C.S. Lewis brings to us his book, The Great Divorce, and we learn of its message through a narrator who we meet standing waiting at a bus stop on the way to Grey Town. The bus arrives, is then filled with passengers, and it leaves, flying over the very large city ahead. On the bus everyone is visiting about how they had died, and some are upset finding themselves on the same bus as others they had known during their life.
At one point the narrator is surprised to find he has no body, only a spirit, and he starts to see the others as ghosts. When they arrive at the next bus stop Grey City is behind them and ahead are beautiful mountains and bright lights and colors. Spirits with bodies are there greeting the ghosts and asking them to come to the mountains with them. The tell the ghosts they can come but will have to give up hate and begin to love and they learn that hate is evil, and love is accepting God. Everything at this bus stop is motionless and the ground where they are is hard and it is difficult to walk, or even stand on, so they need to decide which way to go.
Most of the ghosts do not choose to go with the spirits with bodies and go back to the bus wanting to return to Grey Town.
A great quote from this book sums up the message and story, “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." Lewis’s point is that: All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss having it.
Quotes
“You cannot love a fellow creature fully till you love God.”
“There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.”
“There is no other day. All days are present now. This moment contains all moments.”
