Lewis and MacDonald Part II: Heaven and Hell Work Backwards

'It depends on the way ye're using the words. If they
leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To
any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had bet-
ter not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye
understand.' (Here he smiled at me.) 'Ye 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 ye 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 Hell even from the beginning.'

I suppose he saw that I looked puzzled, for presently
he spoke again.

'Son,' he said, 'ye cannot in your present state understand
eternity: when Anodos looked through the door of the
Timeless he brought no message back. But ye can get some
likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they
are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley
but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those
who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but 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, once attained, will
work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.
And 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 are always in Hell." And both will speak truly.'

Lewis and MacDonald Part I: An Imagined Meeting

What follows is the first post in a series of excerpts from C. S. Lewis' novel The Great Divorce. These excerpts represent my favorite part of the book. The body of excerpts is a fictional account of Lewis meeting his "Master" "Teacher" for the first time. In reality, Lewis never met MacDonald during his natural life. If I remember right, MacDonald died before Lewis was born.

One thing that's so entertaining to me about this part of the story is that this meeting must have been something that Lewis desperately longed for in vain. When faced with the impossibility of a real meeting, Lewis made use of his vivid imagination, sharp intellect, unique scope of theology, and avid reverence of MacDonald and the quality of his writings to conjure up his idea of what a meeting between the two might be like. The other, more significant, part of this excerpt that makes it my favorite is the treatment of the topic that the two characters are discussing: Heaven and Hell. Those two places, after all, are what the book is primarily about.

The following dialogue takes place after Lewis, who's character began the story by riding a bus out of Hell (a.k.a. the grey town) and onto the plains of Heaven, begins to feel the effects of the ultimate reality of Heaven on his shadowy Ghostly form. Lewis' character clumsily and sometimes painfully stumbles around the plain for some time before coming face to face with the guide assigned to him to aid in the journey to the mountains of "Deep Heaven", George MacDonald. Without further delay, here is excerpt I:

'I don't know you, Sir,' said I, taking my seat beside
him.

'My name is George,' he answered. 'George Mac-
Donald.'

'Oh!' I cried. 'Then you can tell me! You at least will
not deceive me.' Then, supposing that these expressions
of confidence needed some explanation, I tried, trembling
to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I
tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead
Station when I first bought a copy of Phantastes (being
then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the
first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante: Here begins the
New Life. I started to confess how long that Life had
delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly
and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom
had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard
I had tried not to see that the true name of the quality
which first met me in his books is Holiness. He laid his
hand on mine and stopped me.

'Son,' he said, 'Your love - all love - is of inexpressible
value to me. But it may save precious time' (here he sud-
denly looked very Scotch) 'if I inform ye that I am already
well acquianted with these biographical details. In fact, I
have noticed that your memory misleads you in one or
two particulars.'

'Oh!' said I, and became still.
'Ye had started,' said my Teacher, 'to talk of something
more profitable.'

'Sir,' said I, 'I had almost forgotten it, and I have no
anxiety about the answer now, though I have still a
curiosity. It is about these Ghosts. Do any of them stay?
Can they stay? Is any real choice offered them? How
do they come to be here?'

'Did ye never hear of the Refrigerium? A man with
your advantages might have read of it in Prudentius, not
to mention Jeremy Taylor.'

'The name is familiar, Sir, but I'm afraid I've forgotten
what it means.'

'It means that the damned have holidays - excursions,
ye understand.'

'Excursions to this country?'

'For those that will take them. Of course most of the
silly creatures don't. They prefer taking trips back to
Earth. They go and play tricks on the poor daft women ye
call mediums. They go and try to assert their ownership
of some house that once belonged to them: and then ye
get what's called a Haunting. Or they go to spy on their
children. Or literary ghosts hang about public libraries to
see if anyone's still reading their books.'

'But if they come here they can really stay?'

'Aye. Ye'll have heard that the emperor Trajan did.'

'But I don't understand. Is judgement not final? Is
there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?'

The Classical, Ancient, Unoriginal Ethic of Christ

A Christian who understands his own religion laughs when unbelievers expect to trouble him by the assertion that Jesus uttered no command which had not been anticipated by the Rabbis - few, indeed, which cannot be paralleled in classical, ancient Egyptian, Ninevite, Babylonian, or Chinese texts. We have long recognized that truth with rejoicing. Our faith is not pinned on a crank.

