Weight of Glory audiobook

BOOK #1 FOR BOOKTUBEATHON 2016This was pretty fantastic! I didn't enjoy it as much as other Lewis books, but you gotta admit that he is super eloquent. He has a way of getting to the heart of things that is unlike any other. The last few essays really hit me hard, and I love him for that.Will always love CS Lewis

Just great. Also read in November of 1995. Great. Also read in February of 1994. Also read in June of 1981. Listened to the Audible version in February of 2016. Finished listening to it again on Audible in January 2018.

"The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point."I have 44 highlights in the Kindle Book and I reread it regularly. In fact, I try to read at least one CS Lewis book every January to start the year off right. This is one of my favorites. It feels like Lewis and I chatting randomly about life and stuff. Of course, I just sit quietly nodding my head frequently and occasionally sipping my Lake District Pale Ale.August update: Just listened to this on audio for the first time. I think I prefer this book in writing. The narration was excellent but I think it is too good a book not to highlight. Audio is great for review though and I did read this book twice this year.

"To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you." C.S. Lewis' popularity has died in more recent history. Academics accuse him of being too simplistic in his expression (a few that I have read even go so far as to say that he adds nothing to Christian theology), other readers find his style too wordy, preachy or patronising to fully enjoy. I myself, however, love C.S. Lewis' work much like I love G.K. Chesterton and J.R.R Tolkien. He is enthusiastic, flawed and all so human - bridging a divide between the more intellectual academics and the everyman. Or so I believe anyway.The one great thing about Lewis' work, is that like Chesterton, he is so quotable. But where Chesterton is a far better wit and academic, Lewis is more laid back and grounded - like a humorous and approachable, if sometimes gruff, Grandad. The reason, therefore, that I believe many intellectuals (particularly atheistic individuals) dismiss Lewis' contribution to Christian apologetics is because he speaks with honesty and straightforwardly. This may sound contradictory, considering the way Lewis conducts his phrases - however it seems clear to me that the way he states his intentions is direct. He's not tactless, yet he does not hide his sentences in tact (if that makes any particular sense). To the intellectual who prefers greater nuance and ideas that they can make their own, there is little for them in Lewis' work. "Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairytales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years." I would define Lewis as a Christian philosopher in his own way. After all, philosophy is all about critical thought, and Lewis is nothing if not critical - again perhaps a reason for his loss of popularity is that he attacks established intellectual institutions within his thoughts. Yet he is more a philosopher of apologetics - if such a role ever has existed. "...it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased." Yet, for most of this review I have merely been defending C.S. Lewis, not addressing this actual work of his. I will say that if you like Lewis, this is one of the better works of his that I have read. His address on The Weight of Glory is one of the finer pieces that he ever composed, I would argue, and many of the other pieces address similarly interesting and complex issues from the idea of unity, peace and scientific logic v. God. I will have to see how Mere Christianity stands up next to this.For now I will state this in closing. I believe that C.S. Lewis is someone who should be read by anyone who reads philosophy or books of faith - works that address the idea of Human Nature and the mind or soul. Lewis is by far one of the most down-to-earth and confrontationally direct of all the writers I have tried (in many ways he is the direct opposite of Nietzsche) but he is still one of the more appealing to me. I will never cease to find it of more interest that he came from critical and intellectual atheism to critical and intellectual faith - proving that Christianity need not be faith without thought. "Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

One of Lewis's most brilliant, the title essay in this collection will blow you away with its rationale for pre-earth life, our longing to be recognized by God, and the remarkable practicality of the ending: it has the biggest 'so what?' I've ever read, and all the groundwork he lays throughout the essay makes the crescendo and climax, solid and unarguable. "It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or the other of these destinations . . . There are no ordinary people. you have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. and our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat--the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.I was just going to quote a couple of lines there, but you see how remarkable it is!

It's been a while since I'd last read Lewis--and this book did not disappoint! The titular essay was easily my favorite of the lot. But his reflections on pacifism and what makes live worth living were also superb--and there were a number of great insights in the other essays as well. Leaves you with a lot of food for thought.Rating: 4 Stars (Very Good).

2020. I love this book. I'm so glad I picked it up again, it was good for me. 2016. Wonderful.

Another awesome group of essays. Some of his famous quotes are in here. Always fun when I stumble upon bits and pieces of Lewis with which I disagree. There’s a bit of overlap between this and God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics. This one definitely deserves a reread in print. I’ll write a proper review someday.

Wow. Just wow.That's the feeling I always get after finishing one of C.S. Lewis's works; Mere Christianity was the same way for me. It's the feeling of, "well, that was that, and it was perfect, and there's nothing more I can even say".Read this beautiful, thought-provoking book. It'll challenge you, convict you, and help you view the world-- and the Lord-- in light of eternity.I underlined and marked so many quotes in this book, but these are a few of my favorites:"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”“He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”

2022: Second time through this (this year as a part of my read through all of CS Lewis’s major works) and I was equally as amazed as I was the first time. There are so many good chapters here. My favorites are obviously the first chapter Weight of Glory, chapter 2 Learning in Wartime, chapter 6 The Inner Ring and chapter 7 Membership. In many ways Lewis is writing more to our current cultural crisis than he was to his. At least that’s the way it seems to me. I think (as with God in the Dock) someone should just start publishing these chapters (save for Weight of Glory because everyone knows quotes from that) in a modern Christian blog or magazine and not list who the author is and I am sure many commenters would be saying “this man gets our culture” or “what a 21st century voice for Christians this man is” and all the while it is Lewis who wrote these around 75 years ago!!! Amazing! Highest recommendation again! 2021 review: Simply amazing! I had quoted the first chapter dozens of times but now I have read the whole thing and it just as spectacular as that first chapter!! Highest recommendation!

Good stuff.Presumably no one wants to listen to a too-long, roughly-edited, Weight of Glory-inspired conversation between two girls who do not yet know what they’re doing when it comes to technology (or talking to microphones)…but in case anyone does have a very long drive or a lot of dishes to wash or laundry to fold, here’s a link to a friend’s and my podcast episode on this book: https:// open. spotify. com/ episode/1l5rrAjg2CAauIYGXmJlWn?si=oVoXGCkFRwq3EN9ZhCnyQg (and just take out the spaces since Goodreads and links love each other not)

It has been quite a while since I have re-read this amazing book by C. S. Lewis. I look forward to writing a review once I am finished.