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CS Lewis and The Great Divorce
I finished it yesterday. We have all these people in the afterlife where hell is a self-imposed stasis in a world where you can wish a house into existence, but no furniture, and it'll let in the rain. If you wanna get out, you have to wait for the bus, which flies up and out, to drop you in a forest where you're a ghost and everything else is solid, solid enough to hurt. The narrator wanders around on the water, which is a bit tricky 'cause it moves, and the grass, which is sharp.
Nice thing about any human relationship for me is that I find it motivating.
It's written well: It's CS fucking Lewis. And it's pleasantly short, which is a rare thing that's getting rarer in the age of the word-processor.
I realize that I'm drained by hanging around depressed people.
So we have all these people who are too stubborn to choose to leave hell. They don't like waiting in line. They get into fights, and so on. Upon leaving hell, they spurn offers of help and wander around aimlessly because they won't give up bad habits. Many of them get in a huff over walking on grass that feels like knives, and talk about returning to hell, but few do.
I'd like to eat more ethicially, so I hang around with people who eat ethically.
Now, the advice that spirits are giving them is a kind of smug and obtuse normally found in Kung Fu Masters. No one says. "Look, you're miserable because you're doing this, this and this, and you need to sort through that, and I'll help you in this way, which may seem counter-intuitive, but I'm sure It'll work because I've been where you are and it seemed stupid at the time, but you're the one walking on knives. Oh, and there really is heaven over there, so lets go this way." No one says this. Partially because you're not supposed to want to get into heaven because it's nice, you're supposed to want it because it's G-d. And You should want G-d... because you want G-d. Not the best marketing.
Erin has been finding that I'm taking a lot of her energy.
So the bad: This is not a great work of theology*. God seems kind of passive aggressive; setting things up so that He can take credit for the saved, but not the damned.
I wanted to get involved with organzing students and that cute smart chick in my class was looking for people to show up to her student union meetings.
And the good: I find The Great Divorce to be a fine rendition of damnation, but in this life, not the next. We do things that make us miserable, and we keep on doing them. If wanting G-d for G-d's sake seems silly to some or most, then wanting misery for misery's sake is at least 2.38 times sillier. And while being enigmatic while trying to help someone get out of a rut may seem foolish, pretending that there's no problem at all, or at least not mentioning it to the afflicted/afflicting is perverse.
Aha, I'm depressed. Better fix that.
Another fine rendition of damnation can be found in Dead Like me, wherein grim reapers are people who died and got hired by the powers that be. Although granted a form of temporary immortality, some of them, after being dead for longer than many people have been alive, are stuck in the same stupid habits that wrecked, or ended, their lives. Others are enjoying the experience. Most, I imagine, do a bit of both.
*("Theology" n. 1. an intellectual endurance contest of making contradictory information fit. e.g. "without faith, you build your house on sand, with faith you build it on rock, with theology, you build it on the back of a giant turtle with sledges pulled by angels that fit fifty to a pinhead").
I finished it yesterday. We have all these people in the afterlife where hell is a self-imposed stasis in a world where you can wish a house into existence, but no furniture, and it'll let in the rain. If you wanna get out, you have to wait for the bus, which flies up and out, to drop you in a forest where you're a ghost and everything else is solid, solid enough to hurt. The narrator wanders around on the water, which is a bit tricky 'cause it moves, and the grass, which is sharp.
Nice thing about any human relationship for me is that I find it motivating.
It's written well: It's CS fucking Lewis. And it's pleasantly short, which is a rare thing that's getting rarer in the age of the word-processor.
I realize that I'm drained by hanging around depressed people.
So we have all these people who are too stubborn to choose to leave hell. They don't like waiting in line. They get into fights, and so on. Upon leaving hell, they spurn offers of help and wander around aimlessly because they won't give up bad habits. Many of them get in a huff over walking on grass that feels like knives, and talk about returning to hell, but few do.
I'd like to eat more ethicially, so I hang around with people who eat ethically.
Now, the advice that spirits are giving them is a kind of smug and obtuse normally found in Kung Fu Masters. No one says. "Look, you're miserable because you're doing this, this and this, and you need to sort through that, and I'll help you in this way, which may seem counter-intuitive, but I'm sure It'll work because I've been where you are and it seemed stupid at the time, but you're the one walking on knives. Oh, and there really is heaven over there, so lets go this way." No one says this. Partially because you're not supposed to want to get into heaven because it's nice, you're supposed to want it because it's G-d. And You should want G-d... because you want G-d. Not the best marketing.
Erin has been finding that I'm taking a lot of her energy.
So the bad: This is not a great work of theology*. God seems kind of passive aggressive; setting things up so that He can take credit for the saved, but not the damned.
I wanted to get involved with organzing students and that cute smart chick in my class was looking for people to show up to her student union meetings.
And the good: I find The Great Divorce to be a fine rendition of damnation, but in this life, not the next. We do things that make us miserable, and we keep on doing them. If wanting G-d for G-d's sake seems silly to some or most, then wanting misery for misery's sake is at least 2.38 times sillier. And while being enigmatic while trying to help someone get out of a rut may seem foolish, pretending that there's no problem at all, or at least not mentioning it to the afflicted/afflicting is perverse.
Aha, I'm depressed. Better fix that.
Another fine rendition of damnation can be found in Dead Like me, wherein grim reapers are people who died and got hired by the powers that be. Although granted a form of temporary immortality, some of them, after being dead for longer than many people have been alive, are stuck in the same stupid habits that wrecked, or ended, their lives. Others are enjoying the experience. Most, I imagine, do a bit of both.
*("Theology" n. 1. an intellectual endurance contest of making contradictory information fit. e.g. "without faith, you build your house on sand, with faith you build it on rock, with theology, you build it on the back of a giant turtle with sledges pulled by angels that fit fifty to a pinhead").