Book Report: The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

I’ve enjoyed every book by C.S. Lewis I’ve read so far. Not a humongous total at three plus, but they have all be powerful reads. I say three plus because I’ve read most of the Narnia series, but don’t remember how many. The best was Mere Christianity. Not counting the work of God Himself, reading Lewis’ Mere Christianity is probably the single biggest thing that convinced me that Christ was real and that I should deal with that very real situation. If you haven’t read that book, Christian or not, I highly recommend it.

The Great Divorce was a little book I picked up from my boss Stu via my other boss Brian. It is a completely fictional account of purgatory and heaven. Lewis even states in the forward that he’s not trying to depict actual reality. Mostly he is using allegory to illustrate the types of sin that keep us away from God. One very cool aspect of the book was his depiction of heaven’s reality being more solid than ours. For instance it actually hurt the feet of the narrative character to walk on the grass.

The most interesting thing for me was that the book as a whole felt familiar. It seems to have been written from the worldview that I have been immersing myself in for the past four years. Christ is love and salvation. Sin isn’t just a matter of what actions you take, but a matter of the heart. It was comforting to me to find a source other than my church and Dallas Willard that talked like this. I sometimes worry that I’ve branched off from Christianity and what they call consumer Christianity is the true teaching. For instance I stumbled on several websites the other day that said that Willard and the other folks that are teaching spiritual formation are very off base and integrating modern and Eastern thought into Christianity.

Quite the contrary. I think spiritual formation is the heart of the matter. It seems to me that modern Christianity has branched off and focused on a few very important key points, but is missing the meat. The transformation of our inner selves into the image of Christ. Becoming Disciples of Christ. Reading something from over fifty years ago that was teaching this was further confirmation for me.