“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, ‘They will be done.’”
The ghosts in C. S. Lewis’s novel The Great Divorce must choose their fate. Lewis writes about a dream that centers on the medieval Christian belief of refrigerium — one day a year in which the damned souls get a break from the fires of Hell.
In Lewis’s story, the Heavenly spirits beg the damned to accept salvation, but the ghosts retreat into their suffering.
Many skeptics reject this framing. How could someone possibly choose Hell? Who wants to suffer?
Lewis lays out an eerie truth: we can—and we do—choose misery over salvation. The narrator encounters one ghost after another that clings to his pride in the face of humility, that refuses to give up his stale bread for the banquet simply because it’s his own.
While all of these ghosts show different sides of our broken humanity, one female ghost struck me the most. She hides behind a bush while her brother—a Heavenly spirit—seeks her out. She begs him to leave her alone, but he pursues her. He promises to bear some of her weight so she can climb the mountain toward salvation.
“But they’ll see me,” she protests. Ashamed and embarrassed, she won’t approach the perfected spirits in her imperfect state.
When I talked to my girl friends about this book, they all brought up this ghost as particularly difficult to read. One friend, laughing yet serious, brought up that she often tells her sister, “Don’t perceive me!”
This character, written by a twentieth-century man, strikes a chord in the female heart: wanting to be loved, but too afraid of rejection to let yourself be seen.
Though surely men experience this struggle as well, it seemed that the women especially related to this ghost.
As the Heavenly spirit prompted, the ghost seemed almost ready to give in before railing that, “It’s not fair” and “It’s disgusting!”
Despite his gentleness, the spirit gave a harsh response. “Could you, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not yourself?”
Here lies the heart of her shame: not excessive humility, but pride.
We often slip into viewing humility as thinking less of yourself, as if the more that you dislike yourself, the more humble you are!
In truth, humility rejoices in our blessings and views failure as an opportunity for reconciliation.
This idea reflects the latin phrase felix culpa used during the Easter Vigil mass. The full verse reflects on the sin of Adam and Eve and proclaims, “O happy fault that won for us so great, so glorious a Redeemer!”
A celebration of the Fall of Man? As counter-intuitive as it seems, this traditional view of Genesis reveals the limitless mercy of God. When man turns away from God, Christ enters into history, endures death, and redeems the world.
And He doesn’t stop there. Every time we miss the mark, we sin, we reject Him, God meets us in our poverty. He mends our brokenness and we remember His everlasting charity.
Yet this ghost won’t allow Christ in. True humility cries out for God’s mercy, taking delight in Christ’s strength instead of despairing in our weakness. Pride turns inward and only sees me: my life, my reputation, my burden. If we recognize our deficiency but lack humility, shame holds us back from offering ourselves to God.
This desire to hide our faces and create our own personas permeates our culture. We’ve made self-identity our idol so that no one can claim we’ve done something “wrong.” The most important part is that I made that decision and I define who I am. No one can tell me that I am broken.
A healthy society recognizes our weakness and offers it to God. A distorted society cannot accept humiliation and feigns perfection, rejecting any concept of the good beyond individual will. It’s as if we can remedy shame by closing our eyes.
This liberal “paradise” of complete self-determination is no different from a ghost hiding in the woods, terrified to live among saints.
And yet, as the Heavenly spirit reminds the ghost, we were born “for infinite happiness… You can step out into it at any moment.”
The spiritual journey is not easy, but it is simple. When we walk in humility, each stumble is merely a reminder of the glory of God. Pride, however, stirs self-loathing that cannot see beyond our shame. We only find happiness in eternal glory when we allow the journey to be about His beauty, not our ego.
