A few days ago I bought The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis and now that I’m almost finished with it, I’d like to share some of it with you. First off, Lewis has to be one of the greatest story tellers of the 20th century. I say this apart from any of his “Christian” works, the man was just a great writer, regardless of what you believe about his religious convictions. (I think this fact is plainly seen in the fact that The lion, the witch and the wardrobe is one of my atheist friend’s favourite books/movies.)

The story is a “modern version of Dante’s Inferno“, with the main character being given a “tour” of heaven and hell. In the preface, C.S. Lewis tells us that his goal is not to paint an overly accurate picture of what the afterlife will look like, he is merely using it as a convention to talk about human nature and sin. While there are a lot of similarities between the two works, here I’m just going to talk a little about the spiritual lessons that the author gives.

  • All sin really flows from putting other things before God.
  • The worst sins are sins of self-deception, i.e. those sins which fool us into thinking that they aren’t sins.
  • Everything that we call “sin” is a perversion of something that God meant for His glory. Lust is a perversion of Desire or Love, Hate is a perversion of Justice, etc.
  • Even seemingly good aspects of human nature, such as love, can become sin if we place that love before the Creator. Lewis drives this point home in the book by showing a mother who’s love for her own son got in the way of her loving God. In reality, her motives were selfish, and not driven out of true love.
  • No one can truly love unless they first Love God.
  • If we insist on getting “our rights” and not leaning on God’s “charity”, we’ll end up in Hell.