165: The Great Divorce

Hello and welcome to Classical Stuff You Should Know, a podcast about books and antiquity and arts and culture and refinements and three cool guys. That's us. We're the three cool guys. We're going to talk about ourselves for the next hour.

My name is Thomas Magby. I'm joined as always by Mr. AJ Hanenberg. That's me.

And Mr. Graham Donaldson. A cool guy. Easy there, champ.

I was going to say. Well, actually, let's put AJ at the top of the list of cool guys. I think I'd give you second, Graham. I'll take last one.

I'm eating cake with a spoon. That's cool. Yes. Yeah.

You are, in fact, actually eating my cake with a spoon. That's my cake. I mean, because you're eating it, it's your cake. I'm not the NFT, man.

I don't think that NFTs. They're not usually physical. There's one thing about them. Good talking.

He's enjoying the cake. This is a plan ownership. Anyway, today's episode is led by it. You said we could have it.

Did I know? After you took it out of the fridge. Graham, you are leading today's episode. Hi.

So you want to take it away? Yeah, it's about sin and guilt and cake stuff. Today, we are going to be talking about a book that C.S. Lewis wrote called The Great Divorce.

And we're not going to be going through all of the book. We're sort of going to just outline a little bit about how the book is structured, give you one or two examples of some of the conversations. But I really want to look at a conversation that C.S. Lewis has with a character in the book.

And it really centers in on that question. If there is one damned soul in hell... Hey, well, hey, well, this is our kind of family podcast. Why, no, but it's a darn soul.

Yeah, thank you very much. No, it's not darned. If there's... What is the darn song?

The actual line is... I don't think that's actually right. It's not. So the lie is, the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of the saved.

That's the line. And so C.S. Lewis, I mean, if it is the character of Lewis, it's the narrator. The narrator sort of asks his version of Virgil.

It's not Virgil, but his version of a guide. Hey, if there is one damned soul in hell, how can those in heaven have all of the joy of being saved knowing that there is this eternal punishment? Does that not sort of, you know, does the final loss of one soul give the lie to all the joy of the saved? So this book is kind of...

If I sort of want to sum up what this book is trying to do, it's trying to answer that question. How can you posit a good God, some idea of heaven, and a final judgment without feeling like hard done by or kind of icky at the end or feeling like there's been some kind of lack of mercy given to people? Don't you have pity for the damned? Yes, do you not have pity for the damned?

Does it not rob the joy of heaven to know that there are those in hell? Also, to darn means to mend with pity. It's literally the opposite of shame, right? Exactly.

Anyway, so okay, the book. So it is a dream. That's how it's framed. And the dream is a vision of death.

And I'm going to... You realize this is what's happening as the story unfolds. So it takes a couple of chapters when you're reading it to realize, oh, there's something fantastical going on. And it's not until you get to kind of midway through the book that you realize that we're talking about souls who have died, who are kind of encountering people that they've known while they've been alive to kind of have the last final reckoning of their life.

It turns out that they're actually having the last final... They're having like the final chance to make a decision for heaven or not. It's what's sort of happening in the story. So the book starts off with the narrator realizing that he's kind of in this like kind of crappy town.

It's just sort of like a little gross tourist town. He's at a bus stop. And he's with all these people sort of waiting to get on this bus and he doesn't really know what's going on. And everybody in the bus are kind of ornery and everyone's kind of jostling for position and trying to get to the front of the line as one does in a bus stop.

And some guys are getting in fights and one guy's like bribing a girl to get his spot by paying her off. And there's people who are... He's just sort of in this bus with these like sort of not too great people. They're sort of...

Anyway. But no one really knows why they're getting on the bus and some people are like, you know, there's not really explained why they want to go on this bus. There's something to do. There's something to do.

Like they're in line. Why not? Anyway. And so they're talking about the town and it's like twilight.

And the sun seems to be setting but it's been like this forever and no one really knows if the sun is setting. And one guy's like, maybe the sun is rising. Everyone's like, nah, I'm pretty sure the sun's setting, buddy. And it's like this eternal twilight and they're all getting on this bus.

And when the bus shows up, it is this glorious bus and the bus driver is filled with joy and he seems to be someone who Lewis says is just like, has the joy of doing the job that he was asked to do. And everyone's like, oh man, look at this guy. He's got this sunshine. And all the people getting on the bus kind of make fun of him.

Anyway, they get on the bus, off they go. And the narrator kind of like talks to people who are on this bus and one guy's like a poet and he's talking about all the poems. And one guy's talking about like how unfortunate it is to be with all these common folk but oh well, we're going to go on this bus and see what they have to offer. There's another guy who says that, you know, he's going off on this bus to see if he can get some cool stuff to bring back in, like sell, in this crappy little town.

And then all of a sudden the bus sort of takes off and it's flying. And they're like, holy crap, this bus is flying. And the narrator looks out and he sees that this town is actually spreading, it's spread out much farther than you think. So you think you're in this little crappy town.

