Save us from ourselves

I have recently finished reading through the Sci-fi trilogy by C. S. Lewis, beginning with “Out of the Silent Planet”, “Perelandra”, and His Hideous Strength”, and I must say it was quite different than what I expected. To go further, I really don’t know what I did expect when I began this very complicated but very inspiring novel. The first two books are astonishing in their following story of Ransom; both if you’re reading them together or if you’re reading them individually. The third book, however, was too often over my head in it analogies and storytelling. Through most of the book I had to reread the cover to make sure I was not reading Lord of the Rings. His Hideous Strength was awesome in its truths about marriage and especially how God views the relationships between man and wife and everybody else.

Especially the second book, “Perelandra”, caught my interest out of the three. This book introduces Ransom to the world of Perelandra (Venus) in its infancy, without sin and without corruption. Just like the Garden of Eden there are two and only two people created on this world, the King and the Queen. What I appreciated the most about this book is how the author was able to describe the quality and innocence of the inhabitants on the planet, which was focused exclusively through Ransoms interaction with the Queen, sense the King is not to be found. In this world Ransom finds out just what Earth is missing out on and just how much humanity has lost when it fell into sin. Not only is there no shame in his nakedness nor any hint of lust for the Queen (she's naked too), but there is perpetual youth found in living in a pure and innocent environment. The author associates the very fact that we age so fast and our life seems so small to what sin and temptation has done to us. Ransom spends several months with the Queen trying to figure out why he was sent there, when a space craft enters their paradise bringing with it the embodiment of evil and temptation. Ransom is proven inadequate in fighting against such cruel logic and deadly sin, and no matter how “right” his arguments or how desperate his pleas become for the queen to stop listening to the tempter, the Queen continues to listen. This simple truth is powerful it actually frightening to me. All the time, do I feel like I have no power to overcome evil in other people’s lives, let alone my own. The Devil our accuser does such marvelous job in making us feel incredibly insufficient in defending ourselves or our God. However, God does not see us through our own eyes, thank God, he sees us through his eyes, through which we become more than capable, instead, we become conquerors. Finally Ransom understands that the only way for the woman to have a chance at remaining free he would have to physically destroy the tempter. Again this is an awesome truth because for all of the tempter’s eloquent use of word and his demonic aura, he is still limited to worldly barriers whereas God is not so limited. This is something that we MUST remind ourselves, the world is limited, temporal, and finite and it is God that is limitless and omnipotent. If we were left to our own devices, well... we've seen what we are capable of doing under our own devices. What I learned from this book and what i have learned from C.S. Lewis so far is that God has done everything, he has given everything, he is willing to spend the most and travel the furthest in order to save us from ourselves.