What is the great divorce? It is the complete separation of Heaven and Hell.
What is this book about? A group of passengers living in hell take a bus ride to the very outskirts of heaven–just outside,–and are given the opportunity to enter into heaven through the guidance of spiritual guides. The book is the eyewitness account of these interactions.
Partial
Among the many visual beauties this book doles out, and the one that will unlock the following post, is that of a partial light. Not quite day, not quite night...the playground of The Great Divorce is a partial light. The travelers in Lewis' story commute from Hell; a place of partial light–with it's sickly weak luminescence–to the outskirts of a heavenly mountain–a place of partial light–as the sun is threatening to juuuussstttt peak over the the mountaintop. And so in this reality before Jesus' final coming to rule and reign over all things, the sun is setting on the inhabitants of hell, and rising on those coming into Jesus' Kingdom. Lewis' does a better job of explaining:
...But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all this earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say 'Let me but have this and I'll take the consequences': little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, 'We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,' and the Lost, 'We were always in Hell.' And both will speak truly."Wow! I read Lewis' words many different times before the gravity hit me. The weight, the force, the beauty in these words is this: it's true! These words are true. Jesus has come. Jesus has died. Jesus has ascended. Jesus is coming quickly. Eternity has already begun. *take a second* Eternity has already begun. And how has it begun? With a partial light. You know the light. You experience the light. You are well acquainted with the light. You feel it's presence. You know it's warmth upon your face. You grope outwardly in it's absence when you feel you need it most. You breath the light in your through nose; it expels from your mouth. It's the comfy jeans, the sound of your spouses voice. The light is the ins and out, the ebbs and the flows. The light is the agent that numbs, and the catalyst that prickles and stirs up. You know the light. Your eyes have adjusted to it. It everything that you see and walk through around you. The light is yours, and mine, and every other living creature's. The light is real, it's here, it's perceived, and also forgotten. The light is in the world. A solo entry into the vaults of here and now. The light abides...and it is partial.
Connotations and Men
Partial light is a waypoint between darkness and light. The partial light rules the present. It is what we experience when we watch the news, unlock our phones, get to work, get a long voicemail, and come home from the doctor. The partial light is there when we open our eyes. It is the good and bad of this world. It is fun and panic. It is pleasure and distress. It is good news and bad news. The partial light is graduating from college the same day your neighbor 2 blocks up and 3 houses over hears of the tumor growing inside their pancreas; darkness and light crashing in vigorous dashes of reality all around us. The partial light is reality. It's real, and C.S. Lewis knows it. And so he writes of it in a fanciful tale of some travelers on a bus ride; experiencing partial light in both entry points to heaven and hell–and everywhere in between. Lewis is not brilliant because he knows the partialness of light in this world. This quote above is not compelling because it recognizes the partial light. The compelling brilliance of Lewis' words lies in acknowledgment that we live between 2 great realities: Eternities of Heaven and Hell. The light is partial for everyone. But for the believer in Jesus, the partial light is from a sun that is barely rising to it's glory, ascending over the horizon. And for those who are apart from Jesus' salvation, the partial light is the twilight of a sun's light setting to the depths of it's own committal to the grave. And so for you, and for me, for us all–this reality is either heaven for the taking, or hell in the making.
So here and now good and bad come to us all. Happiness and shame are our garments. Aches and achievements are the beatings of our hearts. Lewis' assertion is this: The upcoming glory of the Kingdom of God is a life of a deliberate sunrise to those who belong to Jesus. And the impending separation from God's Glory is the slithering life of a creeping sunset to those who are not in Jesus. One more time; we all experience the partial light–the good, the bad, the ugly, and the gorgeous–but all of these things are interpreted by either a sunrise or a sunset. Everything you perceive or experience in this world is either a symptom of your decomposing body, or the growing pains of a coming Body Like His.
Mounds of Glory
Thus far, this illuminating trail of thought put forth by Lewis is helpful in attributing the things that happen in our life to a cosmic shuffle: Those living in glory, to a glorification. Those living lives separated from God, to a total separation. But what puts Lewis' little book into the stratosphere for me is what happens next:
The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, 'We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,' and the Lost, 'We were always in Hell.' And both will speak truly."The truth and pervasiveness of our impending reality, both for those to heaven and those to hell, is that living in the partial light is not all that it seems. For Lewis, the pain, and suffering, and even the forgiven sinfulness in the life of those in Jesus, takes on a sort of glorification...a preparation for the eternal light. In the same way, the things of this life, even the seemingly beautiful and glorious, for those outside of Jesus, takes on a corrupt dreariness. And so those bound for heaven are already living there. And those bound for hell are already living there. Bravo Mr. Lewis! But what if it's true? Like really? What if it's true? It would change everything about our everyday life. It would change everything about the partial light we now live in. Yes the good and the bad would still come our way. But the marks of pain, and suffering, and sin-sickness in this life would be transformed.
The bumps into mounds of glory
The bruises, into violet patches of prestige
The cuts, and scars, and stretch marks, into the stripes of valor
The stuttering mouths, into patient lips
Misshapen desires, into childlike content
The thing you suffer with [yes that thing], into the unique trinket adorning you–set in place by the Creator
Everything about you would be transformed...and I am saying that it has!
Living Between the Lights
In the same way, the weak, partial light of this world for those outside of Christ, shines light on the truth this life's sufferings. For those riding into the twilight, even the most impressive glories of this life, are whimpering pronouncements of a graveside committal to the deep.
So why Lewis? Why does this matter? It all sounds so very set in stone. Except...it's not. If you are reading this right now–you are living between the lights. We are living between the lights. We are between the dusk and dawn. We are right smack dab in the partial light of life. Who we know matters. What we do, and believe matters. And what we say and do with Jesus with those we know really, really matters. And faith in Jesus matters most. As long as we live between the lights, we have an opportunity to be a part of Jesus mission As long as we live between the lights we have the opportunity to change dusk to dawn in the lives of those we love. As long as we live between the lights we have the opportunity to say of the ickiness, and pain, and suffering, and tears, and hate, and hurtfulness of this life, you are being transformed into some future glory. Although the pain and suffering is very real, the partial light only reveals partially. The fullness is coming. The light of eternity is coming. The authors pen is on it's final stroke.
Wage war against the light that is being snuffed out for those around you. Rejoice in the sun that is juuuusssttt about to peak over those mountains, as we await Jesus' coming. Because, when the light and the darkness are separated, and Heaven and Hell's Divorce is complete, the glorified will say, "we were always the light of the world," and the separated from God, "we were always in death's shadow." And both will have spoken truly.
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