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| The Weight of Glory | 
 enlarge | Author: C. S. Lewis
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
Buy Used: $3.98
You Save: $7.97 (67%)
New (41) Used (37) Collectible (3) from $3.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 7632
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 208
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.6
ISBN: 0060653205
Dewey Decimal Number: 252.03
EAN: 9780060653200
ASIN: 0060653205
Publication Date: March 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Very good paperback.
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| Customer Reviews:
Great Reading March 3, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
There is a jacket blurb on The Weight of Glory from John Updike, who comments on both the comfort and pleasure afforded by Lewis. Neither should be underestimated. This is great devotional writing but it is also great writing, writing that is typified by Lewis' ability to deal with the weightiest of matters with a light touch.
It is a truism that our faith is reinforced whenever we see it embraced by great minds. Samuel Johnson believed that and it is interesting that Lewis often turns to Johnson for such reinforcement, as we turn to Lewis--one of the indisputably great intellectuals of the twentieth century. Part of that greatness comes from the stark clarity with which Lewis sees important matters. That makes his work accessible; it does not make it simplistic.
All of the lay sermons in this volume are trenchant, though 'The Weight of Glory' and 'Learning in War-Time' are exceptional. I especially like 'Is Theology Poetry?' and 'Membership' and find 'Why I Am Not a Pacifist' of particular interest and importance these days.
This is a book to be read, embraced, and shared.
Weighty and glorious March 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of my favorite books by C. S. Lewis. The essays are all valuable in many ways; they all touch upon not just theology, but politics, science, life in general. Lewis packs down into uncomplicated prose some of the most profound thoughts I've ever considered in "Transposition" and "Is Theology Poetry?", and they have to be read several times to be understood. In some ways, all the essays are interlinked; it makes sense to read it--the first time--from start to finish. Those who have read only MERE CHRISTIANITY and SCREWTAPE will find here more personal, complex, and unsimplified Lewis.
Lewis Apologetics at its Best February 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
For the serious reader of C. S. Lewis Christian apologetics, as opposed to his fiction and literary criticism, "The Weight of Glory" is Lewis at his deepest and best. The title essay alone is worth the price of the book.
And what is the weight of glory? "The load, the weight, the burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it.... All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of the other of these detinations [heaven or hell]." (pp. 46-47)
But, wait, there's more!
Provocative collection of sermons and essays June 6, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a very fine set of sermons, short articles, and addresses by Lewis, each of them taking up a different and interesting topic but also somehow relating to its fellows. As much as I enjoy longer sustained pieces by Lewis, these little kernels of thought, so concise and self-sufficient, are especially pleasurable to read. Indeed, I found them a little addictive, which is no doubt why I read the book so quickly.
"The Weight of Glory" is C. S. Lewis considering heaven again, something he does very well (as in The Problem of Pain), here trying to make sense of the promises of the "glory" beyond earthly life. In some ways, a complementary piece with "Transposition."
"Learning in War-Time" and "Why I Am Not a Pacifist" were both delivered in the context of World War Two. Of the two I like the first best, which features Lewis arguments to students at Oxford why the crisis of war does not make their academic studies less important. A great celebration of learning and liberal arts, passions of Lewis which readers of his Christian works might be apt to overlook. The second piece is as it sounds, a defense of fighting for one's country from a Christian perspective. Less convincing, still stirring stuff.
"Transposition" is one of my faves in the book. Why do "religious" experiences yield themselves to other, simpler explanations so easily--why may not mystical experiences simply be erotic love mischanneled, and so forth? Lewis postulates the theory that we "transpose" higher emotional experiences into our only available means of expressing them, so that the same physiological signs are called upon to represent a wide range of experiences, including religious ones. This is an elegant, analogy-rich explanation of the sort that will keep the mind buzzing for days.
