The Great Divorce

I finished reading CS Lewis' "The Great Divorce" today. I picked it up because Michael Wilcox quoted it in his talk "The Fourth Watch" that I listened to recently.

The part quoted by Wilcox is on page 69 of the book. Wilcox edits it slightly, quoted below is how it's shared by him in his talk:

Ye cannot in your present state understand eternity. But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are fully grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. All their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, one attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this 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 in Heaven," and the Lost "We were always in Hell." And both will be right.

This book does an excellent job of portraying different ways that "self deception" causes many people to remain in Hell. It is their choice. They can choose at any moment to repent and change and follow God's rules, but their pride gets in their way and they go back to the grey town where they are comfortable and "happy". It goes along with these thoughts that I read on this blog post today: "Within the Bounds"

I would imagine that in the Highest Degrees of Glory, there is a lot of structure.  And within a lot of structure are a lot of rules, requirements, boundaries.  God operates within boundaries, why shouldn’t we?  If this earthly life is a proving ground for the “real thing” then the “real thing” is most likely going to resemble this testing period in some like or manner.  So He gives us rules.  Not arbitrary rules that he tweaks and changes at will, like a game maker who satisfies his need for control by toying with lives and emotions at his pleasure.  Rules that will bring us to Him.  His glory, that will one day be ours.  His greatest glory is our glory.  Do you get that?  It is unlike anything we see here in our lives.  His greatest glory is to see us glorified.  Successful.  Pure.  Like Him. 

So he arranges and teaches and guides and assists in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, all in an effort to BRING US TO HIM.  So if the rules are too strict, or too uncomfortable or too whatever, then there is something amiss IN US.  Not Him. 

He knew we would have desires that were averse to His rules.  He knew we would have to be raked over coals and walked over glass and stretched way beyond our perceived limits in order to be tempered, molded, shaped into creatures that can someday be capable of withstanding the magnitude of His incomprehensible glory. But it is all FOR us.  Not IN SPITE of us. 

The boundaries are loving.  They are His.  They are for OUR GLORY. 

So, what are you going to do with them?

I am going to obey and work and strive to live by his commandments that I may receive all that God has prepared for me and wants for me to receive.