Thoughts on the book The Great Divorce

Recently I read C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce for the first time.

I was semi impressed while reading it. But since I finished it I keep on thinking about it.  Throughout my day periodically snatches of the book come back to me. Sometimes I'll meet people who remind me of his characters.

The way Lewis presents hell fascinates me. I'm attracted to the concept that the people who are in hell could cross over to heaven, but they don't want to be there.  They resist God's ways; His love, forgiveness and uncompromising stance that He must come first.

All my life I've lived in the north American Christian church. I was raised, and mostly resided, in a group called southern Baptists. While I appreciate the wealth that this Christian sect has afforded me, I'm not really comfortable with the common church stance regarding hell. This idea that the cross was a cosmic event where God poured out His love for all mankind, and He loves and wants all mankind to come to him up until the moment they die - and then it's too late.  If they were raised in a Muslim or some other anti-Christian country and did not repent and to come to Jesus, then they'll be tortured in hell for all eternity. This view that would say for an example that if Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl during WWII who wrote her famous diary while hiding from Nazis, died without coming to Christ; she'd end up in the same hell as Hitler.  Somehow, this doesn't jive with what I read in the Bible.

Lewis' idea of an opportunity after death to still come to God interests me.