But he looks out and he sees that this town is kind of like spreading out miles and miles of suburbia. And even off in the distance he can see that there are like little pinprits of light of houses that are kind of off in the distance. I'm going to explain what this means now even though the character himself doesn't realize what's going on. So what this is, is that the people who live in this town have the ability to like, they can live wherever they want.

And they can build instantly. So this is a town where if you want to live in a certain kind of house, you just think it and you get that house. And it turns out that all these people over time have been getting into fights and getting into quarrels and you're looking at your neighbor's lawn and he's like, you know, he thinks up a pool and he's got a pool and he thinks up a stairs system and he's got a stairs system and you're like living next to him and you're like, oh gosh darn it, this guy's like, you're playing Skrillex at four in the morning. And so you're like, I'm out of here.

And so then off you go. You're living next to AJ in this picture. You're living next to AJ. But it's like the jerky AJ.

It's like AJ at his worst. It's like AJ if, you know, he let himself go. No, as opposed to this, you know, this. No, no, I agree with you.

What was the AJ that you gave us? We were cool guys? He's the most likely to listen to Skrillex, right? That's the only point I'm making.

This is your image of cool is Skrillex. No, no, it's not in a pool. Poor in the morning, please. That's my image of someone I want to move away from.

You can go up the house. Anyway, so the point being that if you're living next to this guy, you can get up and move and like build your own house with your mind and you can live there. Or maybe you go with a bunch of people. All the people who hate the Skrillex team can go and they'll be like, all right, let's just move over here.

Over time, this town has been growing because people are getting fed up with each other. And it's expanding. And they're not growing. It's expanding.

Everyone's moving far and farther away. And when they found it, he was like, no one was near Napoleon for light years. But when they got there, he had this beautiful palatial mansion. And when they looked inside the window, it was just Napoleon pacing his house back and forth for days, muttering that it was anybody else's fault in his own.

It was Josephine's fault. It was, you know, who was the commanding? Who was the guy that beat him at Waterloo? What's his name?

I can't remember. The general. Oh, shoot. Not your fault.

That's a... It was a statue of a man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, so they realize that Napoleon's just spending his days saying it's somebody else's fault.

So they're on this bus and they're real. And so the narrator, oh, yeah, the guy who's going to buy, who he wants to go see if he can find some cool stuff. He's like, the reason why everybody, that there's no community, that there's no, that there's, that the city doesn't work is because no one needs anything. So I'm going to go.

Duke of Wellington? Yeah, Duke of Wellington's name. I mean, anyway. I'm going to go and I'm going to go and see if I can find a rare commodity and bring it back and then people will have to live close to me because they're, you know, the scarcity of this thing we can create like a society, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But because no one needs anything, this sort of civic fabric falls apart and everyone would say coral can move on. Okay. We find out later what this place is. But all these people are going in this bus and they arrive at this beautiful sort of idyllic setting of nature and trees and mountains and streams and wildflowers and it's gorgeous.

And when all the people get off this bus to their horror, they realize that they are see-through, they're ghosts. And that Lewis says that there's sort of two ways of looking at this world. The world is normal, but the people are like smudges of people. Or if you like look out a window, if you look out a dirty window, you can like look through the dirt into the outside or you can like focus and look at the dirt on the window.

And Lewis says that's kind of what the people were like in this landscape. Or you can say that the people were normal and the landscape was more real. So all of these ghosts, he now calls them and himself included, all show up in this landscape that is more real than the people themselves and they can't affect it. So they're little ghost bodies, they can't lift a flower.

Grass hurts. Grass hurts. There's an apple that falls on a tree and like smacks a dude and he like passes out. And it's the guy that wants to, he wants to bring the stuff back to sell back in the tourist town.

And he like tries, this apple like smacks something and he like passes out for a bit and he like tries to pick up the apple and then dreads it back to the bus. He does. There's an angel like, dude, stop it. It's not going to be any good, but he still doesn't listen.

He's still going to dread that apple. Anyway. And so all of these ghosts are like kind of, they're like, oh, this is terrible. It hurts.

It's too bright. It's too shiny. And I wasn't made for here. Okay.

And so everyone's sort of like freaking out and wanting to go back to the great town. Right. So it's known as. And then a, basically a caravan of people show up and these people are joyful and some are brightly robed in beautiful clothes and some are shining in their nakedness, but it's like not a nakedness that you would be ashamed of.

And, you know, Lewis being a scholar of Milton, like it's sort of the pre-fall nakedness of man. And these people show up and they are, you know, made for this country. And the ghosts, the people from the bus are terrified. Some are terrified of them and some are freaking out.

