Reviews for The Strong-Willed Adult

The average rating for The Strong-Willed Adult based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-02 00:00:00 G. Kelly I picked up this little humble-looking paperback during the tumultuous period of the streamlining nineties. Its gentle, quiet wisdom was a beacon to me during the wholesale dismantling of traditional chains of command in the postmodern phenomenon known as downsizing. It created quite a stir at the time it appeared. Muggeridge was a famed editor of Punch, and as such an anti-establishmentarian wasp - a mischievous, smiling elf! And here he was, out of the blue, suddenly standing up as an unfamiliar Christian avatar of himself. Weird, huh? Not. When a man who has relentlessly lampooned the high and mighty as mannequins sporting The Emperor’s New Clothes - i.e. wearing a vain attitude hiding their inner emptiness - wakes up himself, he’s gonna see Right Straight Through his own posturing. Vanity, saith the preacher - ALL is Vanity. On that bright, sunny day, when we ALL see through our empty facades - guess what? There’s no place to hide. For THIS is the end of our Road... And maybe, also, its beginning. Maybe. Cause suddenly the endless streaming of the bleak twilight of our TV and computer screens can’t help us. We’re really Lost. Where’s the MEANING in this brutal void? Well, go back to the beginning... We once were golden kids in a golden land. Remember? If you can, you may perhaps remember also that the Spirit walked WITH us in that garden. Until our forbidden bite into a Worldly Wisdom that would make us coequal with the Spirit. Of course, I don’t have to repeat all this. It’s all there, deep in your subconscious, buried under the mindless effluvium of hundreds of thousands of Seinfeld reruns. So, for once, do like the author of this book - turn off those eye-straining screens. Do like the late Malcolm Muggeridge did at the end of his scandalous career - Turn to the small, silent voice within you - And find Jesus... Rediscovered.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-02-12 00:00:00 Joseph Abruzzo Muggeridge is generally an enjoyable author, and being steeped in incredible literature such as Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Kierkegaard, George Herbert etc. gives him much to draw from, but in the form of snapshot articles, "Jesus Rediscovered" gets a bit tedious after a while. I listened to the Audible version, which had an older English gentleman reading it. While he likely sounded like Muggeridge did when he wrote the book, it was difficult for it to sound fresh and new. This book starts out with an overview of the gospel story and then a number of articles Muggeridge wrote, speeches he gave, or interviews he participated in. There are some good points, but after a while the same messages keep coming up again. Whenever he veers from his main themes, though, such as to explore the writings and lives of literary figures, he gets back to his usual genius.