Christian author C.S. Lewis once spoke, “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.” For most who believe, it rings true that in searching and accepting God, one undergoes a transformation. In this belief, one can overcome internal and external mountains in clinging to the truth of God they hold to be true. It is not necessary for one to believe in God in order to see the life change that can occur in others who let God take control of their lives. Literary authors Khaled Hosseini and Charles Dickens use religious allusions in order to develop characters who reveal the theme that in desperate times, leaning on God or a higher power can bring about resolution and change in one’s character after times of self deprecation. To commence, both characters, Amir and Sydney Carton, struggle throughout their lives to accept the ways they have lived and things they have or have not done. Sydney Carton specifically deals with self doubt and extreme lack of self confidence as he hopelessly pines after Lucie Manette. He compares himself to Lucie’s real love interest Darnay, saying, “Do you particularly like the man? Why should you particularly like a man who …show more content…
Characters Amir and Sydney Carton both undergo a transformation as they each find their God. These changes are displayed throughout the novel as the characters are able to let go of their past and previous views of themself. Amir is able to let go of his cowardice and guilt and Carton releases his self doubt as they each begin to understand their purpose as they cling to a higher power. Solutions tried previously simply do not succeed until they find God through their desperation. Have you ever thought, what are your solutions? Are they
How do you allow God to take control of your life and entrust that everything will be okay? This was the type of question author Anne Lamott (2006) baffled with in these next few chapters. Lamott (2006) shares her personal life story of entrusting God in her book Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. This paper will provide a summary of chapters two thru four, combined with a personal reflection, and conclude with a few desired questions that ideally could be answered by Lamott.
Faith is having absolute loyalty and trust towards a tremendous power in their growth. In the biography Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer, Alfons Heck is a strong supporter of Hitler, but his relationship decreased. The memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, a Jewish holocaust survivor, has a wavering relationship with God that also decreases as time continues. Both Heck and Wiesel are devoted to their God’s at first; however, Wiesel is confused with his faith, while Heck continues to follow Hitler. In the end, each boy feels betrayed by their leaders.
Growth in God Through Grief In between the pages of this sacred journal of C.S. Lewis’, he dives into the depths of losing the one he was closest to, his wife. This journal is doubtlessly his most vulnerable book, because it is his direct life experience, and he does not hold back. C.S. Lewis slowly works through his pain and describes his experiences going through the process of grief. He is a man of faith and writes a fair amount about God in this book, but it is not all hopeful.
Many may believe that reading a book about religion would be challenging to accomplish for someone who is not religious. But those people have never read Anne Lamott’s, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith. If one were to ask non-religious college students to read a book by a random author about spirituality and “Finding God” through conversion, they would most likely roll their eyes and bear through it. In Lamott’s series of essays, one does not have to “suffer through the readings” because her writing style is one of a kind. She has strategically chosen every word because she is aware of how important her spiritual experiences are to so many people, religious or not.
As a result, a religious character becomes a proponent
Introduction The lives of two great giants compared side by side in one book. Dr. Armand M. Nicoholi Jr.’s book, The Question of God, takes two renowned philosophers and thinkers who started life in similar circumstances with similar outlooks on living. However these two men, Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis, turned out to lead very different lives. As children, both men experienced a significant loss in their families.
C. S. Lewis presents remarkable ways that different topics and arguments can coincide with each other and make complete connections with the purpose of his book Mere Christianity. After reading Mere Christianity it became apparent that his use of rhetorical devices is unlike any other. He has the ability to portray his arguments in a way that his readers could understand. This quality is quite impressive and every writer, who is trying to persuade, can definitely look upon his work to see a glimpse of what great persuasive piece of writing looks like. SUMMARY
Elie Wiesel suspects that God is letting him go through such a situation. Wiesel begins losing faith in God. For example, Wiesel stated,”What are you, my God? I thought angrily. How do you compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to you their faith, their anger, their defiance?....
At one time, Maya Angelou famously said, “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” Carrying on, one may overcome different obstacles and struggles. In Daniel James Brown’s novel The Boys in the Boat and Elie Wiesel’s Night, characters are resilient with holding faith and reaching their goals after facing hard setbacks. Standing by trust and kind nature, resiliency in faith
When he no longer accepted god, he had no other thing besides his father to live for. “Man is a creature of faith as much as reason” (Economist 77). It is faith that gives man reason and a will to live. Though the way one might accept his fate may appear involuntary, Victor Frankl claims that man has a choice to hold on to his faith. Elie Wiesel’s relative, Stein, for example, chose to give up on faith and his life when he realized his wife and children were dead.
Imagine believing so strongly in something and then being let down, or thinking that you were wrong even to believe. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie felt as though he had lost his religion and belief in God. We learned how strong his beliefs were when he says,“I believed profoundly. During the day I studied the Talmud, and at night I ran to the synagogue to weep of the destruction of the Temple,” (Wiesel, 14).
In the two short stories, “Young Goodman Brown,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Prodigal Son,” by St. Luke there is a parallel struggle of faith. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown” is a very dark tale of mystery and deceit that surrounds a young man’s test of true faith in his battle against the evil one. In the parable of “The Prodigal Son,” Christ gives the reader a picture of God’s unfailing love toward His children and His ever constant surrounding presence. Faith is tested in each of these stories and the choice becomes to either succumb to this evil world, turn to God, or perhaps something else altogether. Although each story differs in climactic endings, both protagonists in each story reflect the struggle of one’s very soul by their reluctance to fully submit to God.
What if someone unexpected changed your way of thinking, permanently? What if God chose to send someone into your life to abolish you superficial thoughts? In both the stories “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, by Flannery O’Connor, and “Cathedral”, by Raymond Carver, the authors create main characters who lack faith and think superficially about life. However, in both stories, the authors send unexpected characters to act like mediums, for their job is to be the connection of the main character’s initial position in faith and their final position, revealed at the end of both stories. Even though the stories have a different plot and involve diverse kinds of characters, the final message and moral is the same.
“The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can become, instead, the means to it. The great secret of the spiritual life, the life of the Beloved Sons and daughters of God, is that everything we live, be it gladness or sadness, joy or pain, health or illness, can all be part of the journey toward the full realization of our humanity” Henri
Soren Kierkegaard, a German philosopher, throughout the 1800’s developed concepts defending the sovereignty of the individual (Basic Writings of Existentialism: Gordon Marino, p. 4). Gordon continues by explaining that, much of Kierkegaard’s work contains a primary focus on what it means to have faith. Published in 1843, “Fear and Trembling”, written by S. Kierkegaard is often described as an analysis of the oversimplification of Christianity. Within the text which is divided into three parts Problema I. presents examples from Genesis 22, an excerpt from Christian scripture to explain what Kierkegaard believes is a paradox that an individual through faith can rise beyond the universal.