And then this begins, and then Lewis says that as this caravan shows up, they all kind of like fan out and each creature, each of these heavenly beings sort of sets their sight on one of the ghosts and goes to talk to them. And then the remainder of this book ends up being these conversations between, they're not angels, but between those who are coming from heaven, from God's kingdom, and those who have come from the gray town, which we find out is kind of hell and kind of not hell. It depends on, well, it depends on what's happening. And so all of these, the souls of the saved come and talks to the souls of the potentially damned.

And that's who these ghosts are. And so then this begins this interaction between these characters. So just to give you an example, the interactions themselves are really fascinating. And personally for me, there was one interaction between a theology professor and his student, which makes up all of chapter, I think it's chapter five, chapter five or chapter six.

Is the student the one that's trying to get together a discussion group? No, no, the teacher does. The student is the one who's in heaven. He's one of my favorite characters on the bus.

He's like, we could just get together a theology discussion group. And they're like, bro, what are we discussing? We know what's happening. Yeah.

So that particular chapter was one that cut through a lot of the BS in my life and was quite impactful for me because I saw that I could have easily become that teacher. Did you study when the first time you read this book was? It was probably, I was probably maybe 18 or 19 in college. And did it have that impact on you the first time you read it?

It did. I mean, I was, yeah, it and the abolition of man were two books that had a very big impact on me, particularly that chapter. The rest of it I didn't really understand at that time. I've come to read it and quite enjoy it now, but there's parts of the book that I was like, I don't get this.

Anyway, so there's these interactions. So one is, there's kind of this like gruff blue collar worker who's really, you know, the phrase he keeps uttering is like, I want to get my, I want to, you know, have my rights. I have my rights. And he's coming, he's like, I'm coming to check out this place.

And the angel that comes, or the being that comes to talk to him is somebody that used to work under him who had murdered somebody and had repented. And the ghost of the big man, that's how Lewis calls him, just can't get over the fact. He's like, this is not fair. He's like, I lived a good life.

I never did anybody wrong. I, you know, had an honest day's work and I got an honest pay and I never did wrong by anybody. And you murdered somebody. And hey, if they let you in, that's like their business, but I don't want no bleeding charity.

And the guy's like, no, you want the, you want the bleeding charity. Like, you were not a good man, says, um, says the angel or says the, the same soul. And the man's like, how dare you say that? Like you murdered somebody.

And he's like, yeah, but we have a laugh about it now. Like that's not the, me murdering him was not the worst thing that I did in my life. He said, actually the worst thing I did in my life was I hated you. And, uh, you were my boss and you made our lives miserable and you made your family's life miserable.

And I spent so many days thinking about how much I hated you that I have been sent back to ask for your forgiveness. And the big man go says, I want your forgiveness. Uh, how dare you pry into my life about how I'm treating my family. You guys are just a bunch of, this is just a click.

And you guys are, you know, you're just a click up here and you keep me up. All I want is what's owed to me. And the safe soul is like, you don't want that. You don't want what's owed to you.

You want the bleeding charity. And to the point where the big man's like, ah, screw this noise and he gets back on the bus. Right. So you get these kinds of interactions.

Another interaction is the one that I described earlier is that there's this theology professor. He was actually a bishop in the Episcopal church. Yes. Um, and he has sort of gone into the new fashionable theology and his former student who, according to the bishop, got quite narrow-minded towards the end of his life because he actually believed in the resurrection.

Um, this angel has, sorry, this safe soul has been sent down to him. And, um, um, and he's like, the reason you're in the great town is because you're an apostate. And the bishop is like, well, let's not go with some, you know, we don't need to put such off, let's use such antiquated terms. And, um, and so they go back and forth and, um, uh, the student says, do you remember that when you were young, you used to ask questions because you wanted answers?

And now the old angel's like, oh, so the old ghost is like, wow, we don't, you know, uh, it's not about answers, it's about the journey and it's about discovery. And, um, and they have this big back and forth. Uh, let me see if I can find some, some fun quotes from the, uh, from this discussion just to give you a flavor of what's going on. Um, um, let's see.

Um, so this is what the, the, um, the safe soul says about being with that man in that, um, in that sort of headspace of really sort of poking holes of this sort of new liberal theology. Um, just to give you a flavor. So at the end, yeah, AJ was right that, that, that the, the, the, the ghost decides he's not going to go to heaven because he wants, he has, he has to deliver a paper back in hell, um, uh, with his theology circle. And the nature of the paper is because Christ died such a young man, we don't know how his fully developed theology would have been if he had lived to old age.

And so his paper is on trying to think about what, if Christ was given the opportunity to fully develop his, his movement, then this is probably what his theology would have been. Um, and at that point, uh, the ghost is like, all right, you, you know, um, uh, yeah, good luck. Yes. No one, uh, he says, I shall end up by pointing out how this deepens the significance of the crucifixion.

One feels for the first time, what a disaster it was, what a tragic waste, such promise cut short because Jesus was killed. Yeah. Um, but the, um, but this is what the, the saved soul says, um, um, well, they're talking about their life. Um, um, the, the bishop says, when the doctrine of the resurrection ceased to commend itself for the critical, critical faculties, which God had given me, I openly rejected it.

