Letter 12 of the Screwtape Letters deals with Lukewarm behavior. Here, Screwtape explains to Wormwood what the proper way to treat "the patient" is. Screwtape wants the patient to slowly change his habits and basically accumulate sins. Every desicion we make brings us either closer to heaven or closer to hell, so essentially Screwtape wants the patient to make desicions that would bring him closer to hell. Screwtape really wants the patient to become numb to God. God would argue the opposite, wanting the patient to build an armor of Christ by staying spiritually healthy. This armor would help to fend off the Devil and his deeds.
This really depicts the patience of evil because the Devil doesn't want to just instantly force sin on the patient, rather, he wants to gradually "impose" i guess you can say and point the patient down the road towards Satan.
God's way of dealing with habits is to keep your habits positive. Take church for example, don't just go through the motions, but participate, listen, and pay attention to the sermon. Ultimately God wants you to stay faithful and active to Him and to enjoy doing it, because if you don't enjoy it then you're just wasting your time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Reading your post, I was reminded of a quote - "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." In The Screwtape Letters Lewis shows just how true that is. The patient is going to church and has made new Christian friends, something that we as Christians should all do and have, and yet evil can use those actions against us anyway. We easily forget that the most important command to us as Christians is not to go to church, pay attention to the pastor, or anything of the sort, but to "Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself."
ReplyDeleteI like how you started your entry with talking about accumulating sins and the fact that after a while they just keep piling up if we do nothing about them. This is also known as the snowball effect. You pointed out here, and I was surprised to read of this in the actual letter, that Satan wants to use the small sins against us and gradually bring us down the road towards hell. It can be a scary thought to think that these little sins that seem so innocent at first can build up to bring more of a blow than some big ones we can think of.
ReplyDelete