Screwtape Letters 22-24
- The Patient's current girl: "one who looks as if she'd faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile.... who would find ME funny"
- Q: is there some level of maturity involved with being able to grin and smirk at the wiles of Screwtape and his kind?
- The Enemy has a bourgeois mind, filling the world with pleasures, which must be twisted before S/T can use them
- In the godly household, the mysterious odor of the Enemy permeates residents and guests. What secret lies behind the pretense the disinterested love.
- Noise ("the audible expression of all that is exultant") -verses- Music & Silence (a place of joy and contemplation)
- NOTE how exciting and passionate things change us (in this case, into a caterpillar).
- First Strategy: separate the patient from spirituality. Keep the cultural and social identity of the Christian intact, while ensuring that the internalized/personal dealings with a spiritual God always secondary.
- If the Patient insists on interacting with God...
- Second Strategy: corrupt his faith and spiritual walk...
- Theology
- Politics
- The interaction of community, social issues, and government
- (re-) define Jesus based upon one's contemporary concerns
- Make Christianity a means to some perceived-value end
- "Believe this [faith] not because it is true, but for some other [perceived-value] reason"
- Definition: Characterizations are the product of suppression and exaggeration, with a touch of guessing (I mean, deduction) and wishful thinking.
- "All great moralists are sent by the Enemy not to inform men but to remind them to restate the primeval moral platitudes against our [Screwtape's] continually concealment of them."
- Screwtape encourages Wormwood to take advantage of people "who have grown up in an intelligent circle united by a clearly defined belief... that the outsiders who do not share this[their] belief are really too stupid and ridiculous [to understand]".... a combination of ignorance (reasonably forgiven) and pride (what you really want to capitalize upon).
- Spiritual Pride: the most beautiful of all vices, whereby
- we have "no notion of how much in him [any of us] is forgiven" as a basis of our daily relationships, and
- are confident in our own value within a relationship,
- not cognizant of the necessary importance of forgiveness of our own indiscretions within a successful relationship,
- rather than our intrinsic merit.
- Recommended method 1:
- Raise up your Christian circles and denigrate your non-Christian ones.
- Then separate the circles.
- Then separate from the non-Christian circles until you cease to have any spiritual effect outside the Church.
- Recommended method 2:
- I rightly belong within these Christian circles, rather than
- These folks have accepted me, warts and all
- Recommended method 3:
- Realize that you have been initiated into a select group,
- A group who has figured things out,
- Engaged by God to have a greater understanding of Him and this world
- Theocrats