I preached my famous sermon. I defied the whole chapter. I took every risk to which the angel replies, which the saved soul replies for risk. What was all, all likely to come of it except what actually came popularity, sales of your books, invitations.

And finally, a bishopric. And then the saved soul continues, and he says, Our opinions were not honestly come by. We simply found ourselves in contact with a certain current of ideas and plunged into it because it seemed modern and successful. And he continues on.

Having allowed oneself to drift, unrestraining, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reach the point where we no longer believe the faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unrestraining, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend. A drunkard reaches a point at which, for the moment, he actually believes that another glass will do him no harm. The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man's mind.

If that's what you mean by sincerity, they are sincere and so are ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent. So the guy was saying, Well, I honestly, I sincerely believe this, and I followed my sincerity to where it led. And the guy was saying, Yeah, but we were still wrong.

This reminds me of, in Dante, in the sixth circle of the city of this, which is where the heretics are punished. And for some reason, it's sort of outside sins of incontinence, like self-control and sins of malice. Because it's not really classified as either. It's almost being honestly mistaken and misleading others.

And it is hard to classify as a sin because it might be sort of an honestly believed mistake. It doesn't stop it from being wrong. So anyway, these are the interactions. And there's a bunch of others.

There's a man who is sort of beset by a little gremlin who is clearly lust. There is another tragic one where there is a man. The real man is like this tiny little dwarf. And he is leading...

It's a woman, isn't it? No, it's a little man who's a tiny dwarf. And he is leading... Yeah, he has on a leash this man who's almost like a puppet.

And the safe soul that comes to see him is his wife. And you get to send... I'm not going to get into it, but when you read it, you realize that this man has sort of been emotionally manipulative to his wife in that there was like his real self and then what Lewis calls the tragedian, this person who was always sort of setting things up as like this big emotional tragedy. And it turns out that he had kind of been using emotional blackmail in his wife her whole life.

And now she has come back to basically say, you need to cut the cord between you and this false version of yourself. So there's always really sort of like interesting psychological portrayals of people's relationships with their sin. But the mechanism of the story is that people are confronted with people they knew in life. And the relationship between these people are where the lost soul needs to be confronted with that central thing.

That there's always something that they insist on keeping, something that they prefer to the joy of going to heaven. Now, they think, well, I can't make the journey to heaven. The grass hurts my feet and this place is terrifying. And all the angels are all the same soul says, as it goes on, if you would just let go of this thing you're holding and come with us, you'll find that it gets easier over time and these souls won't do it.

There's one who is a mother who is so angry at God that God took her son from her early. And the person that is coming down to confront her, I think, is a sister or something. I didn't read that part for this podcast, so I didn't go through that chapter. But the point being that all of these damn souls or all these potentially damn souls are confronted with somebody for whom a conversation with them is going to get right to the heart of the reason why they would not choose God.

This one thing that they would insist on keeping. So for the gruff man, that he's so proud that he wasn't as bad as that other guy. And the intellectual bishop, he felt that he had this keen mind of inquiry and he didn't want God to answer his questions. He wanted to go on asking them.

So there's an interesting sort of spiritual exercise that we could probably do ourselves, which is if we were the ghosts coming up on that bus, who would be coming down from the mountain to talk to us? Who would be that person in our lives for whom it would lay that central thing about our personalities bare? That one thing that we want to keep on, we want to keep hold of more than we would be willingly let go of to be with God on the mountain. Anyway, that's not the point of this podcast, but it's an interesting thought experiment to say what is that thing in our own lives that we are holding on to that we refuse to give up because it really would mean the death of self for the life of Christ.

Anyway, at some point in the story, the narrator gets sent a guide. Sorry, just in response to that part, it's also like the person who you'd be shocked made it. Yeah, the murderer. Yeah, or someone who you're so certain that they went to hell, that they don't deserve heaven, and then realize they made it and you might not.

That's right. Maybe someone who stole your cake. I'm coming down. Yeah, so maybe that opens it up even further, but I think everyone has, or I'm just a curmudgeonly person, everyone has that gratitude.

You're saying that person deserves eternal formant, and then to realize, no, they had a weak faith that saved them in the end, and that was enough. So, yeah, facing up to that also. And so as this goes on, there's a couple of times where the safe souls say to the ghosts that the place where they came from, this gray town, is hell if they choose to go back there, but purgatory if they choose to come up to continue on their path towards heaven. Because they do get another chance to come.

Yeah, so Lewis, this whole story is, Lewis makes reference to this idea that the damned get to go on holiday. What's it called? There's a name for it. There's this old sort of medieval concept that the damned in hell can come and go on holiday to the foyer of heaven, so to speak.

Anyway. And that's the trip that they take at the very beginning. That's the holiday they're taking? Yeah.

