4/14/11
THE PILGRIMS REGRESS
An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism
BY C.S. LEWIS
BOOK REVIEW BY JOHN. L. D.
http://JesusChristIsTheTruth.YolaSite.com
Book Reviews
The narrator is telling us about his dream. The teenaged dream hero, John, is finding the outside world more fascination than his family life. He sneeks out of his house at night, several times, until he begins his actual journey. He finally leaves his family for good. He is looking & longing for a far distant island that he’s only seen from a great distance. He is also seeking the truth about the “Landlord” & where you go when you are ejected from the Landlord’s farm. He meets many virtuous, kooky & somewhat foolish types. Everyone seems convinced of his own philosophy of life & very few change their minds very often.
This is not appropriate for children. Most fairy tales are 6-10 pages long & not 161 pages.
Next, there is a potential conflict for liberals, politically correct or those who want to avoid unnecessarily offending anyone. The teen is befriended by a girl his age, a naked girl they have sex. Those women are called “brown girls”. There are also white girls, but they want a bunch of preconditions met before they have sex, if they every do. I don’t believe that Dr. Staples is referring to the sexual practices of specific races at all, but in our society we are so accepting & unbiased, but yet we see racial discrimination everywhere, even where it may not exist. Perhaps he is just discussing how powerful a motivator sex can be, whether we are aware of its influence, deny, harness, or repress it. The urge towards the spiritual, religion, philosophy, psychology, sociology, politics, ecology, God, romance, sex, adventure are similar energies we find in the urge for peaceful union with ourselves, others & God. There are many false paths that will take us away from our dreams & from God.
He tells us that many of the philosophies that were popular in Dr. Lewis’s early Christianity have morphed into different modern formulas. Like a cancer when you start to understand it & kill it, it mutates into something with better armor & swifter attacks. Luckily for us, in the “Afterword To Third Edition”, he tells us that in his own life, he has proved all the anti-Christian ancient & modern philosophies were wrong. That’s why he is a Christian. He also explains some terms & names in his allegory that only a scholar of many languages & civilizations could understand.
We should not be swayed by clever arguments in classrooms, books or documentaries. We don’t know who created these propaganda pieces, who paid them & which ideological groups they are representing. The stories & myths are being composed by atheists & anti-Christians. They are masquerading their OPINIONS as absolute & final truth, pure science, the gods, penultimate wisdom as if they are our concerned friends generously guiding us. They are the Devil for true Christians, Unless we can benefit from the few, if any true facts contained in their programs we should avoid them. Let’s pick our advisors & entertainment carefully.
This story was somewhat enjoyable, but a little difficult to understand. Perhaps my unconscious mind will understand the allegories on some deeper level. But it does resonate with me in that my spiritual search has taken me down many paths. All my life I’ve interviewed people for their opinions on dating, fighting, sports, religion, philosophy, food, UFOs, ESP, God, the purpose of life, etc. There are various & conflicting opinions on almost every topic. At some point I had to try out some of the theories & evaluate which were the best tools to achieve my goals. The more intense & rapid your search, if combined with honest reflection, trial & error the faster you will reach your goal. You will eventually choose God, Nothingness or the Devil. Nothingness is actually the Devil, so you only have: God or the Devil as you object of desire.
As you know, C.S. Lewis was a great scholar who was convinced that atheism was the best choice for life. But, later he became an ardent defender of Jesus Christ, a debunker of all false philosophies & theories that attacked Jesus & his church. He also was very ecumenical, in that he wanted Christians of different denominations to find the similarities & focus on those. It is better for Christians to present a unified front to the world & display the love for one another that Jesus commanded of his followers. We should ignore the minor & unessential dissimilarities, if they have nothing to do with our salvation. He was an Protestant Anglican that refused to attack the Catholics, but he could also express his differences as opinions & not as condemnations. I think he is a good church father & example for us.
THE TIMLESS WRITINGS OF C.S. LEWIS: THE PILGRIM’S REGRESS; CHRISTIAN REFLECTIONS; GOD IN THE DOCK. The Pilgrim’s Regress, Copyright © 1933 & 1943 by Clive Staples Lewis, Family Christian Press; Christian Reflections, © 1967 by the Executors of the Estate of C.S. Lewis; God In The Dock, © 1970 by the Trustees of the Estate of C.S. Lewis. Pages 161. Pen & ink illustrations by Michael Hague.
ISBN: 0-88486-331-X.
