My wife has tried to get me to read C.S. Lewis books on many
occasions. I have to admit that I have a hard time reading his works. Frankly,
they are so deep that I believe I often don`t possess the spiritual maturity to
understand his writings; not to mention I need a dictionary at hand to
understand the archaic vernacular. Finally,
I decided to pick up his book The Great
Divorce and read it. I was motivated to do so by my pastor as well because
he had read it in one sitting on a Saturday and he absolutely loved the book
and its message. He`s an old grey beard biker like me so I figured if he could
do it so could I. So I picked the book up and began to read.
While I was reading it my wife`s birthday was approaching
and my pastors wife saw that a play of The
Great Divorce was coming to Atlanta. As a birthday gift she purchased tickets
for the four of us—herself, my pastor, my wife, and I. So we set off to see the
show.
The metaphor that the book conveys was portrayed in the circumstances
of the several characters in the story. But the Red Lizard, in the end, spoke
volumes to me personally. If you haven`t read this book I highly recommend that
you do so. However, if you haven`t read it I will give you a synopsis of sorts
as I share my thoughts.
Each character in the story is battling with some form of
fleshly desire, emotional wantonness, feelings of entitlement, or intellectual
superiority (among other things) that is blocking them from the peace of God or
the pathway to Heaven. In the book, the people are stuck in a form of purgatory
in that they all live in a rainy, grey, depressed city. Every so often a great
bus appears and gives them a ride to Heaven—this is not what the story calls
the place but it is, I believe, Lewis` intended meaning of the place. When they
arrive in Heaven they find out, much to their surprise, that they are ghosts in
comparison to the large “Solid People” that greet each of the passengers. Each
of the solid people has a particular connection from life to the passenger they
are assigned to as a guide into Heaven which is represented by a great mountain
range in the distance. As the passengers step off the bus they find that not
only are they less “solid” then the people that greet them but also that everything
is so much more real that they can`t even stand on the grass below their feet
because it hurts them—it`s too solid for their feet. Okay, no more spoilers.
*laughing*
The play ends, much like the story, with the main
protagonist (I forget if he has a name) and his “solid person” or guiding angel
asking for a red lizard which he has hidden and tried to sneak into the solid
world. This red lizard is so important to the man that he begs to keep it. When
the solid person refuses his request he then begins to justify its existence.
The solid person again refuses. The man crumbles into an emotional wreck of
anger, pain, fear, and rebellion as he demands to keep the red lizard. The
solid person ignores all his drama and toil only to repeatedly ask for
permission to take the red lizard. The irony is that the solid person cannot
take the lizard…the man must decide to give it up of his own free will. In the
end, after much pain and fear, he gives the solid person the lizard and he is
made free. He suddenly finds that grass no longer hurts his feet…he has become
a “solid person.”
In the book, and in the play, I saw the truth of all truths:
nothing on this side of Heaven is worth the pain, the suffering, the fear, the
selfishness, the pride, and all the other things we exude from our flesh to
keep and protect the thing of this Earth. At one point, the solid person makes a
profound statement to the man with the lizard. He says to him, “There are only
two kinds of people in the world…those who say `Thy will be done Lord` and
those to whom God says, `thy will be done.’” Wow…what an amazing and simple
truth. We certainly don`t like it when we are only given two options in terms
of our walk with God…do we?
One of the staggering things about this truth is that some
of the characters in the book are fighting to hold onto things that, from all appearances,
seem moral or righteous. During one scene of the play a woman screams at her
solid person for taking her son away at an early age. He had died young. The
solid person tries to explain to her that the child was never hers to begin
with—he was Gods—and that her anger and resentment are the only thing keeping her
from being united with him again in Heaven. She chooses to clutch the memories
of her son to her chest and cry out “Mine!” She leaves her solid person and
walks away heading back to the bus to, as she calls it, go home. Home is in
reality a sad return to the purgatory of the grey city.
Obviously this fictional tale is not Biblical truth in
concrete, but rather, a spiritual truth presented in an allegorical portrayal
of how we humans fight between flesh and spirit and that this fight, often unknowingly,
leads to our pain and lack of joy here on Earth. My pastor says all the time, “It`s
what you don`t know that’s causing all your problems.” I used to say, “To know
and not to do, is not to know.” God, in His vast mercy, gave us an instruction
manual for life in His word—the Bible. But he went further…He gave us a
physical example to follow, as our greatest mentor and big brother, in Jesus.
What is your red lizard?
