Reflecting and Responding
John Bunyan
The Pilgrim’s Path to God
And thus it was: I, writing of the Way, fell suddenly into an allegory about their journey, and the way to glory, in more than twenty things, which I set down.
PREFACE TO THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
JOHN BUNYAN’S LIFE SPANNED A TUMULTUOUS period of history. He was born in 1628 in England, and when he died in 1688, France’s Glorious Revolution was well under way. Bunyan underwent severe persecution and hardship, spending nearly twelve years of his life in jail. During these periods of isolation, his mind turned to his life with God and he began to reflect on how we make progress in our spiritual journey. Out of these reflections he penned one of our greatest spiritual masterpieces, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Its timeless appeal is captured in its portrayal of the eternal longing of every human heart for God. It also provides one of the best depictions of the tremendous trials and tribulations that ravage every follower of Jesus as we embark on our journey with him.
Bunyan’s life overlapped briefly with that of George Herbert. But his religious identity was tied to the dissenting groups and breakaway factions that dominated England during the second half of the seventeenth century. He was touched deeply by the religious revolutions sweeping England and personally suffered many of their attendant injustices. As a member of a dissenting group, Bunyan often found himself out of step with the ruling government. Hence his years in jail. The Pilgrim’s Progress was written during one of his imprisonments.
Entering the “Life”
Bunyan’s great work begins with the protagonist, Christian, setting off to relieve himself of the burdens that so deeply afflict him. These burdens are rooted in a fear of death and the judgment that awaits him in the life to come. Early in the story, Bunyan emphasizes that we must enter the Christian life for it to begin to make sense. He notes how difficult it is to begin this life because we are beset by afflictions and diversions. But as we undergo preparation, the journey becomes more visible.
Each step of Christian’s journey illuminates a deeper dimension of our own spiritual life. Bunyan shows that truth and understanding of God’s ways come to us over time, beginning with a recognition of our need for redemption. The successful resolution of each stage in our pilgrimage determines the degree to which we come to a fullness of our Christian faith.
A central point of The Pilgrim’s Progress is that we do not know all of the twists and turns we will meet along the way. As we travel, we seek and find guidance for that part of the journey. And often the knowledge comes just in time for us to make an obedient response. As we progress, we face new temptations, all of which threaten to disorient us just as those previous temptations did. In this way we come to rely on God for guidance and provision. It is through his mercy and providence that we find the right solution at the right time to meet the dilemma that confronts us.
Christian must overcome different temptations if he is to find the joy and meaning of Christ’s way of life. We, like Christian, must forsake our own inclination to self-reliance and learn from God. Early on we are tempted to work out our own salvation. Additional temptations come when we encounter unexpected setbacks or acute suffering in life. At these times we suffer not so much a loss of belief in God, but a loss of confidence that the Christian life is true.
Facing Multiple Temptations
Bunyan’s illustration of the numerous temptations we face in our journey with God is unparalleled. We are tempted to abandon the pursuit of God’s love. We are tempted to settle into a moral religion. We are tempted to self-deception and hypocrisy. We are tempted to be scornful and critical of others. We are even tempted to believe that we have committed such heinous evil that we stand beyond the limits of God’s ability to forgive.
In each case, Bunyan wants us to understand the power of the temptation so we can rely on God to marshal the strength to resist it. In overcoming temptation we forsake our inclination to self-reliance. We overcome the way in which hardships so often disorient us from our life with God. And in the final analysis, we overcome our temptation to base the meaning of life on a moralistic form of religion.
As Christian progresses in the spiritual journey, the temptations become more subtle and destructive. One tempter likes to talk theology but makes no progress in his Christian life. A second engages in endless conversations about the difficulties of life without ever resolving them. A third tempter challenges Christian to prove that what he has learned on his journey is in fact true. This conversation recalls the original temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden, when the serpent leads them to forget what God has taught them. In the same way, we can end up losing the perspective that comes from accumulated wisdom and experience in our Christian journey.
Because of the turmoil and unrest that marked much of Bunyan’s life, he continually draws from the touchstones of Protestant orthodoxy: the supremacy of Scripture, the suspicion of claims of individual authority based on spiritual experiences, and the quest to assure our selection as the elect of God. He also draws heavily on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, which portrays the grand sweep of history as part of the larger purposes of God’s providence.
Ultimately, The Pilgrim’s Progress reveals that life is a journey. It recognizes that we are never finished fighting the good fight and acknowledges that we fight not only against flesh and blood, but also against principalities and spiritual powers. It further reveals that our responses to temptations along this journey help determine the outcome of our life with God. As a result, Christian serves as a model for understanding how the decisions we make, the choices we embrace, the challenges we overcome and the opportunities we face all contribute to the significance we find in our life with God.
