Screwtape Letters 15-17

• Letter 15 - Tomorrow Never Comes
• The Enemy desires us to focus on the Present (where our actions are within our control) or Eternity (where clearly nothing is in our control, and where it is in the Enemy's control).
• Screwtape desires us to focus on the Past (either in our failures or our successes, as long as it keeps us self-focused and deadens our today) or more importantly, on the Future (the unknown and uncontrollable that overwhelms our today).  Focus on non-realities.
• "Nearly all vices are rooted in the future".
• The Future is the least like eternity - completely temporal - the extraction of our minds, whether in hope or fear.
• Letter 16 - Hopping
• The church congregation: a unity of place not of likings
• The mature are critical of the bad while still willing to accept the good (be that with ourselves, our friends, our family, church, political spectrum...)
• Factions stand in the way of charity (how we treat others) and humility (what we focus on)
• By playing it safe in the portions of Scripture and topics of life we are comfortable in, "We are safe from the danger that any truth not already familiar to him and to his flock should ever reach them through Scripture."
• The Modern Iconoclast Controversy, where we the Church meet anywhere under any condition without regard for any sense except our ears (worship first and foremost) and in a really good church, our minds (with solid preaching). Purposefully negligent of our eyes (the beauty of setting or art) and the other half of our minds (with any form of spiritual discipline). 
• Letter 17 - The Withering Glutton
• The determination to get what we want, couched in the confidence that what we want is relatively simple, so it is OK to want it.
• We hide our self-centeredness under the veil of some other perceived virtue (want of simple things, not wanting to be a bother or put someone out)
• Gluttony of Delicacy
• Every day, every meal, every moment spent thinking about the last or next meal, continually self-focused on our body.
• "The grand lie... that physical exercise in excess, and consequent fatigue, are specially favorable to this virtue"
• We create rules about what makes a person virtuous, and then pride ourselves at achieving, or judge ourselves at failing.