Master Mentor #6

Saturday – February 2, 2008 – Chapter 5
I’ll say this again as I said it before, I like the pace of CS’s writing. Here in chapter 5 (of the first section… which this could get very confusing but I’m going to discuss this chapters in order with a simple renumbering so I don’t get lost. After this chapter, CS goes onto book 2 and begins again with chapter 1. For my purposes here in reading this book the way that I am, it will serve me better to call the next chapter 6, which I will.) , CS sums up most of what he has been talking about in the first four chapters (or book 1). He sums it up with there statements:
1. We all want progress, but if we have progressed in the wrong direction, it’s always better to go back to where we made the mistake and begin again.
2. We haven’t gotten as far as God or Christianity yet, but only as far as establishing a “somebody” or “something” behind the Moral Law that we all ascribe to, even if we decide to disobey it from time to time for our personal benefit.
3. Christianity does not make sense until you have discussed the disarray that we find ourselves in as far as having made mistakes and needing to receive forgiveness as it does no one any good to talk of mistakes and forgiveness until you realize you have made mistakes and need forgiveness.
I guess one of the things that I like about this chapter and we’ll see if the trend continues (I suspect that it will) is that CS seems to be presenting this work in a similar fashion to Paul’s explanation of sinfulness and forgiveness in the book of Romans. For Paul, he is telling the Romans that we’ve all messed up (Gentiles (non-Israelites) and Jews alike) and we all need a forgiveness and a Savior (Romans 3:23). CS seems to be moving in a similar logical direction and I didn’t realize it until today.
But he is going slow and that’s good. It is easy in a discussion like this to move too fast and lose people along the way. But CS isn’t doing that and that’s good. In fact, several times in this chapter, he reminds the readers to slow down and not jump to conclusions that he’s not ready to draw. Good stuff.

Jim