Tag: hell

Hell As a Bureaucracy

  

“We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement,”” advised C. S. Lewis, “where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.” Lewis wrote those words in his preface to the 1961 edition of The Screwtape Letters. Although Screwtape is, in one sense, a comical devil, Lewis never lets his readers forget what lies at the heart of hell: the self, with… Read more »

Snyderian Truism #13–Sincerely Wrong Beliefs

  

Well, at least he’s sincere. How many times have you heard that? It’s a cliché that’s supposed to cover all sins. The problem is that we equate sincerity with truth, or at least we say we “respect” someone who is trying to follow what he/she believes. There is one thing we need to keep in mind, though: A sincere belief can be sincerely wrong. That’s Snyderian Truism #13 in my ever-expanding list of what I think ought to be undeniable… Read more »

Lewis: Hell’s Operating Principles

  

For many, their first encounter with C. S. Lewis’s marvelous works is The Screwtape Letters. This witty little book, which consists of letters from a superior devil, Screwtape, to a junior devil, Wormwood, continues to be a bestseller. Why? I think it’s because it captures so well the essence of the sinful heart as it displays not only Screwtape’s advice on how to lead a person into hell, but also the manner in which the inhabitants of hell treat one… Read more »

Lewis: The Self-Centeredness of Hell

  

Modern man doesn’t like to talk much about hell, unless it’s in some fanciful movie creation where one doesn’t have to worry about its reality. The reason we avoid thinking about the possibility of hell can be traced back to our similar reluctance to consider seriously our sinfulness. And what bothers us the most, I believe, about the idea of sin is that we know the root of it is our self-centeredness. We like being self-focused; we feel justified in… Read more »

Lewis: Hell Cannot Veto Heaven

  

One of my favorite C. S. Lewis books is The Great Divorce. This fanciful account of a busload of occupants of hell getting an opportunity to visit heaven allows Lewis, through conversations between the passengers from hell and heavenly denizens, to discuss all the objections to the faith raised by those who reject it. In one such discussion, Lewis deals with those who say it’s unfair that those who enter into eternal bliss should be so happy when the rest… Read more »

C. S. Lewis: Why Only One Chance?

  

Some people may critique what the Bible says about having only this one life to get things right with God. Isn’t it rather drastic that if we blow it this time around and end up separated from God that we don’t get to try again? Why not multiple opportunities? C. S. Lewis has a rather unique way of explaining the justice of it all: [Some say] that death ought not to be final, that there ought to be a second… Read more »

Lewis: Two Kinds of People

  

C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce is one of my favorite books, as it depicts a fanciful journey from hell to heaven so that those in hell can see what they have missed. Any Lewis book is full of pithy insights. Here’s one from The Great Divorce that I find particularly lucid: 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,… Read more »