The Great Divorce

by C.S. Lewis

"'Do you really think people are penalized for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.'

'Do you really think there are no sins of intellect?'

'There are indeed[...]there is[...]prejudice, and intellectual dishonesty, and timidity, and stagnation. But honest opinions fearlessly followed -- they are not sins.'

'I know we used to talk that way. I did too until the end of my life[...]I know now. Let us be frank[...]When, in our whole lives, did we honestly face, in solitude, the one question on which it all turned: whether after all the Supernatural might not in fact occur? When did we put up one moment's real resistance to the loss of our faith?[...]We didn't want [it] to be true. We were afraid of crude Salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes.'

'[...]it's not a question of how the opinions are formed. The point is that they were my honest opinions, sincerely expressed.'

'Of course. Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, unpraying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires, we reached a point where we no longer believed the Faith. Just in the same way, a jealous man, drifting and unresisting, reaches a point at which he believes lies about his best friend[...]The beliefs are sincere[...]but errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.'[...]

'Well, this is extremely interesting[...]it's a point of view. Certainly, it's a point of view. In the meantime...'

'There is no meantime...All that is over. We are not playing now[...]You have seen Hell: you are in sight of Heaven. Will you, even now, repent and believe?'

'I'm not sure that I've got the exact point you are trying to make,' said the Ghost.

'I am not trying to make any point,' said the Spirit. 'I am telling you to repent and believe.'

'But...I believe already. We may not be perfectly agreed, but you have completely misjudged me if you do not realize that my religion is very real and a very precious thing to me.'

Very well,' said the other, as if changing his plan. 'Will you believe in me?'

'In what sense?'

'Will you come with me to the mountains? It will hurt at first, until your feet are hardened; reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come?'

'Well, that is a plan. I am perfectly ready to consider it. Of course I should require some assurances...I should want a guarantee that you are taking me to a place where I shall find a wider sphere of usefulness -- and scope for the talents that God has given me -- and an atmosphere of free inquiry[...]'

'No,' said the other. 'I can promise you none of these things. No sphere of usefulness: you are not needed there at all. No scope for your talents: only forgiveness for having perverted them. No atmosphere of inquiry, for I will bring you to the land not of questions but of answers, and you shall see the face of God[...]

Once you were a child. Once you knew what inquiry was for. There was a time when you asked questions because you wanted answers, and were glad when you had found them. Become that child again[...]"