Yes, and so everybody has an offer. Yeah, it's called Refrigerium. Okay. Someone named Prudentius.

It means that the damned have holidays, excursions. Excursions to the foyers of heaven. So anyway, at this point, there's an old Christian tradition that Emperor Trajan goes on this and when he is encountered with the gospel, he's like, yeah, that's what I want. He's in paradise, don't they?

He's the only Roman emperor or the only pagan who's in paradise. This idea that the virtual souls do actually get a chance to go and see the truth for what it is and insofar as that they're virtuous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is what I wanted all along. And that's what sort of is being described in the story.

Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. So at this point, the narrator meets up with a Virgil-like character, a guide. And for C.S. Lewis, it is George MacDonald who is a Scottish Christian author who is absolutely fantastic.

Oh, really? His most famous book is probably The Princess and the Goblin if you've ever heard of that. That's a children's book. You mean also a fantastic book?

You mean also a fantastic book? I hate that book. Am I doing this from? Oh, okay.

I hate you, I hate that book, dude. I agree. I'm in moderate. Fantasties was okay.

It's not a story. It's not a story. And the light princess is fantastic. It's not a story?

Fantasties is fantastic? Fantasties, I mean, it's a series of images. It's a series of images. I was like four chapters and I'm like, I have no idea what that means.

Yeah, there's no real story. It's just a series of almost like spiritually allegorical imagery. It's almost like just a book of symbolism. Graham, AJ, before we go any further, I want to thank our Patreon sponsors for making this episode possible.

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You also get, I can't believe I'm saying these words, that you get a Helios' Acolytes of Love crewneck sweatshirt, you get Helios' Acolytes of Love Crocs, and you get a free copy of all future merchandise about a kingdom where there's sort of a begrudged old aunt and, like, auntie, not aunt, as in the antenna. And she comes to the birth of this new princess and she curses her and her curse is that she loses all her gravity. But it's in more than one sense. She spins off into the air because she literally is not affected by gravity, but she also can't take things seriously.

So she can't truly love, when people get hurt, she just sort of laughs at them. She, you know, she's the kind of person who would see someone beheaded and sort of like run tittering off into the woods, but for her it would be floating, right? Except when she is swimming, for some reason. When she's in the water, she's fine.

George McDonnell was so impactful to C.S. Lewis. Fantasties and these kinds of books were something that Lewis was really impacted by Chesterton and McDonnell. George McDonnell, he's fascinating.

His books, his sermons are amazing. His poetry, his divine poetry is quite good. But he's very, he's thick. Like, not in terms of incomprehensible, but it's just like there's so much packed into his phrases.

Like Chesterton, it's like drinking espresso. If you have two of them, you feel gross. So you have too much, you have two chapters of George McDonnell, you're like, blah. And I want to say, I think I listened to the audiobook of Fantasties and, you know, I'm listening at two times speed trying to finish a book and that's not the right way to experience that book.

That's probably very much on me. So he comes up to George McDonnell and George McDonnell explains that, yes, this is a place where the souls of hell, which is maybe purgatory, can come and can encounter heaven, at least the foyer of heaven, and can sort of encounter beings that are going to unearth that thing inside of them and they get the opportunity to make that choice. To give it up and give themselves up and travel with the beings to heaven or to sort of double down onto their own conclusions, get back on the bus and go back to hell. And so Lewis asks George McDonnell, I don't understand.

Is judgment not final? Is there really a way out of hell into heaven? It depends on the way you're using the words. If they leave the gray town behind, it will not have been hell.

To anyone that leaves it, it is purgatory. And perhaps you had better not call this country heaven, not deep heaven, you understand. You can call it the valley of the shadow of life. And yet to those who stay here, it will have been heaven from the first.

And you can call those sad streets in the town yonder the valley of the shadow of death. But to those who remain there, they will have been in hell even from the beginning. So he continues, you cannot in your present state understand eternity. They say of some temporal suffering, no future bliss can make up for it, not knowing that heaven, once attained, and I'll take the consequences.

Little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of heaven. The bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness.

And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the blessed will say, we have never lived anywhere except heaven and the lost, we were always in hell and both will speak truly. And so, first of all, this is maybe an apologia or an explanation as to the sufferings and pain on earth. McDonald's is saying that for those who suffer to the end, they will look back and the glory of heaven will recast and rework all of the sufferings of life into the preamble of heaven. And for those in hell, even the glories or even the joys of life will be seen as the beginnings of the miseries of hell.

Towards at the end, all of those in heaven will say, we have always been here and all of those in hell will say, I have always been in hell. And so it's this idea that like, hell is like a continuation of the attitude of the people who rejected and went back onto the bus. And heaven is the beginning of abandoning the self and sort of accepting reality for what it is, accepting the game for what it is. So Lewis says, oh, then heaven and hell are just states of mind.

