Weeks 3 & 4 with Mr. Lewis

Ah! I told you all I'm running a little behind... sorry I didn't get around to posting this last week! I've been reading The Screwtape Letters in bits and pieces during my lunch breaks over the past few weeks. Here's one little passage that stuck out to me:

"And since they need change, [God] (being a hedonist at heart) has made change pleasurable to them, just as He has made eating pleasurable. But since He does not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of change and permanence which we call Rhythm..."

There were many amazing passages from the book, but this one really grabbed a hold of me. I love how he writes about the Rhythm of life... with seasons of change and seasons of permanence. As always, he has such an incredible way of putting things into words! I'm not going to give any more quotes from the book, mainly because it really needs to be read and taken as a whole, cohesive message. I found a commentary on the book that will give you a short overview and hopefully entice you to pick it up for yourself:

"For those who don’t know the book, the setup is this: Screwtape himself is a senior devil in the “lowerarchy of Our Father Below.” The letters are directed to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter on Earth, working on one of us— whom they call a “patient.” The letters themselves follow Wormwood’s efforts to tempt the patient, who has (to Screwtape’s “grave displeasure”) by the second letter, become a Christian. The goal of damnation is to “secure his soul forever” — to turn him against God (to Screwtape, “the Enemy” and “our Oppressor”) so that on entering Eternity, the man will become “a brimfull living chalice of despair and horror and astonishment which you can raise to your lips as often as you please.” It turns out that to the devils, we humans are “primarily food.”

I would not, “Hell forbid,” give away the ending of the book, but it will do no harm to say that along the way, the course of temptations recommended by Screwtape follows the three great sources of corruption we humans fall prey to—the World, the Flesh, and finally, the Spirit itself. Cowardice, vanity, lust, ambition, gluttony, spiritual pride—they’re all here, and all in the context of one human being’s search for knowledge of God’s will in the midst of the horror of World War II.

The great lesson Lewis is trying to smuggle into our minds (camouflaged in humor to get around all the defenses erected by Screwtape and his cohorts) is the essential Christian doctrine - what he called elsewhere "mere" Christianity. Chiefly, it is that god is very much alive, that He loves us in ways we do not understand, and that He want us to act from our own wills in accordance with His." -Richard S. Sandor

I absolutely loved this book, it was brilliantly written and incredibly thought provoking.
Alright... I'll try to post Lewis updates from week 5 as soon as I can. Stay tuned!
{xo. Jarah}