Screwtape Letters 22-24

• Letter 22:

• 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).

• Letter 23:

• 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."

• Letter 24:

• 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

Electoral College, part 2

I haven’t written part 1, which would include an explanation of

1. why there is an Electoral College,
2. why it is of value,
3. why it is particularly American in its essence, and
4. why you should get used to it (because it is not going anywhere).

Not sure if I’ll get around to that column, as there’s a lot to it. However, I was playing around with Excel (an Engineer’s good buddy), and curious of the effect of changing all 51 states (including D.C.) to mimic Maine’s Electoral College voting law.
There are 538 electoral votes, matching the 538 congressmen we all love to hate in D.C. The 50 states have 2 votes representing their Senators, with the remaining 438 apportioned out based upon census population, in the same manner as the 438 House of Representatives.

The typical voting method for the Electoral College is for each state to vote all of their votes to the one candidate who won the popular vote in that particular state, winner-take-all style (i.e. Bush won Florida by ~537 votes, and received all 25 of Florida’s electoral votes).

Maine and Nebraska employ a  proportional method of casting their electoral votes: whoever wins the state popular vote gets the 2 electoral votes, while the rest of the state's electoral votes are cast based upon whoever wins each congressional district.
In essence, our nationwide election is currently resolved at the state level. Under a proportional system, the election would be held at the congressional district level, with the candidate who wins the state getting a 2 ‘bonus’ votes. 

In today’s system, we hold 51 state elections simultaneously and combine them to get the result. A Congressional District apportionment of electoral votes would entail 489 separate elections (438 congressional districts + 51 states), combined for a single result. Simple enough;)

The following are the of the last 3 elections, data from here and here, using the Congressional District system:

Notice that the Net Change doesn’t work perfectly. This is the best I can do with the data I have. No politics here, just looking at the results, and how they would have changed the national ‘spin’ on the election. I’ve no dog in this fight (and didn’t vote for any of the candidates above), but you could see from these results how the feel of the results would have clearly changed.

1. No results would change. This is likely true for almost all of our nation’s election history, with rare exception.
2. 2000 – Bush would have won with a more clear mandate. Florida’s permanent place in election history would not have had the extreme histrionics, and would not have mattered near as much.
3. 2004 – A win turns into a route.
4. 2008 – A route turns into a win.

A ‘follow’ in the hand is worth two ‘learns’ in the bush

It is a great challenge: to teach people to follow God rather than merely teaching them about God.
Typically, we acquire God-knowledge and habit ourselves with God-actions (act nice, talk nice, be nice), content with the transformation from a child of Adam to a child of God.
But God intends more than rebirth and adoption. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God on earth, dwells in His children as a guide, a leader for our lives in the big and the little, that we should follow Him.
As a teacher, this is very difficult to convey with words. It is more aptly conveyed through deeds.

"But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well-pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us." II Thessalonians 2:7-8