motive above skill?

“There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself … as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organizer of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all snares.”
~an excerpt from The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis pages 73-74

The other major point that stuck out to me while reading C. S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce was the danger of missing God while engaging in ministry. It seems sad in a way that one’s devotion towards a good cause has the potential of destroying their love for it, especially when it comes to God. Just goes to show once again how God is ultimately after our hearts and inner motives instead of our outward actions. Scary in a way as it means that an incompetent Sunday school teacher who is unable to plan a good lesson but still strives to do their best out of love for God and the children of the church, may in fact be in God’s eyes more righteous than a gifted preacher whose sermon series consistently become Christian best sellers when converted to book format, because they lost sight of God in their preaching. Even more alarming and sad is that in the light of Matthew 7:22-23 and Matthew 23:1-7, one is faced with the reality that many of the redeemed were won to Christ through the efforts of the damned. Shocking I know to think that the gifted in leadership are the ones most likely to miss God in their apparent service toward Him. But then again maybe that is why in a way God favors or at least considers blessed fools whose heart is in the right place, not because they come off as needing extra help but because they are less likely to place their trust in themselves instead of God as they are more aware of their need for Him.

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
(Matthew 7:22-23 ESV)

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you–but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others.
(Matthew 23:1-7 ESV)

hell as a choice?

“I must be clear. There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels. The false religion of lust is baser than the false religion of mother-love or patriotism or art: but lust is less likely to be made into a religion.”
~an excerpt from The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis page 106

I recently read The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis and I found its vision of heaven and hell to be very thought provoking. While Lewis made it very clear that the book was to be treated as fiction and not revelation, it contained some good points that are at the very least worth thinking about. Personally I believe that hell is both one of the more neglected and abused Biblical truths out there today. As it seems as if far too often the topic of hell is either avoided or perverted into a weapon of spiritual terrorism that causes people to miss the point and act in fear instead of love. So in stark contract Lewis paints a picture of hell in which one is free to move to heaven (in which case hell becomes purgatry), but most of the damned don’t want to do and most of those who do quickly change their mind and return to hell. While at first the idea of anyone choosing heaven over hell sounds like insanity. Yet it is the tragic pitfall of human freewill that one can turn their back on God according to John Milton’s famous “better to reign in hell than serve in heaven”. So in that sense hell regardless if one can choose to leave or not could be considered an act of grace to the damned. After all if God is the ultimate source of goodness and anything that turns away from God becomes evil, isn’t hell simply God generously granting them their selfish desire to have nothing to do with Him? Honestly I don’t know if this proposed view, if it can be shown to be fully Biblical, is a source of comfort or terror. As I could see it reassuring struggling Christians who are earnestly seeking God, that He won’t give up on them for stumbling one too many times. Yet the mere though that one can fall to the point of finding hell more attractive to heavy is utterly terrifying to me.