The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce in public school

The way I first heard about The Great Divorce was that the eldest of my birth sisters had read it as an English-class assignment. Back then, you actually still could read a Christian book in a public high school.

I read a Frank Peretti book at a public school my senior year with no problems. :) I read The Great Divorce about a year or so ago... I felt like I was on a trip... but it would've helped if I'd noticed, BEFORE the last pages, that it was about a dream. I thought Lewis was off his rocker the whole time and it was hard to stay with it because of that. :)
 
I read a Frank Peretti book at a public school my senior year with no problems. :) I read The Great Divorce about a year or so ago... I felt like I was on a trip... but it would've helped if I'd noticed, BEFORE the last pages, that it was about a dream. I thought Lewis was off his rocker the whole time and it was hard to stay with it because of that. :)
LOL! That must have been funny. Welcome, Beloved. I don't remember seeing you post before. I love your avi!

I love the Sarah Smith vignette in GD because she's so sweet to her dwarfy little husband. It breaks my heart that he chooses his grand delusions of himself rather than going with her ...
 
"If it were possible, I would enter Hell to help you; but you cannot bring Hell into me."


I love it that Sarah Smith's evil husband was NOT allowed, in the end, to spoil the happiness which was her reward in Heaven.
 
LOL! That must have been funny. Welcome, Beloved. I don't remember seeing you post before. I love your avi!

I love the Sarah Smith vignette in GD because she's so sweet to her dwarfy little husband. It breaks my heart that he chooses his grand delusions of himself rather than going with her ...

Thanks, I'm new. ;) Copperfox dragged me here, kicking and screaming.

The avi is my guinea pig, Sty. He's a character.

I don't remember much about the GD except that I thought I was reading the CS Lewis version of something along the lines of "Alice in Wonderland" (ie: rather trippy) and I remember how absolutely stunned/enlightened I felt when I got to the last page and it all came together as a strange dream. It would've been nice to've known that all along! ::wah wah::
 
I love it that Sarah Smith's evil husband was NOT allowed, in the end, to spoil the happiness which was her reward in Heaven.

I see you're mirroring the Christian attitude of Sarah Smith herself there!!

I feel sorry for him. It shows how so many people can let their self-conciousness get too great and become a form of pride in itself. It's obvious that the man's problem was that he never really felt loved, not because he wasn't, but because he wouldn't believe anyone would love him.

I find it really depressing, especially when we see them share the joke and there is hope on the horizon, but then the dark clouds of his inferiority complex descend back in and choke all the efforts of Sarah to show him how much she, and Christ, loved the man. I found this one of the most moving parts of the book.
 
It was moving and very powerful. I loved how Lewis made clear that Sarah Smith still loved her husband, but the fact that he chose destruction could cast no cloud on her joy. "I am in Love, and will not go out of it" - that has to be one of the most powerfully poetic lines in literature.
 
Sarah's loving example is so sweet ... she doesn't get nasty with him (as I would be inclined to do) when he tried to make her feel guilty ... she just patiently, gently, continues to try to show him the truth, and cover him with her love ... I like her example very much and have often in my life tried to remember it and imitate her.
 
You must remember that Lewis made a point in the book that many who we think love us actually have little or no love at all. For if they did have any true love for us there would be hope for them. We saw this in the mother of Michael and the wife of Robert. In some ways Sarah's husband had more hope than the other two I mentioned for Sarah came to him, and it looked like she could have suceeded. It is sad to find out those who you thought loved you never did.
 
You must remember that Lewis made a point in the book that many who we think love us actually have little or no love at all. For if they did have any true love for us there would be hope for them. We saw this in the mother of Michael and the wife of Robert. In some ways Sarah's husband had more hope than the other two I mentioned for Sarah came to him, and it looked like she could have suceeded. It is sad to find out those who you thought loved you never did.

Depressing, but so true.
 
The selfish person may "love" us both in the sense of believing us to be good, and in the sense of desiring a benefit from us--yet NOT love us in the sense of being willing to sacrifice for us. This distinction was part of Mr. Lewis' theme in The Four Loves.
 
Cf, this love is merely where a person is getting some inner passion or desire which is satisfied by your presence. That person might as will be Pavlov's dog, merely reacting to the situation they are in while in your presence. You might think they truely love you but their loving actions toward us are just conditioned reflexes to receive a goal. That is why Lewis in TGD could find no way to save this person. There was no spiritaul love just a base lust. True love is only of God and God in a person's life.
 
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Cf, this love is merely where a person is getting some inner passion or desire which is satisfied by your presence. That person might as will be Pavlov's dog, merely reacting to the situation they are in while in your presence. You might think they truely love you but their loving actions toward us are just conditioned reflexes to receive a goal. That is why Lewis in TGD could find no way to save this person. There was no spiritaul love just a base lust. True love is only of God and God in a person's life.

Good insight. Thanks for sharing.
 
The evil husband had not had ONLY a sexual lust toward his wife, but also a desire to keep her always in a position of supposed moral inferiority to himself, so as to feed his inflated ego.
 
I didn't mean that kind of lust. More like the bases of instincts. In the case of the bad husband the instinct is to just be dominant.
 
The selfish person may "love" us both in the sense of believing us to be good, and in the sense of desiring a benefit from us--yet NOT love us in the sense of being willing to sacrifice for us. This distinction was part of Mr. Lewis' theme in The Four Loves.
Yah, this is the sense I get from Mr. Smith. I imagine in life he was proud to be the husband of such an adored woman, but never really understood how what she did was what made people adore her ... he loved her, I like to think, as best he could with his damaged sense of self. But he loved his own idea of himself as a Big Man more than he loved her. It's very sad. :(
 
Sarah Smith fan club

Sarah's loving example is so sweet ... she doesn't get nasty with him (as I would be inclined to do) when he tried to make her feel guilty ... she just patiently, gently, continues to try to show him the truth, and cover him with her love ... I like her example very much and have often in my life tried to remember it and imitate her.

What a beautiful thought -- Especially now for me when I am being really stretched in caring for my mom I am learning how much more I have to learn about real love. I will need to go back and review how Sarah related to her husband, to learn from her example too.
 
Their story may be the last one in the series of encounters the narrator has in the book, but the whole book is worth a read.
 
I love the scene with the apostate clergyman who pretends he was "heroic" to deny the Deity of Jesus, when he had actually known that he was in a setting where this denial would only make him MORE popular.
 
I love the scene with the apostate clergyman who pretends he was "heroic" to deny the Deity of Jesus, when he had actually known that he was in a setting where this denial would only make him MORE popular.
LOL! Yes -- it is exactly how people behave today, as if they have somehow thrown off the shackles and are boldy standing out as individuals when they deny that their is a God, as if they're evolving into great new freedom where few dar to go ... and in fact they're just following the crowd who think it's cool to pretend to debunk religion.
 
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