To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity

―C.S. Lewis

Scripture: Psalm 79.2

They have left the dead bodies of your servants as food for the birds of the sky, the flesh of your own people for the animals of the wild.

Reflection: Termination Point
The Park Forum

For the authors of scripture, heaven’s physical description comes secondary to the reality of heaven as the locus of God’s goodness, mercy, and grace. In the same way, hell’s location is secondary to the reality of hell as life apart from God.

“Damnation is the state of the human soul when it is cut off from God, and salvation is the state of the human soul when it is united with God,” explains Douglas Beyer. “It isn’t imposed on us by God from the outside, but arises from the nature of what God is.” (Beyer composed a wonderful summary of C.S. Lewis’ understanding of hell, from which many of Lewis’ quotes this week were drawn.)

Hell is the termination point for those who cut themselves off from God and are finally left with no other options. We see this supremely in the personification of evil—for whom hell was designed. “Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament,” C.S. Lewis writes in his Preface to Paradise Lost. “Certainly, he has no choice. He has chosen to have no choice. He has wished to ‘be himself,’ and to be in himself and for himself, and his wish has been granted.”

We underestimate how rejection of God builds until it consumes. In The Great Divorce Lewis reflects, “It begins with a grumbling mood, and yourself still distinct from it: perhaps criticizing it. And yourself, in a dark hour, may will that mood, embrace it. Ye can repent and come out of it again. But there may come a day when you can do that no longer. Then there will be no ‘you’ left to criticize the mood, nor even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on forever like a machine.”

Prayer: The Cry of the Church

O God, come to my assistance! O Lord, make haste to help me!

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Numbers 35 (Listen – 4:41)
Psalm 79 (Listen – 1:50)

This Weekend’s Readings
Numbers 36 (Listen – 2:15) Psalm 80 (Listen – 1:58)
Deuteronomy 1 (Listen – 6:27) Psalm 81-82 (Listen – 2:36)