The Four Loves

We may give our human loves the same unconditional allegiance which we owe only to God. Then they become gods: then they become demons. Then they will destroy us, and also themselves. For natural loves that are allowed to become gods to not remain loves. They are still called so, but can become in fact complicated forms of hatred.

This reminds me very much of the woman in The Great Divorce, who chose to love her son above God and so corrupted this love. Actually there are a lot of characters in The Great Divorce who would choose hell over Heaven because of misplaced love.

Lewis defines three types of love: need-, gift-, and appreciative.

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory." Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection — if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.

He does not deny the risks of loving purely, but rather embraces them as part of God's plan for us.

Perelandra {III}

"And now the experiences of the past day and night began to make a direct assault upon his faith... It was all very well to talk of Maledil: but where was Maledil now?... Knowledge remained an abstraction. Mere bigness and loneliness overbore him."

Remember Lewis' definition of faith: "The art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods." Bad days happen. Sometimes several bad days happen in a row. It's easy to forget what we once knew when all we feel is loneliness or depression.

"Say a child's prayer if you can't say a man's."

 "There was, no doubt, a confusion of persons in damnation... they were melted down into their Master, as a lead soldier slips down and loses his shape in the ladle held over the gas ring." 

This is a horrible (and probably accurate) conception of Hell... elsewhere in Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters Lewis has expressed his opinion that, "Sameness is to be found most among the most "natural" men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been," and that the goal of the devils is to devour and consume humanity. Real personality, real individuality can only be found in Christ.

Perelandra {II}

"Were all the things which appeared as mythology on earth scattered throughout other worlds as realities?" 

This betrays Lewis' great love of myth, and the fact that myth led him to a belief in Christianity makes this sentence intriguing to me.

Thinking about when Ransom is drenched with "an ice-cold shower bath," that brings to his mind the phrase, "die of a rose in aromatic pain," I think it represents baptism.

"Such was the refreshment that he seemed to himself to have been, till now, but half-awake. When he opened his eyes... all the colours about him seemed richer and the dimness of that world seemed clarified... The golden beast at his side seemed no longer either a danger or a nuisance." 

It's cool to think of baptism in that way.

Ransom christens the trees, just as Adam was charged with naming all the creatures in the Garden of Eden.

Interesting thought:

"This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backwards... was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself - perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defence against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film."

Surprised by Joy {II}

"This was a religion that cost nothing. We could talk religiously about the Absolute: but there was no danger of Its doing anything about us. It was "there"; safely and immovable "there." It would never come "here," never (to be blunt) make a nuisance of Itself. This quasi-religion was all a one-way street; all eros (as Dr. Nygren would say) steaming up, but no agape darting down. There was nothing to fear; better still, nothing to obey."

I like how Lewis describes God as "hunting," or actively pursuing him. I definitely agree that God's love is powerful and active, and that He does pursue us. His love is relentless.

"Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. The reality with which no treaty can be made was upon me. The demand was not even "All or nothing." I think that stage had been passed, on the bus top when I unbuckled my armour and the snowman started to melt. Now, the demand was simply "All.""

Mere Christianity [book III, ch1-7]

Main points: Lewis discusses morality and how it is the condition of the inward man that matters most. Among other virtues, he touches on marriage and Christ-like forgiveness. 

Lewis starts his next section talking about morality and virtuous living. In the first chapter, he establishes the long-term importance of morality:

Christianity asserts that every individual human being is going to live for ever... Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were going to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse —so gradually that the increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years: in fact, if Christianity is true, Hell is the precisely correct technical term for what it would be. 

Living with an Eternal Perspective means that the little things I do... that might not be so good... that I think don't matter so much..... actually matter a lot. 

Lewis then moves into a discussion of virtues - but more important than the specific actions are what they make of us. He writes, 

"There is a difference between doing some particular just or temperate action and being a just or temperate man... A man who perseveres in doing just actions gets in the end a certain quality of character. Now it is that quality rather than the particular actions which we mean when we talk of "virtue."" 

This reminded me of Elder Lynn G. Robbin's talk, What Manner of Men and Women Ought Ye to Be? 

Speaking of perseverance, Lewis also writes, "You will notice, of course, that you cannot practise any of the other virtures very long without bringing [fortitude] into play." In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis expressed the same idea when he wrote, "Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions."

Love Wins // The Great Divorce

It occurred to me yesterday to compare Lewis' beliefs espoused in The Great Divorce to the more recent work by Rob Bell - Love Wins. Unfortunately I've never read Love Wins, and though I would very much like to I don't foresee myself having the time {or money...} anytime soon. Still, I've heard quite a bit about it and read various articles online and I think the comparison still holds.


According to a USA Today article, Bell makes the following claims: 

• Heaven and hell are choices we make and live with right now. "God gives us what we want," including the freedom to live apart from God (hell) or turn God's way (heaven).
• Death doesn't cut off the ability to repent. In his Bible, Bell sees no "infinite, eternal torment for things (people) did in their few finite years of life."
• Jesus makes salvation possible even for people who never know his name. "We have to allow for mystery," for people who "drink from the rock" of faith "without knowing who or what it was.

One of my favourite parts of The Last Battle is when Aslan says, 

"Therefore, if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him…Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.” 

I think this goes along with what Bell says - that Jesus makes salvation possible even for people who never know his name. "We have to allow for mystery," for people who "drink from the rock" of faith "without knowing who or what it was."

The Great Divorce

In 1946, Lewis wrote The Great Divorce in response to Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790). 
Curious, I looked up The Marriage to see what it was about. I was interested to learn that The Marriage was itself written in response to an earlier book, Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg (1758). 
In each work, the author writes as though he has visited the afterlife and is writing to inform the rest of humanity about what he has seen. I briefly skimmed each to prepare to re-read The Great Divorce. To give a very, very brief summary:
Swedenborg believes that there are "heathens" in Heaven, and that God does not thrust anyone down to Hell but that people cast themselves down. {This seems to go along with Lewis' work.}
Blake calls Swedenborg's writings a "recaptiulation of all superficial opinions" and claims to have conversed with both angels and devils in a depolarized, unified afterlife.
Lewis refutes Blake's assertion that good and evil can eventually be reconciled. {This jives with Latter-day Saint belief, which states that "No unclean thing can dwell with God."}
This quotation by the George MacDonald {a poet greatly admired by C.S. Lewis} is on the title page of The Great Divorce:

'No, there is no escape.

There is no heaven with a little of hell in it--

no plan to retain this or that of the devil in our hearts or our 

pockets. Out Satan must go, every hair and feather.' 

It is on this belief that Lewis bases his work. 

...

I love Lewis' style of writing. The way he describes the Tousle-Headed Poet is just so perfectly ironic: 

"To make matters worse he had been exactly the sort of boy in whose case the examination system works out with the maximum unfairness and absurdity" etc.

He always writes from "our" perspective - we imperfect humans - with the sort of reason we would use to defend ourselves. But in seeing it down on paper, we realize how ridiculous is actually is.

The Screwtape Letters

The Screwtape Letters is one of my all-time favourite books. Lewis' mastery of irony works to great effect in persuading the reader to take a second look at themselves. At times stinging, frequently profound, this is a book unmatched by others and in a category all it's own. Advice from one devil to another? Pure genius.


Some favourite quotes:

IV
"They constantly forget... that they are animals and that whatever their bodies do affects their souls."
"Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they mean to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not to notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven."
{IV always make me reconsider my prayer habits...}

VI
"Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient's soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary."

VIII
"It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be... He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."