And the angel corrects him. He says, hell is a state of mind. You've never said a truer word. And every state of mind left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind is in the end hell.

But heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is a reality itself. And all that is fully real is heavenly. And so this is sort of, yeah, the first, we're getting to that big question that Lewis asks later, which is what happens with the final souls who choose hell.

But it's this first idea that in the end, at least as far as Lewis is concerned, that hell ends up being this choice. That it's not, or if it's not a choice, it's not a choice because your habits of personality have been so wrapped up in that thing that is keeping you from God, that pride or that arrogance or that, you know, the bastardized version of love that, and it's so baked into your character that when given the opportunity to abandon it and sort of like shed yourself and go with the beings to sort of walk into heaven like a child again, there are some people that just refuse to do it because to them it would feel like such a death to the self because it's so wrapped up in their self. Like an indignity. Yeah, exactly, yes.

So, you know, in our AMA, we were talking about most embarrassing moments, right? Like it would be too embarrassing for that bishop because those moments have been some of the most formative to me. Yeah. Yeah, I talked about the time after when I made sort of a fool of myself and I was sort of laughing at myself in a bathroom stall.

I still remember that as sort of a formative moment. Yeah, these moments where you, it's not that you sort of stop regarding yourself as important but not in a depressive way but in a, like, seeing rightly way. Can I ask, is it correct to call these, are these actual choices? So taking your quote, if heaven goes back in time essentially to, so the person says they've always been in this state, the person in hell has always been in this state, hasn't their decision already been predetermined by the point that, again, Lewis would say it's a dream, don't take it so seriously but I'm just wondering is there an authenticity to that choice that they're presented with in that moment?

