THIRST WAS MADE FOR WATER: THE NATURE OF LOVE IN C.S. LEWIS’S THE GREAT DIVORCE
Most English-speaking Christians today can probably name at least one work by C.S. Lewis that has delighted, puzzled, challenged, inspired, or simply astounded them. I can think of several, but the one I've revisited the most is The Great Divorce. When I first read this slender novella, I wasn't a Christian, but I was edging tentatively Christward. My primary obstacle was the injustice of eternal damnation, as I’ve never understood how a loving God could condemn His children to infinite misery for finite sins.
The Great Divorce offered me a different way to understand divine Judgment. In this story, those who find themselves in Hell aren't imprisoned there. They can travel up to the outskirts of Heaven, where the saints and angels invite them to leave the dreary confines of damnation behind for good. All who wish to remain can do so, and no one returns to the underworld except by choice. I was stunned and delighted to read the suggestion — from a renowned champion of orthodoxy, no less — that God had cracked the infernal gates wide enough for even the wickedest to step blinking into the light. For a while, this gleam of hope was all that kept me stumbling along the Way.
Yet Lewis makes it clear that his "imaginative fantasy" is only a backdrop for the story’s real point: exploring the nature of the choice between sin and salvation. Most of the book consists of dialogues in which the residents of Paradise try to persuade the faded ghosts of Hades to join them. Every one of these shades has placed some cherished pleasure, distraction, or "higher" calling above the desire for communion with the divine. Until they give up these idols, they're cut off from the life-giving connection with their Creator, with too little substance even to weigh down the grass of Heaven.
What struck me most when I revisited the story recently was how little ink is spilled on the virtues that enable a soul to choose rightly. For the most part, the reader must deduce them from the opposing vices on display. I was startled by the apparent absence of one saintly quality in particular. The self-sacrificing love that Christians call Charity appears to play surprisingly little part in converting the specters.
When the ghosts do speak of love, it's quickly revealed as a pitiful, warped, grasping feeling. Those who loudly proclaim that they lived for others are often the most stubbornly resistant to salvation. The remnant of one woman boasts that she sacrificed everything for her husband, but her dialogue makes it clear that she spent her life methodically crushing his spirit. Another shade plans to bring back "commodities" from Heaven to improve the existence of the damned, but this is a transparent excuse for his desire to recreate the economy of scarcity and coercion that he knew on Earth. Yet another tries to manipulate his wife by masquerading as a long-suffering spouse who loves her more than himself. All the while, he’s being consumed by the empty puppet he’s built.
Lewis is keen to drive home the idea that earthly love can become a trap, convincing us to remain content with a mere reflection of the highest Good. At times, his enthusiasm for this theme seems almost perverse. In one painful episode, the ghost of a bereaved mother is told that God took her son to give her a chance to grow beyond her "merely instinctive" love for him, which had grown "uncontrolled and fierce and monomaniac."
We are only shown one soul, a young man beset by lust, choosing salvation. When he gives up the demonic Lizard that whispers in his ear, it’s a sacrifice of sorts, but not one motivated by the wish to save or serve anyone else. The tempter is simply an anchor weighing him down. Once he allows an angel to slay it, the creature is reborn as a stallion of pure Desire that carries him to the heights of Heaven in a flash.
Desire is a fitting vehicle, since Heaven appears self-evidently desirable. Here's a glimpse of what the story calls the Valley of the Shadow of Life.
Before me green slopes made a wide amphitheatre, enclosing a frothy and pulsating lake into which, over many-coloured rocks, a waterfall was pouring...The noise, though gigantic, was like giants' laughter: like the revelry of a whole college of giants together laughing, dancing, singing, roaring at their high works.
Near the place where the fall plunged into the lake there grew a tree. Wet with the spray, half-veiled in foam-bows, flashing with the bright, innumerable birds that flew among its branches, it rose in many shapes of billowy foliage, huge as a fen-land cloud. From every point apples of gold gleamed through the leaves.
In contrast, Hell is shown as a lonely, cheerless town plunged into an eternal twilight of cold drizzle from which the flimsy houses give no shelter. Rejecting it in favor of Lewis's Arcadian vision of Paradise would seem a matter of straightforward self-interest. Indeed, none of the souls join the saved out of a desire to help their neighbors, nor do any of the Heavenly people attempt to rouse this feeling. Their only focus is on awakening the longing for God. There is no suggestion that love for one's neighbor has any power to turn the heart towards Heaven.
As I've said, this observation startled me at first, but perhaps it shouldn't have.
Like many Christians, I'm constantly falling into the trap of thinking that good deeds will earn me salvation. I know better in theory, but in the back of my mind, the idea still lingers that performing charitable works will shape me into a person capable of receiving God's grace. The Great Divorce offers a reminder that I may have this picture backward.
Where does the book show us the genuine virtue of Charity? In the bright spirits who minister to the phantoms. They set aside their desire to journey ever deeper into Heaven for the mere chance of saving others. They're even willing to abase themselves if that's what it takes. “That is why I have been sent to you now,’ ” one of them says. “ ‘To ask your forgiveness and to be your servant as long as you need one, and longer if it pleases you.’ ”
They can offer this sacrifice joyfully because they've already accepted the greatest gift possible. This is one of the most challenging insights of the faith: that we are incapable of truly displaying Charity until we have received it from outside ourselves. Love for one's neighbor is the second commandment and love for God the first, but love from God precedes both. It's the bus that goes down to Lewis's desolate Hell and carries the wretched back up. Only after they’ve been rescued can they begin to grow into the kind of people who can help others.
I’ve seen this at work in my own life. I'm a Christian today in large part because I've encountered God as a source of boundless generosity whose gifts far exceed what we ask of Him. When I perform acts of compassion, it's not because I'm hoping to earn His mercy, but because I've already received it and want to share it with others.
That's not to say I'm particularly diligent in doing good works, nor that I always perform them with a glad heart. When I offer help, it's often through gritted teeth, and when I give alms, I struggle not to feel like a sucker. Yet there are brief moments when doing good feels as natural as taking a drink of cool water in a desert, and I recognize Christ at work in me. Creating opportunities for those flashes of divine purpose might be the main role that our own works of mercy play in our sanctification.
Some may object that many people act altruistically without any prior experience of God. I'm not sure this is true. I suspect that all of us ultimately learn selfless love from others — from a parent, a teacher, a friend, or (for some morally advanced souls) the simple recognition that the world itself is a gift that we never earned and could never repay. Trace the chain of generosity back far enough, and you'll return to the original Giver.
“It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further,’ ” says the risen George MacDonald to Lewis's narrator. “ ‘Who knows where it will end?’ ”
Charity, then, is not a weapon we wield in our battle against sin, but the joy of victory. Self-giving love is God Himself, not the means by which we struggle toward Him. When we're able to act lovingly here on Earth, it's because the clouds veiling Heaven have grown thin enough — if only for an instant — to let some of its light shine through.
