Musings on the The Great Divorce

If you want the discomfort that comes with your toes being trampled on by someone far greater than yourself, try reading anything by C.S. Lewis. This time, it was The Great Divorce, which we're currently reading in my English class at Greyfriars. The students love it, and I love it too... even more now that it's a third or fourth or fifth read.

In it, the narrator (in a dream) takes a trip to heaven and while there, witnesses numerous "ghosts" arriving at heaven's door. Most of them find petty, trivial reasons not to enter heaven, all of which had something to do with their besetting sins while on earth.

In the scene with a grieving mother (in hell) who just wants to see her son (in heaven), she is rebuked for loving her son too much. On earth, he died as a young boy and momma never got over it. At the expense of her relationships with her husband and daughter, she establishes her son as a sort of idol and appeals to the natural feeling of "mother-love." She has to, as Lewis says, learn to "want God for His own sake" if she wants to enter heaven and see her son.

In what is one of most poignant phrases of the book, the mother is told that she allowed the "tyranny of the past" to ruin her. What should and could be a healthy, joyful relationship in its proper place went sour because she allowed the past to rule over her, and how often can we say the same about ourselves?

As Eli enters every new stage of development, it's so easy to wish that he would stay little--to wish that things would stay just as they are. But this is just another example of letting the past rule over me. God, in His goodness, has ordained that there be a beginning and an end to everything; a season, as Ecclesiastes teaches. When I'm tempted to reminisce about how carefree life was pre-baby (you mean there was a time I didn't need to schedule my day around a child's naptime and bedtime?), I'm letting the past rule over me. When I allow myself to get in a funk because I want to "re-do" my semester in London, I'm letting the past rule over me--and I'm not talking about a wishful nostalgia, a sweet rememberance of how incredible the experience was. I ache to go back! Alas, we are put where are for a reason. God desires to teach us something new in every phase of our lives, and sometimes the lessons are a bit harder to learn.

The mother in the book is given such hope, and so are we. When we learn to love God fully and to mortify our desires for the sake of obedience to Him, then we can learn to "love a fellow-creature fully." Joy can be hers, if she will learn that lesson--and so it is for us!