Is it Worth the Pain?

One

Killing the Lizard

In C.S. Lewis's masterpiece, The Great Divorce, several unpurified souls take a bus ride from Hell to Heaven. If they want, they can stay in heaven. Or, if they want, they can go back to hell. Some choose heaven, although the choice usually involves some struggle. Many just go back to the bus because hell is really where they feel at home.

One of the souls has a lizard on his shoulder. And the lizard keeps whispering in his ear, telling him to go back to the bus, to go back to hell. But the soul meets an angel. The angel says, “Off so soon?” And the soul says, “Yes, I’m off.” He explains that he knows the lizard on his shoulder doesn’t fit in heaven and he can’t make the lizard quiet so he’ll have to leave. The angel tells him he doesn’t have to go. All the soul has to do is let the angel kill the lizard. 

This sounds pretty drastic to the soul. He knows the lizard on his shoulder is a pain, an embarrassment, but he’s not really ready to have the lizard killed. The soul tries to change the subject, tries to delay, asks for time to think about it. But the angel is relentless. He keeps asking, “May I kill it?” “May I kill it?” “May I kill it?”

Eight times, in rapid succession, the angel asks the soul for permission to kill the lizard on his shoulder. The angel is an angel of death, is ready to pounce in a second, but he will not destroy the lizard without the man’s permission. The soul is terrified. He believes that if the angel kills that lizard, he, the soul, will also be destroyed.

So what does it all mean?

Two

What Is the Lizard?

What is this lizard, sitting on the shoulder, this thing that shames the soul, that makes the soul unfit for heaven, that makes the soul deeply unhappy – and yet this thing that the soul does not want to have killed? The lizard is, ultimately, a disordered attachment. It’s sin, it’s vice. 

The problem with sin, with vice, is that it forms a kind of symbiosis with our sous. It gets so deep under our skin that it feels as though it’s part of us. That we can’t live without it. We know it’s bad. We know it’s shameful. But we’re terrified of the pain we’ll have to go through to get rid of it. We’re afraid there won’t be anything left of us when it’s been taken away.

In the story, the ghost says to the angel, “How can I tell you to kill it? You’d kill me if you did.” And the lizard says to the soul, “He can kill me, then you’d be without me forever and ever… how could you live?”

We don’t trust that the joy of glory, and the peace of purity, are worth the pain and the sense of loss that God knows we need to undergo. 

So we cling to our sins even though we know how hateful they are.

Three

“I’ll Die.” - “You Won’t. But what if you did?”

There are disordered attachments in your personality that are so deep you can’t imagine life without them. Things where you say, “Come what may, I can’t do without this.”

It may be sexual gratification, physical comfort, having other people notice you. It may be you need a crisis in your life to distract you from the deeper, painful truths. It may be a sense of self-importance, the feeling that you’ve had a significant impact. It may be the need to feel that your family is bringing you honor instead of shame.

What if God said, “You need to let that go.” Could you? Could you just walk away? Or is that attachment so strong, that it’s a lizard on your shoulder that could talk you into choosing hell instead of heaven because you just can’t imagine an existence without that one thing you think you need?

But we know our vices don’t make us happy. We know, deep down we’d be better off without them. When the soul says that killing the lizard will kill him too, the angel replies, “It won’t. But supposing it did?” Then the soul realizes that it would be better to die, it would be better to offer up one’s very existence than to endure eternity with the filth and the shame and the burden of sin. The soul says, “You’re right. It would be better to be dead than to live with this creature.”

The soul finally comes to accept that, whatever the cost, it must be made clean. Purity, happiness, and peace are worth whatever pain has to be undergone. Until we accept that, we will not be fit to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Four

Purification and Transformation

The great mystery of human life is that the same faculties can lead us closer to God and happiness or further from God and happiness. The lizard on the man’s shoulder is primarily an image of lust, the selfish, perversion of the human sexual faculty. Our sexuality is one of the ways we are in God’s image. It brings us so much joy, and propels us into marriage, the most kaleidoscopic experience of love this life has to offer. Then, through the gift of children, it raises up eternal companions for God and us in heaven. But lust has to be killed for sexuality to realize that vision.

The same is true for every other faculty. Magnanimity, the desire to do great things, is the urge to glorify God, serve our neighbors and society, and become the best we can be. But once that desire becomes infected with vanity, with the desire for praise, then our capacity for greatness is siphoned off, bit by bit, by the desire to impress. That lizard, that vanity, has to die, for magnanimity to have free reign.

The point is, we have to let God kill the things in us that are getting in the way of following Him. It will feel like a death, at first. But it’s really the beginning of a fullness of life.

So if he sends you purification, trust Him. Because the transformation at the end of the pain is worth it. 

Five

The End of the Story 

So the angel kills the lizard, breaks its neck, and the soul screams in agony.  The corpse of the lizard and the ghostly form of the soul fall to the ground. It looks like the soul was right. It looks like killing the sin has killed him too.

But the next moment, the man is standing again. He’s not a ghost anymore. He’s a whole man, a glorified man, a shimmering magnificent perfect, and unspeakably joyful man. He’s everything he always wanted to be.

And the Lizard too, the dead lizard slowly morphs into a splendid horse, a white stallion with a golden mane and tail. The transformed man pets this new awesome creature, and he jumps on its back, and together they ride at breakneck pace into the heart of heaven, deeper and deeper into the happiness of God.

May we all of us permit God to do the same for us. Amen.