If marriage is about the getting, it’s about usury, and there’s no use for holy vows at all. Lewis rightly says that we cannot predict or promise a feeling any more than promising never to have a headache.

We should ask, is marriage for the getting or the giving? If it’s the former, then we always lose. It’s this selfishness, and not the selfless act of giving ourselves to one another, that forms a basis for Satan to do his work. And if this love fades away, many people believe divorce is permitted.

To Screwtape’s delight, the idea of “falling in love” is now a quid pro quo to marriage. God demands “either complete abstinence or unmitigated monogamy,” Screwtape assesses in our August 8 reading. When we isolate sex outside of the marriage union, we are attempting pleasure only in part, and not as a whole blessing of God. God designed a man and a woman to be a “single organism,” like a violin and bow are one instrument, or a lock and key are one mechanism, Lewis says. Joel Rainwater is the narrator and a ghost who is emotionally attached to a lizard he can’t understand why the spirits want to kill it.Why is sexual intercourse outside of marriage sinful? Simple: it breaks the design of God. (There isn’t much hope for her.) Michael Frederic is most memorable as George MacDonald, the Scottish author whose spirit tries to explain the nature of God. Christa Scott-Reed achieves the most distinctly different interpretations, in roles ranging from a serene spirit guide to a ghost who does nothing but grumble. The plot of “The Great Divorce” takes some residents of hell (a gray place where it rains a lot) on a flying-bus trip to heaven, where they learn that being joyful for eternity isn’t that simple. He was an atheist turned Christian apologist, and his theology makes for fascinating if dense intellectualism. Lewis, the 20th-century British scholar best known as the author of “ The Chronicles of Narnia,” took religion very seriously. At least it does after a few puzzling, artistically pretentious early scenes in the Fellowship for Performing Arts’ infinitely thought-provoking production at the Pearl Theater. This all makes sense in “The Great Divorce,” which has been adapted for the stage by Max McLean and Brian Watkins from Lewis’s novella. (“The glory flows into everyone,” a resident explains.) Nobody is famous - or rather, everybody is. Murderers can be friends with their victims. Walking on the grass hurts your feet at first.

Cs lewis the divorce