Screwtape Letters

Whitney posted his first blog!! Wow, and all it took was my being on death's door. Ha. Eli and I have been really sick and the only nice thing about it was that I had time to do some reading. You can only lay around for so long, but I didn't have the energy to do much. One of the things I read was C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. Most of you have probably already read it--but I hadn't. I loved Mere Christianity, and as a child, all of the Narnia series, but had yet to read the short "compilation" of letters from an "Uncle" Demon to his nephew, a Tempter Demon. If you haven't read it, I recommend it highly. You can't really categorize it as a church book (although C.S. Lewis is widely quoted by general authorities), but it is certainly inspired. I liked all the letters (which are numbered), and I also enjoyed the "Screwtape Proposes a Toast", which the recent Harper publication includes at the end as a bonus, but my favorite letter was number eight. I thought I might quote a few parts of it to get some of you interested in reading it yourselves...

To explain, though, when Screwtape, a Demon who has moved up the ranks to an Undersecretary, says "the Enemy" he is referring to God. C.S. Lewis uses the premise that a Demon and a guardian Angel are appointed to every human being living. (Interesting concept) ... Anyhow, just wanted to be clear on who "the Enemy" actually is. In the letter I am quoting from, Screwtape has just explained that humans are amphibians--half spirit, half animal. So, since we inhabit time due to our animal half, we are in continual change or "undulation", which means we live in a series of troughs and peaks (or good and bad times). All of our desires and interests vacillate or change over time, waxing and waning. Now to the quoted sections:

"Now it may surprise you to learn that in His (God's) efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than the peaks; some of his special favourites (he's British, hence the u) have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. The reason is this. To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself--creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below (Satan) has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct."

It goes on and I wish I could just type it all, but I don't have that much time and you probably don't want to read that much on my boring blog! Here's another neat passage or two, though.

"Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo... Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best... He cannot tempt to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles."

I guess I should bear my testimony here that I know that God wants us to walk and even though I stumble a lot, I hope my will to walk lets those stumbles please him. I know God loves me and sent his Son and I am so grateful for that every day of my life.

My posts will probably return to just updates on Eli (and soon Dora), but I thought before Isadora makes her appearance, I might do one that wasn't about kids!! Hope all three of the people who read my blog liked it! HA!

Bridget