The Great Divorce – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Your Get Out Of Hell Free Card

When I think of C.S. Lewis the first thing that comes to mind is his novel, The Great Divorce. In that novel one of his characters, the Teacher, has the following to say which I formatted below as a poem:

There are only two kinds of people in the end:
those who say to God:
‘Thy will be done,’
and those to whom God says, in the end,
‘Thy will be done.’
All that are in Hell, choose it.
Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.¹

So, assuming you do not want to be in hell, how do you get out of whatever hell you might be in? By hell I mean addiction, sin, or even illness. The Holy Spirit provides the way.

I am grateful to Diane Marshall for linking to this video.

The Holy Spirit is your *Get Out Of Hell Free* card.

C.S. Lewis: Five Books in One Volume, 1969, page 156. ↩︎

Link—Six Sentence Story

George listened to Anton say, Those in Hell want to be there. This convinced George that Anton hung onto reality by only a looney link since why would anyone ever want to be in a place like that?

When George died and went to Hell he became a prominent commander in Satan’s army commissioned to nuke the daylights out of Heaven. By contrast when Anton died he went to Heaven.

George exhausted himself throughout his eternity attacking Heaven in every which way he could imagine with extreme prejudice. However, Heaven being what it is, Anton noticed none of it.

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Denise offers the prompt word “link” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

I got the idea that I put in Anton’s mouth that those in Hell wanted to be there from the following passage in The Great Divorce.

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, page 75)