The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

Imagine you're in a town that is all dull and grey where the people are waiting for the sun to rise but it never does. Also, everyone fights with everyone. Lots of bickering. Then you get on a bus and go up into the air and arrive at this very bright country where you find that you are transparent and the ground and plants and everything is extremely hard and heavy. It hurts to walk on the grass. This is the setting of this book. The main character is one of these transparent people and his experience wandering around this bright country overhearing other ghosts having conversations with solid people. The reader comes to find out that where he was was Hell and this bright place is Heaven. Its possible to go from Hell to Heaven (to become solid) by letting go of whatever it was that was your sin. So the main character overhears conversations about everyday things that most people are guilty of for example: vanity, arrogance, pessimism,...among others. It was really interesting to see how all these people sound so familiar to other things you hear everyday. To think because we hold on to these thoughts that it imprisons us in a kind of hell on Earth and if we want to gain a higher place we have to let it go. The book doesn't go into too much detail about how that is done. The solid people try to explain but most of the ghosts are so wrapped in themselves they can't understand so they just argue. It becomes quite sad in some instances.

This whole book is so good and it is pretty easy reading according to my roommate who has read other C.S. Lewis books. I was wary of reading a C.S. Lewis novel. I have read the Narnia series and this book kind of falls into that difficulty of reading. But my roommate has told me about other of his books that are extremely difficult and are along the self-help type of writing, which I don't really like. But I may give another of his more difficult ones a try to see.

This book is full of good quotes.....but I was lazy and didn't highlight them because I pretty much would have been highlighting pages and pages. But here are a couple of passages that I thought were interesting.

This is from a ghost who is an intellectual type and is trying to find explanations for the religious aspects that his solid friend is trying to explain to him. I've always thought it would be interesting that when all these intellectuals finally get to the afterlife and all is revealed then they will just kick themselves but maybe they will still hold on to their beliefs and never be able to know the joy of what God can offer them. Anyway he is telling about this paper he is writing.

"I'm going to point out how people always forget that Jesus was a comparatively young man when he died. He would have outgrown some of his earlier views, you know, if he'd lived. As he might have done, with a little more tact and patience. I am going to ask my audience to consider what his mature views would have been. A profoundly interesting question. What a different Christianity we might have had if only the Founder had reached his full stature!"

Just as I am rereading some parts to find quotes there is so much good stuff. I love all the conversations.

"There is but one good, that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It's not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art; but lust is less likely to be made into a religion."

I reccommend this book. I think everyone should read it. It doesn't take very long either. I read it in a little over a week, but I could have read it in a couple of days but I get distracted. So there you go. Sorry this post is so long.