Yeah, so in the book MacDonald makes reference to the fact that even those who don't get on the bus and come to heaven at some point, I think he was saying that Christ even goes down and personally talks to everybody. So, like, Christ goes and talks to Napoleon but Napoleon's like, doesn't even want, like, go away like I have big important things to think about right there's some point where like Christ himself comes to you to offer you eternal life but you have been so wrapped up in self that the choice is not a choice it doesn't really matter at that point the choice was not predetermined but the choice was made long ago in the fact that you were unwilling to sort of get out from it so again we're not really delving into this but there's you know the question of free will versus predestination and again so what you would look at yes there's this moment of decision that Lewis is presenting a great divorce but there's something that's prepared them for that moment I guess I'm wondering like what is that like is it fully the person's choice you know 50 years before this moment kind of set them on this path that then ended with them rejecting the chance of repentance does he go into it he doesn't but I mean like even in an individual person's life there must be some point where you realize well I don't know I'm just wondering if like people who realize that they're like supremely proud and arrogant is there a point where they in the quietness of their own soul at some point say man I'm kind of a jerk I think C.S. Lewis would also be a proponent of the notion and there's a whole lot of words to say C.S. Lewis probably thinks that it's a weight of numerous small choices along with maybe a couple of big ones but it is those choices over time that will sour man's soul and you eventually become numb to them and like the bishop he originally asked questions to find answers and over time small little things got into the place where he didn't want the answers anymore he wanted to ask questions and get fame and here they are presented with another choice isn't there a point later in the book when he starts to talk about temporal realities and he's basically saying this choice is not a like what you are seeing as a representation of the choice that people have throughout their lives is not a singular moment so the man can choose to abandon his tragedy in the face of his wife that emotional manipulation and what you are seeing as a representation of that choice boiled down to a couple seconds but it is a lifelong choice I think that comes in the later chapters I could be wrong it's been a while since I read it that's what these moments feel like though it's more than just that one moment they've been prepared for one outcome or the other based on everything after that moment I also think that there are moments of grand choice in a person's life but in the same way that you are tilted one way or another on those decisions based on the little decisions you make shooting up to it so there's a point where there is an interaction between a married couple and it was one I was making reference to earlier where the man as a ghost is a dwarf sort of a short little mute creature and he's holding the chain of this regular looking man and this regular looking man is clearly sort of like the false front of what the real man is and the basis of this relationship is that he kind of was this overly dramatic husband and was kind of emotionally abusive to his wife and always was making reference to like their love and Lewis calls him to tragedy and getting into that whole story I don't want to get into with the sake of time but the point being that she has come and she has said listen I have come to tell you that you need to stop acting and you need to abandon this sort of false front and you need to come to love itself and he's you know let me give an example here she says quick she said there's still time stop it stop it at once stop what using people other people's pity in the wrong way we have all done it a bit on earth you know pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery but it can be used the wrong way around it can be used for a kind of blackmailing those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom by pity you see I know now even as a child you did it instead of saying you were sorry you went and sulked in the attic because you knew that sooner or later one of your sisters would say I can't bear to think of him sitting up there alone crying you used their pity to blackmail them and they gave in in the end and afterwards when we were married oh it doesn't matter now only people stop it so he's the kind of guy that uses like the good nature of pity of others to get his way in this case he's like don't you care that I'm in hell how can you be happy up here while I'm down there and she's like I have to be happy I'm in heaven you can be happy too and he's like I couldn't do that thinking you were up here happy when I'm sad and that is all you understood of me after all these years I don't know what's become so no frank not here to the lady love itself and he's like how can you say this and while this is going on he is getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller until he finally disappears and she turns around and leaves so he sort of poofs into nothing he's so tiny you do not love me said the tragedian and she said I cannot love a lie said the lady I cannot love the thing which is not I am in love and out of it I will not go and then he vanishes and she says presently the lady got up and began to walk away the other bright spirits came forward to receive her singing as they came and so Lewis then turns to George MacDonald and asks that question how can she be happy and how can she be in glorious heaven knowing that the man that she spent her entire life with her husband who is this person that used his own misery as blackmail to get her to do what he wanted is still miserable in hell and George MacDonald says would you rather he had the power still of tormenting her and he says no I don't want that and he says then George MacDonald says what do you want and Lewis says I hardly know sir what some people say on earth is that the final loss of one's soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved and George MacDonald says well you can see that's not true you can see it does not and George MacDonald says that sounds very merciful but see what looks behind it the demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe that till they consent to be happy on their own terms no one else shall taste joy that theirs should be the final power that hell should be able to veto heaven either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it or else forever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves I know it has a grand sound to say you'll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside but watch that sophistry or you'll make a dog in a manger the tyrant of the universe and then but then they sort of equivocate on the word pity for a little bit anyway so this ends up being kind of the answer that Lewis gives to that question of how can there be joy in heaven when there are the souls who are damned can I understand it so it's really interesting because most people would say it wouldn't be great if everyone went to heaven there'd be no suffering in the afterlife right but MacDonald's point Lewis's point against MacDonald is that that gives control to the person who's chosen misery to set the terms of what will allow them into heaven so instead of heaven setting a bar essentially and saying that you must be pure to enter this place the person who's outside gets to I'm missing it at this point they get to say who's worthy of getting in they get to it's the black he says it's sort of the emotional blackmail so instead of apologizing he sulks and the sisters who love him say oh man I just can't think of him crying his eyes out and they go and they're like no come on I'm sorry even though they did nothing wrong but in heaven at least here the wife of this sulky man is saying I'm not going to love you on those terms you have to stop it you have to kill this thing this false front this weaponizing pity you need to release it and only then can you begin to actually be in love and he is so wrapped up in weaponizing pity for his own ends and he's like how dare you utter the sacred name of love and he gets smaller until he disappears and she turns around and is welcomed back to the angels and is seemingly unaffected and Lewis is like oh that's so sad and the other question is like well what's the alternative that he gets to enter heaven but be a sulky shorts no or that she gets to go to heaven but she has to feel bad the whole time because he's down in hell it gives hell the emotional veto so everyone in heaven can be happy but they have to remember and pity goes in hell and it's like going to an amusement park and your cranky nephew hates everything and just ruins the day and so he gets all the power because he can ruin the day for everybody because he feels bad and everyone else is trying to have a good time so at some point they get to have a good time at some point there must become a day