Final Essay

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Recommended: Beauty in societies eyes

The study of Great Ideas through Great Books has taught me an amazing amount. Every year, each new theme said something else about God and man. Each different book showed to me something unknown. There is something that can be said about every distinct book. But the study of God and Man, Truth and Lies, Good and Evil, and Beauty and Ethics, has done two main things. It confirmed to me the absolute greatness of God's mercy and it brought out to me the absolute depravity of man. Those two things are the main topics that came through year after year and cover all the other details that were learnt.
The study of Truth and Lies through the great books was year two. This part of the study made me see that man often thinks that truth is inside themselves. But what they think as truth often leads them astray into a lie. So many of the books read on truth revealed that the search for truth is such an overwhelming all encompassing desire mankind has in him. The History of Rassellas, Prince of Abissinia by Samuel Johnson was a good example of this. Rassellas tried so hard to find truth in every aspect of life, but in the end, he still could not find it. Silas Marner, in Silas Marner by George Eliot, also looked for truth in the wrong places. He looked for it in his daughter, but his daughter could not give it to him. In The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, one man thought that through the direction of philosophy he could find truth. And over and over it goes. Either a person was looking for truth or they saw that the way they have been living as truth, was really a lie- as seen in the Plays of Wilde and Molder [Moliere] . But most of all the study of truth and lies taught me how much we need God in our lives. He is all truth and wit...

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...teous ethics belong to God. All horrors of lies, evil, and wicked ethics can be found in man. The study of all these subjects really showed the full extent of the evil in this world and in man. The full depravity of man is never understood until you read of the children in Lord of the Flies. But over and over again God's grace is revealed to us. If anything all these books have shown to me the absolute amazing God who gives so much, and who is so powerful that we can never describe it. In end there is so much that can be said about every book. Every one revealed something different, everyone a new story and new fact. But although each author had something to give us, there is one Author to whom all the credit for all He has done and all He has revealed should be given. In the words of the Psalmist "Let everything that has breathe praise the LORD. Praise the LORD."

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