The Great Divorce at amazon.comDon't Waste Your Life at amazon.com
From: silkroadinaa@hotmail.com
Subject: Two Book Reviews
Date: October 11, 2004 11:27:47 AM GMT+04:00
Salaams! Have read two excellent books lately. I'll write a bit about them and then will include info from amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com below:
The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis: I read this book a loooong time ago, and felt it needed a re-read (as most Lewis books should be). Man, glad I did. Enjoyed Lewis' allegorical bus trip from hell (a lonely, nondescript grey kind of place where everyone move further away from each other because they're always fighting with each other over piddly things) and tour of heaven...well, more like the approaches to heaven. Yeah, see the good review below about some of the theological controversy Lewis stirs up, but know that Lewis--as usual--hits the nail on the head so clearly in showing why people are the ones who send themselves to hell...and wouldn't be comfortable in heaven even if they could get in. When you just can't "have it your way," or be "the king of the hill" and submit to the King of Kings...well, then you're not fit for heaven, where joy oozes out of every leaf and blade of grass and waterfall, singing praises to the Creator of it all.
Don't Waste Your Life, John Piper: This was an excellent and challenging read. It is all about what Piper calls the "single, all-embracing, all-transforming reason for being: a passion to enjoy and display God's supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples." It is about why we should be living each day with a mind to Jesus' call for us to live life with a "wartime lifestyle" and "hazardous liberality." Lives that are lived with faith-filled risk and abandonment, as opposed to lives lived with an "avoidance ethic." BUT, this is serious stuff, and Piper begins the book, appropriately, with a warning:
"The path of God-exalting joy will cost you your life. Jesus said, 'Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.' In other words, it is better to lose your life than to waste it. If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full. This is not a book about how to avoid a wounded life, but how to avoid a wasted life. Some of you will die in the service of Christ. That will not be a tragedy. Treasuring life above Christ is a tragedy." The bottom-line is that we have been bought with a price--we are NOT our own--and we are to strive to glorify God in our body, whether by our life or by our death (see I Cor 6:19-20 & Phil 1:20-21).
The Great Divorce
by C. S. Lewis
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The Great Divorce is C.S. Lewis's Divine Comedy: the narrator bears strong resemblance to Lewis (by way of Dante); his Virgil is the fantasy writer George MacDonald; and upon boarding a bus in a nondescript neighborhood, the narrator is taken to Heaven and Hell. The book's primary message is presented with almost oblique tidiness--"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'" However, the narrator's descriptions of sin and temptation will hit quite close to home for many readers. Lewis has a genius for describing the intricacies of vanity and self-deception, and this book is tremendously persistent in forcing its reader to consider the ultimate consequences of everyday pettiness. --Michael Joseph Gross --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Synopsis
C. S. Lewis takes us on a profound journey through both heaven and hell in this engaging allegorical tale. Using his descriptive powers, Lewis introduces us to supernatural beings who will change the way we think about good and evil.
Book Description
C. S. Lewis takes us on a profound journey through both heaven and hell in this engaging allegorical tale. Using his extraordinary descriptive powers, Lewis introduces us to supernatural beings who will change the way we think about good and evil.
Reviewer:
Robert W. Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
THE GREAT DIVORCE is remarkable for being a book by C. S. Lewis that is as likely to be criticized by Christians as by non-Christians. While MERE CHRISTIANITY is an apology for traditional Christianity, THE PROBLEM OF PAIN an attempt to deal with problems in theodicy, and THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS a help for analyzing psychological dimensions of temptation, THE GREAT DIVORCE can best be described as speculative theology. This is not the only place where Lewis allows himself to speculate on matters theological. For instance, he elsewhere suggests that pets and other animals who have interacted with humans will go to heaven, while wild animals will not, because these animals have gained a personality through human contact. In this work, Lewis speculates about the nature of the afterlife.
Inevitably, Lewis's work will unfairly be compared to Dante, who like Lewis is granted a visit to the afterlife. It is unfair because Dante's DIVINE COMEDY is without debate one or the two or three greatest masterpieces in the history of world literature. THE GREAT DIVORCE is not even one of Lewis's best works. Still, as long as one does not force Lewis's work to compare favorably to Dante's work, the comparison is not uninstructive. Like Dante, Lewis finds a guide. While Dante is shown through Hell and Purgatory by Virgil and through heaven by Beatrice, Lewis's guide is the Scottish theologian and fantasy writer George MacDonald. This is not inappropriate for a couple of reasons. What Lewis is suggesting about heaven and hell in THE GREAT DIVORCE is not precisely orthodox, and MacDonald himself, while devoutly religious, was somewhat heterodox in his advocacy of universalism, i.e., the belief that all humans will be redeemed, and not only Christian believers.
In THE GREAT DIVORCE Lewis tries to take a midpoint between universalism and a traditional belief in eternal damnation in hell of unbelievers. Lewis is hardly the first to attempt this. Origen, the brilliant if eccentric father of the early church, among other things toyed with the idea that being sent to hell might not be a permanent state. Lewis attempts to preserve the notion of the punishment of sins, but shifts the agent of that punishment from God to the individual involved. Basically, people place themselves in hell and prevent themselves from ascending to heaven. All one need do is surrender one's will to God, and cease insisting on one's own conception of things. In a sense, the primary thing an individual can do to receive grace, even in the next world, is to humble oneself.
The great negative to Lewis's view is that it doesn't correspond terribly well with either the views of the New Testament or to traditional Church teaching. The great advantage is that it absolves God of any complicity in sending people to hell. A host of factors will determine whether one will find one or either of these views desirable. Like George MacDonald, I tend to be quite orthodox on most Christian doctrines, but somewhat heterodox on the issue of the damnation of the unsaved. I personally am quite drawn to Lewis's views on the afterlife, and while I concede that they don't mesh well with the Bible's teachings on hell, I believe they mesh well with the Bible's teachings on the loving nature of God. It solves some key issues at the heart of theodicy, or to paraphrase Milton, it justifies the ways of God to men.
Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Lewis, this marvelous book raises some important theological questions. It also complicates the normal picture of Lewis as a staunch defender of traditionalism. We find in it that Lewis was also a bit of a theological rebel.
-----------------------
Don't Waste Your Life
John Piper
Product Details:
ISBN: 1581344988
Format: Paperback, 160pp
Pub. Date: June 2003
Publisher: Crossway Books
Barnes & Noble Sales Rank: 9,292
NEW FROM B&N
List Price: $12.99
Don't Waste Your Life
FROM THE PUBLISHER
It's easy to slip through life without taking any risks -- without making your life count. But life ought not be wasted. You don't need to know a lot of things to make a lasting difference in the world, but you do have to know the few, great, unchanging, and glorious things that matter and be willing to live and to die for them. John Piper's plea to a generation is, "Don't waste your life!" This book is a passionate call to make your life count for eternity. He acknowledges that there are risks for those who seek to make a lasting difference by faith, yet he believes that they are risks worth taking for the cause of the Gospel. Each book includes a DVD featuring Piper speaking on this topic. If you believe that to live is Christ and to die is gain, read this book, learn to live for Christ, and grab the opportunity to make your life matter!
CUSTOMER REVIEWS
A reviewer, September 26, 2003, 
Essential reading
John Piper hits the nail on the head! A must read for every christian actively seeking God.
Also recommended: The Purpose Driven Life; Rick Warren
Klondicia Marrietta Smith, Thrilled to be here, September 22, 2003, 
The best you can be
The title pretty much says it all. This is a book about being the best you can be.
Also recommended: Kenn Gividen's THE PRAYER OF HANNAH is excellent also.
No comments:
Post a Comment