Over some time off in December, I read The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis and loved it! If you haven’t read it, don’t worry, I won’t be giving any major spoilers. I’ll tell you this as well, it’s not a theology book - so if you find those painfully boring - I think you’ll find this story delightful! 

At the outset of the story, the narrator finds himself in Grey Town. You figure out pretty quickly that he has died, and his new town is located somewhere in a liminal space between heaven and hell. Specifically, Grey Town seems to lie eerily close to the edge of hell. Early on, the narrator and several other residents of Grey Town are given the opportunity to board a bus for a field trip to the outskirts of heaven. 

Lewis describes Grey Town as the Valley of the Shadow of Death. And the edge or outskirts of heaven, he refers to as the Valley of the Shadow of Life. Keen to point out that he’s not attempting to put forth a complete theology of life after death, he rather playfully puts forth a narrative that gives him the opportunity to explore why people choose what they choose. 

Upon arrival, passengers on Lewis’s bus are overcome by how bright and overwhelming their surroundings are. They ask if they’re in heaven, only to be told that this was “not deep heaven” but just the beginning of it.  Soon, friends and family members from each passenger’s earthly life come out of heaven to meet them. We get to overhear their conversations, where inhabitants of heaven are attempting to convince Grey Town residents to stay. 

Each conversation goes differently, of course, with each individual making a different choice for different reasons. At one point, Lewis puts forth an idea: “both good and evil, when they are full-grown, become retrospective… This is what mortals misunderstand… Both processes begin 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.” 

I found myself pulling for each passenger, wanting him or her to choose to stay. And while I won’t divulge any conversation’s outcome, the idea that good and evil continue to grow after death to the point that they become retroactive, tinting one’s view of life’s events, has stayed with me after finishing the book. 

Revelation 7 and 21 put forth the idea that Jesus will wipe away every tear from every eye. That Good will touch each and every sorrow you have ever known. Pain that you’ve repressed. Forgotten. That you cannot forget, no matter how hard you try. Once He touches it, it will be undone. 

The narrator ponders how anyone could refuse such a healing, only to have the angel respond, “There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery. There is always something they prefer to joy.” That line really convicted me. I can tell you the two things I choose over joy: worry and unforgiveness. These two things rob me of being touched by Christ each day. Each moment I have the option of walking further in, deeper into fellowship with Christ - or I can get back on the bus headed to Grey Town… 

What about you? What do you choose over joy?