Perelandra

I'll admit that the beginning of the book was pretty hard to read, in the sense that it was more confusing. But, as I got more into the book, I began to appreciate the beauty of the story and its relation to the creation of our own earth. Two themes/ideas early stood out to me.

1. Temptation comes and goes, it is up to us to decide what we are going to do with it.

"Thus, and not otherwise, the world was made. Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices."

While the lady had no sense of right and wrong, she still had to make choices, to listen to reason and logic and decide for herself what was inherently right. While we know right and wrong and are tempted, we have the Holy Ghost to balance us out. That being said, it is a challenge for us not to be clouded by that. But, we do have the ability to choose, to make up our minds to have a clear mind by staying worthy.

2. Each of us are little Maledils

What I mean by that, and want to expound on, is that we are little Christ's, in so many different ways. Ransom is the perfect example as he teaches each of us that we can be a representative of Christ. While Ransom might have felt that he wasn't prepared or strong enough, there came a time when he realized that he had to fight the un-man, whether or not he liked it. In the same way, there comes a time when we have to decide that we are on the Lord's side, and do all we can to fight the adversary and everything he stands for. We are stronger and better than we think we are. If we can have that faith and courage, then we will be able to overcome all.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Rereading this book was a joy. 


The wonderful thing about children's books is that there are so many things that you don't understand and appreciate till you're older. 


I love the characters and personalities that he built into each of the characters in the story. He did an amazing job by explaining the fallibility of all of God's creation. 


Alongside that, he had a good understanding of the beauty of the Atonement, along with the consequences of disobeying god. Putting it in fiction, I feel, gives all a better understanding of the concept. 


One passage reads:

You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill.... And so that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property... unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water."

 

We can subject ourselves to God or the Devil. It is our choice, but a choice that makes all the difference. At the end of the day though, there is one who is the Father and master of the other. As Aslan put it.... 

"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward."

The beauty of the Atonement lies in the fact that it has the ability for us to overcome all. And, we can, if we so choose to.

Christianity and Literature

Reading this essay gave me a better understanding of what lewis was thinking when he started to write his fictional books centered around Christian theology. while secular and Christian literature should have the same literary styles, it is in the message it conveys, much as the Savior did, that makes the difference. Lewis makes a good point when he says that that the Savior's words seemed beautifully poetic to us, and part of that based on the fact that He is a perfect being. To phrases in this piece stop out to me.

First was Lewis' interpretation of Paul's epistle, when he said that "God is to Christ as Christ is yo man an man is to woman, and the relation between each term and the next is that of the head." I think that that is one thing that Lewis could not fully grasp because He did not understand the Trinity. It could not reconcile with his understanding that we could become Gods. That is the beauty of the Restoration.

The second quote, I absolutely love. In quoting Homer's Phemius, he said:   

I am self-taught; a god has inspired me with all manner of songs.' It sounds like a direct contradiction. How can he be self-taught if the god has taught him all he knows? Doubtless because the God's instruction is given internally, not through the senses, and is therefore regarded as part of the self..."

The gifts that God has given us are all within us to use, to learn ang grow and develop. I hope that I always remember that it is God that inspires me in each thing that I do everyday. He is, in every way, the way, the truth, and the life. 

Surprised by Joy

There are many things in life that affect an change us, for better or for worse.

My Mom's parents died when she was in college, at a fairly young age. My mother got angry at God, and was inactive of almost two decades. There are many experiences in life that teach us, whether for better or for worse. The difference lies in the way we respond to it.

Lewis became an atheist for the better part of His life, but when he gained a testimony of Christ, returned with a vengeance. It was interesting to read about the life of Lewis, to gain a better understanding of the themes and characters of his books as a result of looking at his life as he grew up. I love his admittance of his reluctance to take back Christianity.

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

The beauty of the gospel is that it is always there. The challenge is turning to it and admitting it is the only true way to joy. My mother eventually realized that and return to activity in the Church. I hope that I have a resevoir of testimony and faith deep enough never to have to go through that!

Miracles

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

Though I do not fully understand all that Lewis was trying to teach when he was writing miracles, I do have an understanding of the faith that He had in God. The problem with not having a full knowledge of the restore gospel means that you can only piece to gather certain things, with hunks of the puzzle still missing. 


But in the quote mentioned above, Lewis it it on the head. Miracles are right in front of us everyday, in the lives that we live, in the things that we see everyday. The problem is not in the miracle, the problem is in us. 


Lewis also said: 

The grounds for belief and disbelief are the same today as they were two thousand — or ten thousand — years ago. If St. Joseph had lacked faith to trust God or humility to perceive the holiness of his spouse, he could have disbelieved the miraculous origin of her Son as easily as any modern man; and any modern man who believes in God can accept the miracle as easily as St. Joseph did.

We can have faith in the miraculous birth of Christ. Why can't we then believe in miracles as they happen each day. Looking out for those miracles in our lives will bring us great blessings, one, because we have the faith to look, and two, because we will be so much the better for it when the Lord does bless us with them.