse to repent.
One soul in hell is an Episcopal cleric. He is a great example of someone who meandered down that gently sloping path towards hell. He was an important person in life—in fact, he was a bishop. But he chose to turn away from Christ along the way, in favor of being a Big Intellectual and securing book deals. A friend, already in heaven, confronts him with what he has done; the cleric never put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of his faith. He allowed himself to drift, and in the process, pursue worldly things and status instead of Christ. What is interesting is that the friend also did the same thing, but the difference is that the friend, during his earthly life, repented. He saw the error of his ways.
But the cleric doesn’t seem to understand what his friend is driving at. Finally, the friend says to the cleric, “You have seen hell; you are in sight of heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?” And the cleric replies, “I’m not sure I've got the exact point you are trying to make.”
He’s not sure of the friend’s point? How could his friend have been any clearer? The friend offered him the chance to understand the truth, to repent, instead of dwelling in the cleric’s self-imposed cesspool of abstract intellect. This bishop and acclaimed writer is smart by all human standards. But he refuses to hear even the most plain and obvious of questions. Actually, it’s the answer he refuses to acknowledge—the answer of salvation. What does the cleric do in response to his friend’s direct question?
Nothing. He does nothing. He still chooses to refuse to repent. Yes, for a few minutes he toys with the idea of changing, but he wants guarantees—he wants to make sure he’ll be an important person in heaven and that there will be some intellectual life for him to enjoy. But, of course, the friend tells him that heaven offers nothing other than eternal happiness. So, what does the cleric decide he will do for eternity? He decides that he needs to get back to his daily existence in hell so he can make his speaking engagements.
While this seems unbelievable, is it really? Or is it so believable—people placing conditions on God and wasting their chances at heaven—that we don’t want to consider it?
By the end of the book, only one person is on his way to heaven. A man, whose pet sin was lust, utters the only words of true repentance, of changing his mind and heart, in the whole book. He says, “It would be better to be dead that to live with this creature.” He verbalizes—confesses—that death is better than sin. He agrees to let a friend in heaven extract his lust, represented by a lizard that must be surgically, painfully removed from the sinner.
Now, for all we know, this man might have lived a life of total depravity. Is it safe to assume that only blockbuster, repeat-offender felonies are the ones that doom us? I don't think so.
In another C.S. Lewis work of fiction, The Screwtape Letters, Lewis composed a series of letters from Screwtape, one of Satan’s minions, to his nephew, Wormwood, a lower level tempter for the devil, to assist his nephew in gaining the soul of a particular human. We might expect Satan’s tempters to go for the “big” sins, the really bad ones, to secure souls for hell. That’s not what happens in the story. Interestingly, it is the apparently innocuous sins that are of greater interest to the tempters. Screwtape teaches his nephew:
“It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
This idea is not new. St. Augustine taught that even little sins add up—“if you take them for light when you weigh them, tremble when you count them. A number of light objects makes a great mass; a number of drops fill a river; a number of grains make a heap.”
If you have read St. Augustine’s Confessions, you’ll now that he knew something about sin himself, and was well equipped to speak about it. He tells us to tremble when we count them. Why? They add up. And that should make us tremble.
On a more modern note, the Christian rock band Casting Crowns sings, in a song entitled Slow Fade, “people never crumble in a day.” Before we hit the bottom of the barrel, we undergo a cumulative, consistent crumble.
Did you ever notice how many discussions of hell reference a method of travel? I think that is because the road to heaven or hell is just that—a journey, a path, a trip. We do not live in a world where all roads, if followed long enough, draw us gradually to God. We live in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two paths, and each of those two forks again, and at each fork, you must make a decision. You must make a choice.
This is not a posting of doom, but of hope. And choice. The path to heaven is a life-long one, and the path to hell can be too. Our daily activities really do matter. Not everyone who chooses a wrong road is doomed to hell, thank God. There would be precious few souls in heaven if that was the case. But our rescue from the wrong paths, from taking the wrong forks in the road, depends on us getting back on the right road. The choice is ours.