- C. S. Lewis

Gratitude

Double major crazy mad props to the lady of the house for the will and skill to meld the best of two templates together and make this blog the best that it can be: Respect.

There is no Business Parallel

It is a very small matter to you whether the man give you your rights or not; it is life or death to you whether or not you give him his. Whether he pay you what you count his debt or no, you will be compelled to pay him all you owe him. If you owe him a pound and he you a million, you must pay him the pound whether he pay you the million or not; there is no business-parallel here. If, owing you love, he gives you hate, you, owing him love, have yet to pay it. A love unpaid you, a justice undone you, a praise withheld from you, a judgment passed on you without judgment, will not absolve you of the debt of a love unpaid, a justice not done, a praise withheld, a false judgment passed: these uttermost farthings--not to speak of such debts as the world itself counts grievous wrongs--you must pay him, whether he pay you or not.

- George MacDonald

Self Defense

When men speak ill of you, live so as nobody may believe them.

- Plato

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

...to try too hard to make people good is one way to make them worse; that the only way to make them good is to be good - remembering well the [plank] and the [speck]; that the time for speaking comes rarely, [that] the time for being [good] never departs.

- George MacDonald

Born on the Wild (hill-)Side

But the rejoicing in heaven is greatest over the sheep that has wandered the farthest - perhaps was born on the wild hill-side, and not in the fold at all. For such a prodigal, the elder brother in heaven prays thus - "Lord, think about my poor brother more than about me, for I know thee, and am at rest in thee. I am with thee always."

- George MacDonald

It Is Better to Forget About Yourself Altogether

How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. Any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good--above all, that we are better than someone else--I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

- C. S. Lewis

The Untuned Tuner

Foolish is the man, and there are many such men, who would rid himself or his fellows of discomfort by setting the world right, by waging war on the evils around him, while he neglects that integral part of the world where lies his business, his first business - namely, his own character and conduct. Were it possible - an absurd supposition - that the world should thus be righted from the outside, it would yet be impossible for the man who had contributed to the work, remaining what he was, ever to enjoy the perfection of the result; himself not in tune with the organ he had tuned, he must imagine it still a distracted, jarring instrument.

- George MacDonald

Not Feeling Fond of Him

...something inside us, the feeling of resentment, the feeling that wants to get one's own back, must be simply killed. I do not mean that anyone can decide this moment that he will never feel it any more. That is not how things happen. I mean that every time it bobs its head up, day after day, year after year, all our lives long, we must hit it on the head.

It is hard work, but the attempt is not impossible...we must try to feel about [our] enemy as we feel about ourselves - to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not.

- C. S. Lewis

Lover of Truth

Do you so love truth and the right that you welcome, or at least submit willingly to, the idea of an exposure of what in you is yet unknown to yourself - an exposure that may redound the glory of the truth by making you ashamed and humble?...Are you willing to be made glad that you were wrong when you thought others were wrong?

- George MacDonald

Like an Illness

The great thing with unhappy times is to take them bit by bit, hour by hour, like an illness. It is seldom the present, the exact present, that is unbearable.

- C. S. Lewis

Tenfold Consciousness of Being

For, when we say that God is Love, do we teach men that their fear of Him is groundless? No. As much as they fear will come upon them, possibly far more. But there is something beyond their fear, -- a divine fate which they cannot withstand, because it works along with the human individuality which the divine individuality has created in them. The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear, coming out with tenfold consciousness of being, and bringing with them all that made the blessedness of the life the men tried to lead without God. They will know that now first are they fully themselves. The avaricious, weary, selfish, suspicious old man shall have passed away. The young, ever young self, will remain. That which they thought themselves shall have vanished: that which they felt themselves, though they misjudged their own feelings, shall remain -- remain glorified in repentant hope. For that which cannot be shaken shall remain. That which is immortal in God shall remain in man. The death that is in them shall be consumed.

- George MacDonald

Let Go

The fear of loss is a path to the dark side...Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.

- Yoda

The Only Way

If thou art not willing that God should have his way with thee, then, in the name of God, be miserable--till thy misery drive thee to the arms of the Father.... If God has a way, then that is the only way. Every little thing in which you would have your own way, has a mission for your redemption; and he will treat you as a naughty child until you take your Father's way for yours.