SALVATION TRACTS FROM INHERITANCE OF OUR FATHERS
http://JesusChrististheTruth.YolaSite.com
6/14/11
INTRO
These are small, plain white tracts from taken from sermons, tracts or letters from bold preachers of the 1500s to the early 1800’s, at least the few that I’ve seen. These are for the serious Protestants, serious about salvation. I’m a serious Catholic & Protestant Christian & I am enjoying reading & being inspired by these tracts. Hopefully, I’m a part of the true followers within Jesus Christ’s Church, which includes all churches that he would praise [See Revelation chapters 2 & 3]. I’m always looking for a different presentation of the Gospel of Jesus, whether from Peter, Paul, James or John or some more modern people. The Catholics emphasize the Church Fathers such as St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas & so many visionaries, saints & martyrs that promoted a “correct” Catholic theology. For the Protestants you must preach in line with Luther, Calvin & Wesley’s interpretations of the Gospel, which are something similar to what are in these few tracts. I’ve heard of the Rev. John Newton (Amazing Grace song) whose tract is “Guilt Removed, and Peace Restored”, but not: Andrew Gray-“Great Salvation”, Hugh Latimer-“Thou Canst Make Me Clean”, William Romaine-“The Self-Existence of Jesus Christ” & Thomas Halyburton-“Man’s Recovery by Faith in Christ or the Convicted Sinner’s Case and Cure”. I was raised a Catholic & the priest & the Pope were our modern & current authorities. Later I became a Seventh Day Adventist so, Ellen G. White was the Church Mother & we didn’t need Church Fathers.
These tracts seemed boring to me at first. I mean how many ways can you say, “Jesus is the only way to get to the Father, Heaven & eternal life”? These old-timers apparently had an education that often puts our school systems in America to shame. But more importantly they had a love, reverence & fire for Jesus Christ & our salvation that you rarely see today. Oh, we hear great preachers, who then go to Asia to buy tailored suits, play a few rounds of golf with a president or dictator, hire & fire pilots for their fleet of private jets that fly them to their world-wide industries or their several mansions. And since Gross Capitalism is the sin Republicans & evangelical types encourage the most. This all seems so normal & even Christ-like to them, to refuse to sell all they have & give it to the poor. Republican Capitalistic Christians might defend themselves by saying,
“What is the alternative? To be cursed by poverty, to be a socialist or communist, to be powerless in a world that hates Christians & Jews or rather to provoke sinners to jealousy as our rich Father Abraham did?”
Maybe we need to go back to the fear of God, the total love of God & the total obedience to God, even if it means selling all our idols, whatever they may be, & giving the money from them to the poor Christians & then the left-over money, the offerings & sacrificial alms to Jewish non Christians & Gentile sinners? This is truly the church age of Laodicea that is making God sick to His stomach, so to speak. How can we claim that Christians should all be well off financially, but then send all our money overseas to mostly sinners, religions that hate us & pagans while Christians in our churches are falling all around us into financial ruin? If Christians should be blessed, then logically speaking, the well off in our churches should be intimately involved in raising the economic status of all Christians or blessing them. That will provoke more jealousy then a few selfish, blind, wealthy preachers hob-nobbing with the rich & the famous. Oops, pardon me, I guess I went off on a tangent & became a little too passionate (code word for angry). Anyway, having the correct salvation “formula” is necessary, but also demonstrating the love for our own brothers in sisters, is what Jesus said would attract the wicked sinners to us, not how much wealth we hoard [John 15:12-14].
These tracts that inspired me, but which I didn’t really haven’t reviewed, are from a Protestant "Reformed" church & you can get free (donations requested) sermon tracts from the 16 to 1900s from:
The Inheritance Publishers, P.O. Box 1334, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49501, www.hnrc.org/ip, also watch sermons or down load MP3 sermons; Reformed Heritage Book Sales, www.heritagebooks.org (non profit organization). To get on their mailing address email your postal address to: ip@hnrc.org or send your address to the P.O. Box address above. Church Address: Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation 540 Crescent St NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503, 616-977-0599
Tract Bibliography
Great Salvation—Series XXIX, No. 12; Guilt Removed, and Peace Restored—Series XXX, No. 6; Man’s Recovery by Faith in Christ or the Convicted Sinner’s Case and Cure, Series XXX, No. 11; Thou Canst Make Me Clean, Series XXXII, No. 4; The Self-Existence of Jesus Christ, Series XXXIII, No. 3.
