Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Source

C.S. Lewis has an interesting perspective of hell.  In his book "The Great Divorce" Lewis presents hell as a place where everyone can get what they want and move wherever they want to move.  Only the places and possessions are of mundane quality.  How the people respond to this is interesting.

They move to a new neighborhood, get a new house, get new stuff but are in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction.  They want more and better "stuff."  They want more stuff than their neighbors.  They are constantly observing the things wrong with their neighbors so they pack up an move to what they believe is an ever-expanding world where they just move on to the next place where "the grass is greener."  Lewis says that what is really happening is that this fictional world is not expanding ... it is contracting.  It is constantly collapsing on itself until it reaches the point of all things from Satan ... total emptiness.

As I thought about this I had an epiphany I hope you can appreciate.  Maybe the reason Lewis reaches this conclusion is that Satan and hell are all about the powers of darkness.  Jesus and heaven are all about light.  In our faith, light has a source as all light has a source.  Light flows from power and energy.  Darkness is not power at all.  It has no source.  Darkness is the absence of energy and the absence of substance.  I think Lewis is onto something ... the ultimate destination of hell is into the nothingness from which it flows.  It might be why Jesus once said, Cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matt. 25:30).  Yes, hell is real, harsh and horrific, but in relation to God's kingdom, hell and Satan are destined for the total darkness and emptiness from which they came.

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