Ledbytheshepherd’s weblog

I picked up C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters at the library a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve been wanting to read it for a while and finally got around to it.  If you haven’t read it, you need to.  Soon.

It’s fiction – a collection of “letters” from one demon to another, discussing how best to keep people from God.  It offers such a different perspective on sin that I highly recommend it.  You will think differently after you’ve read it.  It’s not the easiest book to read because of the formal language, but it’s worth the effort. 

Here are some quotes from the book that got me thinking.  Remember that “the Enemy” in these quotes is God:

On humor:  “If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter.  It is a thousand miles away from joy:  it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it…”

On sin itself:  “You will say that these are very small sins;  and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness.  But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy.  It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.  Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick.  Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts…”

On faith in action:  “Let him do anything but act.  No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will.  As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened.  The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel…”

On pride:  “Your patient has become humble; have you drawn his attention to the fact?  All virtues are less formidable to us once the man is aware that he has them, but this is specially true of humility.  Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, “By jove!  I’m being humble”, and almost immediately pride – pride at his own humility – will appear.”

and “The Enemy will also try to render real in the patient’s mind a doctrine which they all profess but find it difficult to bring home to their feelings – the doctrine that they did not create themselves, that their talents were given them, and that they might as well be proud of the colour of their hair.  But always and by all methods the Enemy’s aim will be to get the patient’s mind off such questions, and your will be to fix it on them. ”

And last but not least, on how we spend our thoughts, gifts and energies: “…we want a man hag-ridden by the Future – haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth – ready to break the Enemy’s commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other – dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see.  We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow’s end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.”

There is so much more… but you’ll need to read it yourself!

It all just makes the following two scriptures more concrete in my mind:

Ephesians 6:12

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

1 Peter 5:8

Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.