REFLECTING AND RESPONDING
I owe a special debt to John Bunyan and his allegorical masterpiece, The Pilgrim’s Progress. I was fresh out of seminary serving as pastor to my first congregation. The people were most patient and kind to me as I was finding my way in pastoring and my voice in preaching.
As you might imagine, being the pastor of a small congregation meant that I had to be prepared to do almost anything, from printing the weekly newsletter to emptying the trash to visiting the sick. One of the tasks that fell to me was delivering the children’s sermon each Sunday just before the little ones made their way to their own service. This was a delightful assignment, really; I loved the challenge of speaking to children with adults listening in just to see if I could keep both interested and engaged.
Exactly how it happened I do not remember now, but somehow I began telling the stories of The Pilgrim’s Progress in serial form. I knew that there was something here for the youngest to the oldest, for the most tentative believer to the most mature Christian. What a joy to tell these little ones about Christian and the many people he met on his journey: Faithful, Obstinate, Pliable, Mr. Worldly-Wise, Talkative, Little-Faith, Faint-Heart and so many others. I especially found the folk in the town of Fair-Speech of interest: my Lord Turn-About, my Lord Time-Server, Mr. Smooth-Man, Mr. Facing-Bothways and the parson of the town, Mr. Two-Tongues. I must not forget to mention the many adventures Christian had in places such as Vanity Fair, By-Path Meadow, Doubting Castle, the Delectable Mountains and more.
The trick was to tell the story so that each week Christian was left hanging by a thread and the children would need to come back next week to find out what happened to him. With sincere apologies to John Bunyan, I suppose I embellished the stories just a bit in order to keep the suspense at a high level. Actually, my changes were minor, for Bunyan himself had a real flair for the dramatic.
I think the children found it all great fun and high adventure. The one thing that I did not expect, though, was the interest and anticipation of the adults. Every now and then some mother would call or some father would drop by the office saying he or she had to be out of town next Sunday and please could I tell them what happens in the next episode—just to keep abreast of the story, you understand!
Well, I rather imagine that those brief children’s sermons had more lasting effect for good on our little congregation than all the erudite sermons I worked so hard to prepare and deliver. That is the power of The Pilgrim’s Progress.
In terms of spiritual formation and, most particularly, the idea of the spiritual life as journey, allow me to highlight several key themes. The first is the importance and significance of conversion. The journey makes no sense without this decisive turning. Christian must make a clear decision to turn away from the City of Destruction and to Christ, and pass through the Strait Gate and experience the great burden of sin falling off of his back. No half measures here. A real turning and a real journeying toward the Celestial City. So for us.
Then, too, I am impressed with the stress Bunyan places on struggle in the spiritual journey. He made much of the grace of God throughout his life (at one point he wrote a book titled Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners), but he never saw grace as opposed to struggle, only as opposed to earning. Christian struggles through the Slough of Despond and struggles to enter the Strait Gate and struggles up the Hill of Difficulty and struggles to overcome Apollyon. At times he stumbles and falls, and he must struggle to overcome these setbacks.
This story of genuine struggle is much like the Old Testament story of Jacob wrestling with the angel at Peniel and receiving a new name: Israel—“the one who struggles” (Gen 32). Struggle, you see, is true to the realities of a good world gone bad. It was true for Jacob; it was true for Bunyan; it is true for us.
One final thought. For Bunyan the spiritual journey is never over until it is truly over. When Christian and Hopeful are within a hair’s breadth of reaching the Celestial City, they are nearly overcome by Flatterer and Atheist. You would think that after all they had gone through and all they had learned they would not be taken in, but they were. Escaping the traps of Flatterer and Atheist they come to the crossing of the River, passing from this life into greater Life. Christian finds the crossing exceedingly difficult, and without Hopeful there to help him out it appears he might not complete his journey.
But they do cross over, and as Christian and Hopeful enter the gates of the Celestial City they see Ignorance, who had been with them from time to time on their journey. Ignorance marches right up to the gates of the Celestial City but is refused. Indeed, he is bound hand and foot and carried through the air and shoved into a door in the side of the hill. Bunyan’s conclusion of the matter: “Then I saw that there was a way to Hell, even from the very gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction.” Our pilgrim journey, you see, is never over until it is over.
Lord, we too are on a pilgrim journey. Today the journey feels filled with grace and mercy. We know that the journey will bring hard days as well, but today it is filled with your light and life, and we thank you. Thank you for loving us and guiding us. Thank you for giving us patience with our children. Thank you for the strength to face the challenges of life with courage and compassion. Thank you. Amen.