‘The Great Divorce’, by C. S. Lewis, is a fictional account of a trip to Heaven, and a fascinating study of why many people would choose not to stay there.

Later in the story, Lewis is met in Heaven by one of his real-life literary and spiritual heroes, Scottish author and pastor George MacDonald. (Lewis never had the opportunity to actually meet MacDonald, in this world anyway – MacDonald died while Lewis was still a young boy – but Lewis was greatly influenced by MacDonald’s writing).

At this point in ‘The Great Divorce’, Lewis and MacDonald have a series of discussions as they observe interactions between people who have embraced the joy of Heaven, and new arrivals who cannot, or will not, let go of their pride, envy, anger, or resentments. During one of these discussions, on the topic of having pity, MacDonald distinguishes between the passion of pity – centered upon emotionalism – and the action of pity – centered upon goodness and truth.

That distinction had never particularly stood out to me when I read it before, but in revisiting that section of the book yesterday, I was struck by the degree to which the passion of pity is currently controlling our culture and our discourse – at the expense of truth.

In the following excerpt, they’ve just witnessed a joyful woman – a resident of Heaven – simply unable to embrace and adopt the bitterness and misery of her earthly husband who had just arrived. Over and over, she cheerfully encourages him to let it all go and come with her. In the end, the husband clings so tightly to his resentment and unhappiness that he literally disappears back to Hell. Yet the woman is now so utterly filled with joy and love that it’s no longer possible for her to experience even the slightest amount of sadness, and she continues on her way, surrounded by a host of singing animals and other creatures.

Lewis begins:

“And yet . . . and yet … ,” said I to my Teacher, when all the shapes and the singing had passed some distance away into the forest, “even now I am not quite sure. Is it really tolerable that she should be untouched by his misery, even his self-made misery?”

“Would ye rather he still had the power of tormenting her? He did it many a day and many a year in their earthly life.”

“Well, no. I suppose I don’t want that.”

“What then?”

“I hardly know, Sir. What some people say on earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”

“Ye see it does not.”

“I feel in a way that it ought to.”

“That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”

“What?”

“The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”

“I don’t know what I want, Sir.”

“Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside…”

“But dare one say – it is horrible to say – that Pity must ever die?”

“Ye must distinguish. The action of Pity will live for ever: but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of pity, the pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty – that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken.”

“And what is the other kind – the action?”

“It’s a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy, whatever the cost to itself. It changes darkness into light and evil into good. But it will not, at the cunning tears of Hell, impose on good the tyranny of evil. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured: but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice, nor make a midden of the world’s garden for the sake of some who cannot abide the smell of roses.”