17. Our Great Burden

CHRISTIAN: What you describe us certainly what I am seeking after, namely to be rid of my burden. But I cannot get relief by myself, nor do I know of a man in our country who can lift it off from my shoulders. So, for this reason I am heading in this direction, as I told you, so that I may be rid of my burden.

WORLDLY WISEMAN: Who directed you to go this way so as to be rid of your burden?

CHRISTIAN: A man who appeared to me to be a very great and honorable person; his name, as I remember it, is Evangelist.

WORLDLY-WISEMAN: I most certainly beshrew [condemn] him for his advice, for there is not a more dangerous and troublesome way ahead in all the world than that into which he has directed you; and you will prove this to be so if you submit to his guidance. Indeed, you appear to have experienced some of this trouble already, for I notice dirt on you that surely comes from the Slough of Despond.

Yet that Slough is but the beginning of your sorrows, even as other pilgrims experience along the same way. Listen to me, since I am older than you! As you proceed along the way ahead, you are likely to experience wearisomeness, painfulness, hunger, perils, nakedness, sword, lions, dragons, darkness, and in a word, death, and what else? These things are certainly true since they have been confirmed by the testimonies of many pilgrims. So why should a man so carelessly place himself in danger by paying attention to the advice of a stranger?

CHRISTIAN: Why, sir, this burden on my back is more terrible to me than all of those things that you have mentioned. No, to give careful thought, I don’t care what I meet with in the way as long as I can eventually be delivered from my burden.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

1. What three things is Christian looking to do in the first three sentences?
2. Why do you think that Mr. Worldly Wiseman has great dislike for Evangelist?
3. What do you think of Mr. Worldly-Wiseman’s advice so far? Where is he wrong?
4. What do you think about Christian’s willingness to do anything to get rid of this burden?

The wisdom of the world is always more toilsome and dangerous than the wisdom that comes from the Word of God and those he sends to speak it to us. The sorrows that we encounter in this life will be as nothing when we finally see that they bring the most glory to God and even more so on that day when our feet will rest in glory with our Savior, free from sin, saved from the second death and the enemy forever vanquished.

Let what may come! Pains, hungers, perils, sword, lions, dragons, or darkness, we have a lamp at our feet that leads us down the paths of this fallen world into the arms of our Heavenly Father, He will hold us fast. But let us flee from worldly wisdom and cling to the eternal truths spoken to our hearts from the Holy Spirit living and moving inside of us.