One soul in hell is an Episcopal cleric. He is a great example of someone who meandered down that gently sloping path towards hell. He was an important person in life—in fact, he was a bishop. But he chose to turn away from Christ along the way, in favor of being a Big Intellectual and securing book deals. A friend, already in heaven, confronts him with what he has done; the cleric never put up one moment’s real resistance to the loss of his faith. He allowed himself to drift, and in the process, pursue worldly things and status instead of Christ. What is interesting is that the friend also did the same thing, but the difference is that the friend, during his earthly life, repented. He saw the error of his ways.
But the cleric doesn’t seem to understand what his friend is driving at. Finally, the friend says to the cleric, “You have seen hell; you are in sight of heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?” And the cleric replies, “I’m not sure I've got the exact point you are trying to make.”
He’s not sure of the friend’s point? How could his friend have been any clearer? The friend offered him the chance to understand the truth, to repent, instead of dwelling in the cleric’s self-imposed cesspool of abstract intellect. This bishop and acclaimed writer is smart by all human standards. But he refuses to hear even the most plain and obvious of questions. Actually, it’s the answer he refuses to acknowledge—the answer of salvation. What does the cleric do in response to his friend’s direct question?
Nothing. He does nothing. He still chooses to refuse to repent. Yes, for a few minutes he toys with the idea of changing, but he wants guarantees—he wants to make sure he’ll be an important person in heaven and that there will be some intellectual life for him to enjoy. But, of course, the friend tells him that heaven offers nothing other than eternal happiness. So, what does the cleric decide he will do for eternity? He decides that he needs to get back to his daily existence in hell so he can make his speaking engagements.
While this seems unbelievable, is it really? Or is it so believable—people placing conditions on God and wasting their chances at heaven—that we don’t want to consider it?
By the end of the book, only one person is on his way to heaven. A man, whose pet sin was lust, utters the only words of true repentance, of changing his mind and heart, in the whole book. He says, “It would be better to be dead that to live with this creature.” He verbalizes—confesses—that death is better than sin. He agrees to let a friend in heaven extract his lust, represented by a lizard that must be surgically, painfully removed from the sinner.
Now, for all we know, this man might have lived a life of total depravity. Is it safe to assume that only blockbuster, repeat-offender felonies are the ones that doom us? I don't think so.
In another C.S. Lewis work of fiction, The Screwtape Letters, Lewis composed a series of letters from Screwtape, one of Satan’s minions, to his nephew, Wormwood, a lower level tempter for the devil, to assist his nephew in gaining the soul of a particular human. We might expect Satan’s tempters to go for the “big” sins, the really bad ones, to secure souls for hell. That’s not what happens in the story. Interestingly, it is the apparently innocuous sins that are of greater interest to the tempters. Screwtape teaches his nephew:
“It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards will do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
This idea is not new. St. Augustine taught that even little sins add up—“if you take them for light when you weigh them, tremble when you count them. A number of light objects makes a great mass; a number of drops fill a river; a number of grains make a heap.”
If you have read St. Augustine’s Confessions, you’ll now that he knew something about sin himself, and was well equipped to speak about it. He tells us to tremble when we count them. Why? They add up. And that should make us tremble.
On a more modern note, the Christian rock band Casting Crowns sings, in a song entitled Slow Fade, “people never crumble in a day.” Before we hit the bottom of the barrel, we undergo a cumulative, consistent crumble.
Did you ever notice how many discussions of hell reference a method of travel? I think that is because the road to heaven or hell is just that—a journey, a path, a trip. We do not live in a world where all roads, if followed long enough, draw us gradually to God. We live in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two paths, and each of those two forks again, and at each fork, you must make a decision. You must make a choice.
This is not a posting of doom, but of hope. And choice. The path to heaven is a life-long one, and the path to hell can be too. Our daily activities really do matter. Not everyone who chooses a wrong road is doomed to hell, thank God. There would be precious few souls in heaven if that was the case. But our rescue from the wrong paths, from taking the wrong forks in the road, depends on us getting back on the right road. The choice is ours.
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