Thinking about hell

For some reason this morning I got to thinking about "the lake of fire" described in Revelation. That got me thinking, for some other unknown reasons, about C.S. Lewis' book, The Great Divorce. You may have known, or not, that this book is generally considered one of the best books ever on the topics of heaven and hell. It is sort of a book of theology, written as a (rather fanciful) story. As I thought about that, and why it should be so, it suddenly seemed very appropriate. Most of the biblical language about hell, and heaven (for that matter), is couched in metaphor and story. So, for example, the primary word Jesus used to describe "hell" (and he did, as an aside, talk about it quite a bit), is taken from the large trash dump that sat just outside Jerusalem (always burning and smelled of sulfur, its location chosen because, before the Jews moved in, the previous residents sacrificed their children (by burning) in that particular valley, and so the land was considered unfit for habitation). So there we have it - the language of hell couched in metaphor and story. And thus it seems only fitting that it should be that the preeminent contemporary reflection on hell comes to us in the form of a story, by an author both theologically informed and very comfortable with his imagination.