- George MacDonald

"Bad" Pleasures

But aren't there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them "bad pleasures" I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean "pleasures snatched by unlwaful acts." It is the stealing of the apple that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory. That does not palliate the stealing. It makes it worse. There is sacrilege in theft. We have abused a holy thing.

- C. S. Lewis

Flagship

I am re-posting this, the first post ever added to this blog, as a reminder to myself. It was entitled "Creeping Christians":

We are and remain such creeping Christians, because we look at ourselves and not at Christ; because we gaze at the marks of our own soiled feet, and the trail of our own defiled garments...Each, putting his foot in the footprint of the Master, and so defacing it, turns to examine how far his neighbor's footprint corresponds with that which he still calls the Master's, although it is but his own. Or, having committed a petty fault, I mean a fault such as only a petty creature could commit, we mourn over the defilement to ourselves, and the shame of it before our friends, children, or servants, instead of hastening to make the due confession and amends to our fellow, and then, forgetting our own paltry self with its well-earned disgrace, lift up our eyes to the glory which alone will quicken the true man in us, and kill the peddling creature we so wrongly call our self.

- George MacDonald

This post is the namesake of this blog, the flagship post, if you will. The quote is from a C. S. Lewis book where the author compiled different sayings and excerpts from one of his most favorite Christian authors, George MacDonald. This quote seems to me to be talking about how Christians look at others to determine how well they are doing in their attempt to follow Christ. It reminds me of the passage in Scripture where Jesus instructs us to take the plank out of our own eye before trying to help our brother get the speck out of his.

The term "creeping christian" hung in my mind for a while after reading this quote for the first time. When no matches came back during the blog naming process, I ran with it. The term makes me think that if we were better at looking to Christ instead of our circumstances (by the way, I don't really know how to do that, although I do believe it's possible), instead of wallowing in the fact that we sinned instead of repenting it and making the necessary amends as best we can , we would grow spiritually at a faster rate than we are right now. Many people because they judge what they see their brother doing against what they have done end up only creeping along, because they are most often judging their own life against another frail human, instead of THE example, what MacDonald calls "the footprint of the Master." I think Christians are too critical of others. Too often we criticize those walking closest to us, not realizing that we are defacing the image of God in ourselves, and calling the standard that we judge our neighbors by "God's example" when in reality it is just what we mistakenly think to be His example.

A Difficult Reminder

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

- Matthew 5:43-48

*****************

But the question must be put to each man by himself, "Is my neighbour indeed my enemy, or am I my neighbour's enemy, and so take him to be mine?--awful thought! Or, if he be mine, am not I his? Am I not refusing to acknowledge the child of the kingdom within his bosom, so killing the child of the kingdom within my own?" Let us claim for ourselves no more indulgence than we give to him. Such honesty will end in severity at home and clemency abroad. For we are accountable for the ill in ourselves, and have to kill it; for the good in our neighbour, and have to cherish it. He only, in the name and power of God, can kill the bad in him; we can cherish the good in him by being good to it across all the evil fog that comes between our love and his good.

Nor ought it to be forgotten that this fog is often the result of misapprehension and mistake, giving rise to all kinds of indignations, resentments, and regrets. Scarce anything about us is just as it seems, but at the core there is truth enough to dispel all falsehood and reveal life as unspeakably divine. O brother, sister, across this weary fog, dim-lighted by the faint torches of our truth-seeking, I call to the divine in thee, which is mine, not to rebuke thee, not to rouse thee, not to say "Why hatest thou me?" but to say "I love thee; in God's name I love thee." And I will wait until the true self looks out of thine eyes, and knows the true self in me.

But in the working of the Divine Love upon the race, my enemy is doomed to cease to be my enemy, and to become my friend. One flash of truth towards me would destroy my enmity at once; one hearty confession of wrong, and our enmity passes away; from each comes forth the brother who was inside the enemy all the time. For this The Truth is at work. In the faith of this, let us love the enemy now, accepting God's work in reversion, as it were; let us believe as seeing His yet invisible triumph, clasping and holding fast our brother, in defiance of the changeful wiles of the wicked enchantment which would persuade our eyes and hearts that he is not our brother, but some horrible thing, hateful and hating.

- George MacDonald

Master Plan

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

- C. S. Lewis