when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it I don't know will we get to the story where there's a positive outcome no so there's one of the stories where someone actually makes the right choice and so the alternative would be and he abandons his sin which I think was lust in this case or some sort of sexual UNC it was lust the guy crushes the little lizard that's sitting on his shoulder and he dies and he becomes a stallion and rides off on it but it's incredibly painful this is not a pleasant experience the alternative is that instead of him being given the choice his sin is killed for him yeah I think in that scene he's like you kill it you kill it to the angel or to the heavenly being he's like I can't do that you have to do it to the point where there's that choice where you need to sort of no I think the man had to give permission to the angel was like I can kill it it's on your shoulders if you simply really want it done and he's like I don't know it's going to hurt it's going to hurt a lot but it needs to be done and eventually the man says yes please kill it he doesn't kill it he has to give permission for it to kill it he can't be forced to be saved heavenly help but the man has to be willing the alternative would be that instead of each of these people being presented with that choice they would just have the sin eradicated from them to then make them worthy to enter into heaven Calvinist I'm just posing that isn't that the better I'm just asking is that a better alternative because now we have four people who haven't conquered their sin who have to get back on the bus you know what I mean but the thing is if you do that then your free will means nothing then love means nothing if there's not a choice for you to actually choose joy this is sort of what everybody says well if I was actually like if you showed me heaven and gave me the choice of course I would choose it it's like well but when the choice comes down to the complete abandonment of the thing that you think is the core of you when really it's the it's the sinful tendency that has infected your soul that's so much so that the real you has been completely shriveled up like no that's a hard choice to make if you think of the Lord of the Rings isn't there that king who is so under the power of that little gremlin guy Wormtongue yeah Wormtongue that it's not until he yeah he's so under that under the influence of Sauron or whatever Sauron that I can't remember it's no one time since I read those books right but this idea that the once noble person has been completely infected to the point where they don't they can't even see reality for what it is anymore yeah so anyway this is a whole long discussion sort of roundabout way to get to that central question of well then how can how can those how can you sort of be comfortable with the doctrine of hell and for me this has been the most sort of answer to that question which is that the doctrine of hell is not some sort of punitive place where we send all like creepy people just to poke the sticks and like heading upside down and burning poop or whatever like in Dante but it's actually the place where when we say not your will be done my will be done God says okay your will be done fine if that's your final choice your will is done and you go off and hell's kind of a place where you get everything that you want except God you want to think of a big old house you think it up and you get it you want like you get it you get everything that you want except you're going to be alone because everybody else gets what they want and sometimes those clash and that's what hell is and what heaven is is you giving up that ability and having to go to that very like painful center of that thing that drives you as opposed to allowing God the thing that's actually sitting on the throne of your heart as opposed to God sitting on the throne of your heart and kicking that thing off the throne and that is not an easy thing to do it's a very painful thing to do and so heaven is really heaven really is won by sort of the violent men who take it by force heaven is really only for those who are sort of willing to go and right down to the center of that pain of what sin has wrought in their lives and cry out from that pain asking for the little lizard to be killed for me personally that has always been a much more palatable and also intuitively understandable concept of hell especially as somebody who as a little kid I found myself and maybe I still do that to a certain extent that sort of emotional manipulative thing where if I'm not having a good time I can definitely weaponize my pity in such a way to make sure that nobody has a good time that is a hellish quality that is an infection to anything good like your nephew had to that was not a real thing but like that sort of ability really is that has no place in heaven that characteristic it is the same question people ask how can you laugh and have a good time when people are starving in Africa and there's a I was trying to search it up but he talks about how the suffering almost has no point if nobody gets to laugh what are they suffering for if there is no laughter in this world then the suffering is just suffering for suffering's sake and that doesn't quite totally line up with what you're saying but joy has to be allowed to have some free reign and at some point it has to be completely free reign and I think that's what you're talking about and the very uncomfortable theological position that Lewis talks about in this book is for those of the saved any pain that they have in life in the light of heaven ends up being the preamble saying we've always been here and even if somebody had like the easiest cushiest awesomest life on earth a family you know who loved them enough money to be able to be leisurely but if they allowed themselves to slowly allow their sinful nature to metastasize into every corner of their personality and let that continue for 10,000 years like that is hell and misery and so then at a point we're saying like well what are we is it more tragic that there is that you know that sort of the injustice of the kinds of things that we have in this life or you know the soul that chooses itself over God right like at that point the scales become so out of whack that that sort of calculus of misery no longer makes sense in the light of heaven and hell anyway it's still pretty challenging because like yeah it's easy to say sitting around on a Saturday afternoon talking about this and it's not easy to say if you're in the midst of present suffering but and I would find that very challenging where Lewis is like yeah but that poor guy he's such a sulky pants going down to hell and McDonald's like what else do you want to do like that's yeah This American Life just on Sunday played out an episode on grief and I guess both could use it how you can be helpful and how you can be unhelpful but one of the stories is about a person who over the course of the story dies sorry if that's a spoiler but like they have quotes of him like before he dies and all he can talk about is the misery of the world and how horrible things are and like the point of the story is supposed to be like how bad death is but like that those moments of him he's given a platform to say whatever he wants to and all he can see is the misery around him that's the part that stuck with me of like you've talked about this before we eventually become whatever we're becoming and that like that way that that's crystallized right before his moment of death It's a really scary thing for me to hear about.

Yeah, terrible. I think that plays into what you're talking about then of, so that's over the course of life. Well, then multiply that out thousands of years, millions of years, right? And those trajectories don't get better, right?

Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the core comforts of the Christian faith is that, like, death is a speed bump, right? Death is not the end. It's much more dangerous to be the soul that is grasping after self than to be, you know, yeah, than to die having been someone who has sought Christ in their life.

Lewis, at other points in this book, Lewis talks about, like, two soldiers fighting in a war who both kill each other at the same time and find themselves on the other side and, like, have a good laugh about it. Like, that kind of attitude, to me, is a distinctly Christian one. Like, that is, that sort of attitude towards death is a distinctly, sort of, Christian attitude. It's also the attitude of that creepy wizard in Ghostbusters 2, right?

Death is not the end. That's true. Yeah, that's not the same attitude, though. It's not quite the same attitude, but, you know, like, death is but a door and he has this creepy thing he says.

Is that for Anderson? I'm not for Anderson. All right, that's my, that's sort of the, Lewis's apology for, of, like, why hell? Oh, what is hell?

And hell, to summarize the entire thing, this is a famous Lewis line, that hell is a door locked from the inside. That the people who have chosen it have locked everybody else out. Sure. All right, thank you all for listening.

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