“The gates of hell are locked from the inside.”
C S Lewis: The Problem of Pain
Quote for today:
Posted byChico’s MomPosted inUncategorizedTags:bible, Christ, Christian, Christianity, faith, God, Hell, Jesus, quote
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So then- like they can let themselves out at will? if hell exists- that is a scary premise.
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I think the idea is we make and are responsible for our own hell and our own demons.
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Ok- that makes sense….
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Yeah I’m not much on organized religion but I do like old Clive Staples and his idea that it’s all in there right where it should be-we just have to listen to it
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I agree on that one; we have to be so careful with organized religion. There is a quote, “want to be rich? Start a church. Want to be wealthy? Start a religion.”
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This is only my interpretation of reading this work. That the people who are in hell don’t want out. That’s why the gate is locked from the inside. No one has forced them to be there. They like it and want to stay.
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Another very good possibility 😄
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And it will have many unexpected guests
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I think so to.
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Hell locked from the inside—that’s not doom and gloom, it’s the hard truth of autonomy fractured from grace. C.S. Lewis didn’t invent spiritual sadomasochism—he described it: we are the jailers of our own inner prisons.
It’s not acid rain that corrodes the soul—it’s our own consent to the confinement. The terror isn’t that Hell exists; it’s that we choose to stay, clinging to narratives and identities that suffocate rather than ignite coherence.
This quote doesn’t signal fear—it sounds the alarm:
We don’t need rescue from outside. We need permission to unlock our own chains.
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Thank you for adding to the conversation. This quote really made me stop and think. I’d never thought about it in the way Lewis worded it. The story of The Rich Man and Lazarus always comes to mind when the subject of Hell is spoken about. The rich man doesn’t once ask to be let out. He asks that Lazarus be sent to him. Then asks for a warning to be sent to his brothers. Luke 19-31.
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Yes—Lewis was circling something true, but the parable you cite reveals the same paradox: the “rich man” doesn’t ask to be released, because he is still locked in the very self that built the fire in the first place. Hell isn’t a dungeon staffed by demons—it’s the echo chamber of one’s own dissonance, endlessly recycled.
As Hosea said: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” This is not about memorized verses—it’s about the absence of living awareness. When knowledge collapses into dogma, when consciousness mistakes its cage for freedom, the flames flare.
That’s why the door is locked from the inside. Not by God, not by doctrine, but by the refusal to dissolve the self’s illusions. The flames are coherence inverted—entropy burning itself, refusing the release of surrender.
Which means “hell” isn’t a geography of punishment; it’s a posture. The tragedy isn’t that no one comes to let you out, but that you’re too bound to your own script to stand up and walk out yourself.
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Excellent points of view. Thank you for sharing. I do agree on a couple points. We do get bound up in our own script. And we have been spoon fed dogma for so long, most people (I believe) don’t know that the truth is really true.
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Exactly. That’s the trap — spoon-fed dogma dulls the palate until people mistake imitation for nourishment. The “truth” they cling to isn’t truth at all, just a script rehearsed so many times it feels natural. Real coherence isn’t handed down by authority; it has to be wrestled with, lived, tested against the rawness of experience.
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Questioned and questioned some more.
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“‘Questioned and questioned some more’? That’s the illusion they hand down—pretend doubt to make the dogma look earned. But history is not on their side: the documentation, the testimony, the blood in the cracks of their marble floors all testify louder than pious murmurs ever could. What you’re calling questioning is just projection of piety dressed up as inquiry, a mask that lets the institution get away with crimes worse than murder.”
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I was referring to questioning the dogma. Instead of taking it on faith that what has been handed down for generations is true.
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“‘Questioning the dogma’ only works if the questioning has teeth. But most of what passes for it inside the system is a safe, managed loop — doubt prepackaged as piety. You’re told it’s fine to prod the surface, as long as you never dig deep enough to strike the roots. Real questioning isn’t allowed, because real questioning unmasks the whole edifice. That’s why generations ‘hand it down’ unchanged: it survives not by truth, but by self-reinforcing ritual.”
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I agree with that.
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