Okay, so I have to admit at first I was a little bit weary to open Paradise Lost. A book that begins in the capital of hell, through Satan’s eyes? What?! For someone who is used to the layout of the Bible and not used to this strange new layout, our assignment was extremely daunting to me. But as I pushed through this concern and kept reading, I realized I was starting to like the book for one of the very reasons why I originally hated it. Paradise Lost and Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters are very similar as that they give us an “insider’s scoop” in the mind of Satan. They both show the audience that we all have a common enemy and that he will do almost anything to destroy us because we are the one creation made in the image of God. So, Paradise Lost isn’t to be feared but seen as a sort of “playbook” we can read the next time we sense an oncoming attack from Satan. As the famous quote goes, keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
I also really appreciate that John Milton decided to write a book that delved deeper into Genesis. Most people think Revelation is the most mysterious and misunderstood book in the Bible, but to me it is Genesis. Our world’s ending is described far more than our world’s beginning-or more specifically, what happened before and during our world’s beginning. What happens in Paradise Lost may not be exactly what happened, but I enjoyed the “what if” question that John Milton asked in his book anyway. There are indeed a lot of unexplained time gaps and plot holes in Genesis (though I think God wanted it written this way), and John Milton did his best to try and fill them.
I commented on posts by Hailey Morgan and Madison Flowers.
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