C. S. Lewis's "The Great Divorce" (Part 1) (#376)

Religion on the Mind

Religion & Spirituality, Religion, Spirituality

4.7 • 542 Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2026

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, recurring guest Kristen Tideman and I discuss C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce, examining how its exploration of hell, isolation, and human flaws speaks to modern issues like political polarization. We also examine Lewis's allegory and its connection to broader questions about existential psychology, spirituality, mortality, and the struggle for honest self-accountability—all of which seem increasingly rare in our culture today. Highlights 05:20 The Context of The Great Divorce 11:00 The Psychological Richness of The Great Divorce 19:34 Political Polarization and Its Parallels 32:18 Theological Perspectives on Hell 47:16 Cultural Shifts in Conversations about Mortality 01:11:47 Theological Perspectives on Responsibility ___________________________________________ Follow Dan on IG: ⁠⁠⁠www.instagram.com/dancoke/⁠⁠⁠ Or Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠twitter.com/DanKoch⁠⁠⁠ Faith deconstruction resources: ⁠⁠⁠www.soyouredeconstructing.com/⁠⁠⁠ Join the Patreon for exclusive episodes (and more) every month: ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/dankoch⁠⁠⁠ Email about the "sliding scale" for the Patreon: ⁠⁠⁠youhavepermissionpodcast@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠ YHP Patron-only FB group: ⁠⁠⁠tinyurl.com/ycvbbf98⁠⁠⁠ Website: ⁠⁠⁠www.dankochwords.com/yhp.html⁠⁠⁠ Join Dan's email list: ⁠⁠⁠www.dankochwords.com/⁠⁠⁠ Artwork by ⁠⁠⁠sprungle.co/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:46.4	Welcome back, everybody, to a very special part one of a little ongoing series here on religion on the mind.
0:47.4	I am your host, Dr. Dan Koch, licensed therapist.
0:50.6	And I am joined by great, dear, longtime friend of the pod multi-time guest Kristen Tidman. Kristen,
0:59.6	welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. Kristen and I, as you may have heard on a recent episode,
1:05.4	we've been trying to figure out like more stuff to do together. And this is one of the things that we have come upon.
1:13.4	We are going to do a little, it's probably going to be four part series, one episode per week,
1:21.1	responding to the C.S. Lewis masterpiece of short religious fiction, the greatce. Now, to be clear, we're going to find a lot of
1:30.7	things we disagree with. I just want to say this very early on. You don't have to like agree with
1:35.2	C.S. Lewis or find his views in the great divorce to be accurate. What Kristen and I both know and what
1:43.3	most listeners, I think, will know is it's been a very
	...

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