Most of the unfortunately self-centered ghosts in The Great Divorce drew nothing but pity and detached sympathy from my judgmental heart, but the artsy phantasm was the one that plucked - and almost snapped - my conviction-strings. According to the portrayal of artistic endeavors in The Great Divorce, all creative energy channeled through art should be towards and for God, and out of a love for God. This blinded artist is a demonstration of creative energy being taken too far in the incorrect direction: towards a love of the expression itself. In the ghostly artist's situation, his focus is more upon the painting itself than on the country it represents and reflects, but I think - and Lewis seems to think - that this sentiment applies to any sort of creative assertion. If harnessed for the right expressive reasons, then writing, musicianship, or design can all be God-glorifying. However, the guiding spirit warns the ghost that these forms of expression can be "drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till . . . they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him."
Higher education is one of those potential vices. I find myself further and further drawn into the temptation to trust my own arguments, philosophies, and - scariest of all - rational theologies above the revelation of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. College has taught me to utilize my cognitive abilities to overcome and comprehend most any ideology, which subtly suggests that God's mysterious character simply has no place among higher intellectuals that can reason their way out of seemingly contradicting theologies. Thanks to The Great Divorce, I have realized that I must exert more effort in resisting this temptation to trust rational thought above the divine, no matter how mysterious the latter.
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