The Great Divorce

C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce convinces me that we really do deal in a lot of shallow water here on earth.

I reread this book this past week, and, wow! Isn't it amazing how something that you thought was really incredible about six years ago can be even more so now? The interplay of the themes of agency (he calls it "freedom") and Time (usually capitalized by Lewis, thus giving it proper name status) as fits our eternal identity is fascinating and thought provoking to say the least.

But there it is: the book illustrates a number of individuals who refuse salvation because of one thing or another that they want to hold onto more than to receive the love of God. Perhaps most illustrative is the man with the lizard about his neck, who in a moment decides to let the Angelic being kill the lizard and immediately begins to grown into something akin to the fullness of the measure of the stature of Christ--and the lizard becomes a divine stallion. Upon viewing this most shocking of transformations, Lewis asks his Teacher (the wise nineteenth century Scottish author/preacher George MacDonald, about whom I'm certain to have more to say later) the meaning of this. MacDonald responds, "Nothing, not even what is best and noblest, can go on as it now is. Nothing, not even what is lowest and most bestial, will not be raised again if it submits to death. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body."

Just as a brief excerpt from the book, I offer those words. For more, go read it, and see what kind of soul searching occurs.