Earlier this spring, my brother recommended that I read C.S. Lewis’s The Weight of Glory. It was well worth the read.

The version I found at the library is a 1965 edition, containing five essays:

• The Weight of Glory
• Transposition
• Membership
• Learning in War-Time
• The Inner Ring

I can’t do each of these addresses justice here; I’ll merely summarize the nature of each, and leave you to read them for yourself.

In “The Weight of Glory,” Lewis talks heaven and the promises therein. Things he said were similar to things Randy Alcorn talks about in Money, Possessions, and Eternity — in Heaven there is treasure, allotted to us, and this is to be desired.

“Transposition” brilliantly addresses Paul’s saying in one of the letters to the Corinthians that the spiritual things are “spiritually discerned.” Using the concept of transposition (I think a modern mathematical term for it would be “projection”), he describes how the nature of God and the divine order of the universe are hidden to those are not first aware of their existence. An example he uses is that of a flat drawing — the shapes in a two-dimensional representation of three-dimensional realities only make sense if we are previously aware of the three-dimensional entities represented; otherwise, a road in perspective may look only like a triangle.

“Membership” discusses the nature of our membership in the body of Christ, and the nature of membership in general. He points out how the term “membership” is frequently used to describe belonging to a homogeneous set of items, and that this is entirely opposite to the meaning intended by the new testament authors.

“Learning in War-Time” deals with the pursuit of academic studies in light of the reality of hell and eternal destiny. He states that God does not necessarily call a man to drop all that he’s doing and engage in some vocational ministry; rather, God redeems a man’s life and endeavors. Rather than stopping doing everything one was doing when turning to Christ, one does the things one was doing, but now for the honor of God rather than the praise of man. Further, he points out the danger of becoming more enthralled with the fact that we know something than the thing being known; this, he says, is the problematic level of pride.

Finally, “The Inner Ring” warns of the danger of desiring to belong to various cliques and inner circles of power in society.

All told, a rather worthy read. There’s a lot of good, thought-provoking material in this small volume, and it’s in a readily approachable format as a nice bonus.