Letting Go and Moving On

Timothy Chester

In Chapter Five, we meet again the rotund, cultured Ghost—our fellow traveler from the bus—now in heated debate with a radiant Spirit he calls “Dick.” This Ghost sees Heaven and Hell as mere metaphors, spiritual ideas for intellectual discussion, not real places. He prides himself on “honest opinions fearlessly followed,” but it’s clear: his opinions were shaped less by truth-seeking and more by a fear of seeming naïve or unpopular. The Spirit names this plainly, calling out his intellectual pride and revealing that “sincerity” doesn’t absolve us when we’ve let convenience shape conviction.

Timothy Chester

The chapter probes something timely: how belief becomes performance, how we defend doubt not as humility but as self-protection. For the Ghost, Heaven offers no stage for his talent, no need for his lectures—only the unsettling invitation to be forgiven. And that, he cannot accept. He turns back to give a paper to his “Theological Society” in Hell.

Timothy Chester

Chapter Six shifts from debate to embodiment. Our narrator begins to feel Heaven physically—its grass too firm to bend, its rivers walkable but resistant. Then comes Ikey, the bowler-hatted Ghost, who attempts to steal a golden apple from a tree of impossible beauty. The effort wrecks him—he moves with pain, weighed down by the fruit he cannot carry. A bright Angel warns: the apple can’t go back to Hell. “Stay and learn to eat such apples.” But Ikey refuses. Greed doesn’t just distort desire—it makes us blind to abundance we don’t control.

Timothy Chester

These chapters are about spiritual transformation—and its cost. Lewis invites us to consider: Are we willing to let go of our curated selves, our cleverness, our scarcity thinking—to receive a truth that does not need us, but still welcomes us?

Timothy Chester

Let’s dive in.