40 Inspirational Classics

It’s a hot topic (see Universalism as a Lure? The Emerging Case of Rob Bell): universalism, or to put it as a question, will everybody get to heaven in the end? Rob Bell repeats the old mantra, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.”

C.S. Lewis answers this objection to divine judgement and heaven and hell as separate for the blessed and the damned in The Great Divorce.

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.” 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 it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

“What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”
“Ye see it does not.”
“I feel in a way that it ought to.”
“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”
“What?”
“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”
“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or you’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”

However, these two excerpts are only the pertinent quotations in regard to universalism and the complaint that it’s unfair for anyone to go to hell. The book itself is much more, a wonderful story about an excursion bus from hell to the outskirts of heaven. I learned more about heaven and God’s mercy from reading The Great Divorce than from many a sermon listened to in my youth.

Maybe I’m a better reader than listener. Or maybe I learn better through story. A little of both I think. Also C.S. Lewis is just a great writer and thinker. You’ll come across several of his books in this series of 40 Inspirational Classics that I’m recommending for Lent. Now go out and get The Great Divorce; it’s only 125 pages long, but there’s lots of truth in that small package.