"Is Theology Poetry?" is another great essay, both clever and amusing. To the idea that Christian theology might "merely" be poetic feeling, aesthetic pleasure, Lewis cleverly notes that if it is, it is very poor poetry--not half so aesthetically pleasing as Norse myth, for instance. My favorite part of this essay is Lewis's parodic presentation of the Big Bang theory as a romantic story, demonstrating that the presentation of any theory of origins can be manipulated and diminished in dignity.
After the heady stuff of the beginning essays, "The Inner Ring" is surprisingly modest in scope. The ring of the title is the coveted, half-imaginary circle of confidence within any social group--the top group, the exclusive club, the most influential clique. Lewis here counsels a group of graduates not to spend their lives hankering after membership in these rings, pointing out the rewards of tending to one's affairs and passions to the best of one's ability. A satisfying and encouraging address.
"Membership" is another relatively simple idea that Lewis follows to very interesting places. He points out the typical secular understanding of "member," denoting a more or less uniform member of a set, and contrasts this idea with the Christian understanding of the "members" of the Body of Christ. Within Christianity, he is arguing, members are meant to differ, to have different traits and "functions," like the organs of a body. Elegant.
The last and shortest pieces in the set, "On Forgiveness" and "A Slip of the Tongue," were the least interesting for me, though certainly worth reading and reviewing. "Forgiveness" makes a distinction between what we ask from God and what we seem to expect (not to be forgiven but "excused"). "A Slip of the Tongue" shows how a misquotation in prayer leads Lewis to consider how believers reserve temporal, secular pleasures and comforts to themselves while ostensibly requesting/desiring eternal gifts. A good critique of complacency and "practical" Christianity.
Overall a very fine collection, and probably a great place to begin sampling Lewis's writings for Christians.
Beautiful Insights April 24, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
In the title track of this book, a sermon, Lewis argues that the problem with humanity is not that we desire too much but too little. Should we pursue wholeheartedly the deepest desires of our hearts, we would be lead towards, rather than distracted from, God. He spends some time rebuffing the challenge that pursuing God for the sake of fulfilling our desires is immature. Instead, he says, we need to pursue temporary rewards at the beginning of our education in order to lead us to greater and more sublime fulfillment later on. What is promised in Scripture are five things: being with Christ, being like him, glory, entertainment, and position in the universe. He focuses especially on some misconceptions of "glory," preferring the idea of being acknowledged or recognized by God. He closes on the challenge that we spend time thinking about the potential glory of our neighbors, leading them, eternal beings that they are, to become what they are meant to be. For those who have not read this essay, it is a refreshing reversal of what many people think Christianity to be.
Of the remaining essays in the book, two of them, "Learning in War-Time" and "Why I Am Not a Pacifist," address issues that arose during Lewis' experience of WWII (having fought in the first war). He rebuffs pacifism in light of Jesus' teachings on turning the other cheek with an apparent intuitionism, suggesting that there are obvious exceptions. The other proposes that war does not bring to a halt the practices of a disciplined life that prepare us for a future without war. "Transposition" is an exploration of the phenomenon of speaking in tongues. "Is Theology Poetry" is a defense against the accusation that Christianity has no more substance than myth. "The Inner Ring" deals with developing the personal integrity and fortitude to resist trying to achieve status in a peer hierarchy, a clique. "Membership" is an introductory look at the necessity of Christian community. "On forgiveness" looks specifically at our desire not to forgive, and proposes the remedy of realizing that, one, God understands the things that lead us to sin, and, two, God really does forgive our sins, with or without reason. The book closes with "A Slip of the Tongue," in which he wrestles with his own temptation to hold onto the temporal and not renounce it for the eternal.
Lewis' work could be said to be prophetic, in the sense that he sees beyond the norms of the world around him, even the well-enforced norms, and draws our attention to an alternate kingdom. He vision is singular and clear, and he finds in this alternate reality a palpable attraction which he believes to be written on every human heart. Like Narnia, there is a world that we all most want, and Lewis is playing on our desires to get there in order to draw our attention to it. In a word, he makes stale old Christianity sound fun.
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