The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis
Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings. I Peter 5:8-9
Letter # _IX Summary Title: Ondulation, Moderation and Phases (Armor of God - Ep. 6:10-18)
Strategy Matrix
Area of Life
/ Devil’s Advice / God’s Way / Questions, Observations and StrategiesOndulation
Pleasure / -Evoke Distorted Pleasures
-Exploit them in troughs
-Troughs
Sexual Temptations(man), desire of things(woman)
Empty Inner Life
-Avoid Peaks
(more energy, but powers of resistance are at their highest)
-Use pleasure at times and ways
forbidden by Him(extremes)
-Away from the natural condition
(empty mind)
-Increasing craving and
diminishing pleasure is the formula.
- Take all – give nothing / Pleasure is God’s Invention (ever increasing pleasure IN OBEDIENCE till daylight)
Do not deprive one another-
I Cor 7:4-5/Exodus 20:17
Use them at the right time Moderation and Obedience
Avoid Extremes - Ec. 7:18b
Everything is… I Co. 6:12
God wants to fill us –Eph 3:16
My Father will honor he who serves me. John 12:27 / gifts from above, but: (Jas 1:17)/ I Cor 6:12
Things work together Ro. 8:28
Pr 4:18 (Till perfect day )
Pray at all times (Eph 6:18) (Obs: It is difficult to pray and sin)
What is the difference between the trough and peak sexuality?
(See The Four Loves, CSL)
See Moral Heresies and Extremism’s (see next page)
Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality. C.S. Lewis
How do we get out of troughs?
Obedience and prayer-Eph6:18 (Pray at all times)
Knowledge of right and wrong / - Explore the thought of troughs
- Keep knowledge out of his mind
- Desponding
(tempted to Despair) – keep him away from experienced Christians
Proper verses … recover feelings by sheer will power
-Wishful-thinking
Accommodation to the low temperature
Excessive Christianity / Seek Wisdom
Older in the faith to teach the younger…
Do not be anxious …
Peace that surpasses… / Proverbs 4:7-9
Ph. 4:6, Pr. 12:25, 1Pe.5:7
Ph. 4:7
Religion / -Moderated Religion
-Attack his faith
Trough is Permanent
Faith is a Phase
Losing Interest - This is False
-Hazy Ideas (fashionable ideas)
Progress and development
Historical Point of View
Modern Biographies
(always emerging from Phases)
-It was a phase (avoid the true /
false question)
- Blessed word: Adolescent / Whatever you do, do it for the glory of God. Life is religion – All of life.
Decide what is right or wrong, let your yes be yes and your no be no. (there are no grayareas).
Lukewarm - Rev. 3:16,20 (obs: Laodicea was the wealthiest church in Phrygia)
Hate his father … Lk. 14:26
Make EVERY thought captive to Christ (II Cor10-5) / I Co. 10: 5,31
Why does Screwtape consider a moderate religion better than no religion at all?
What are the phases in vogue at the moment?
Romans 6:15 ( sonship not fear), I Cor 9-24-27, Ps16:11!
See next page:
Pilgrim’s Regress: Mr. Sensible
Why is this word so important?
Eph6:10-18 (Armor of God)
Resist the devil and he will flee from you. James 4:7
Moral Heresies and Extremisms
Subjectivism: the subjectivity of goodness and badness
Emotivism: The reduction of goodness and badness to emotions
Positivism: the idea that man posits values with his will, invents goodness and badness
Cultural relativism: the relativity of goodness and badness into place, or culture
Historicism: the relativity of goodness and badness to time
Utilitarianism: the reduction of goodness to utility, or efficiency
Instinctualism: the reduction of goodness to biological instinct
Hedonism: the reduction of goodness to pleasure
Egotism: the reduction of goodness to enlightened selfishness
Pragmatism: the weakness of goodness and the power of badness
Optimistic humanism: the denial of the existence of human badness
Cynicism: the denial of the existence of human goodness
Rationalism: the simplicity and plainness of goodness
Nominalism: the reduction of religion to tradition
Secularism: the reduction of goodness to the merely horizontal (human)
Pantheism: the identity of goodness and badness
Moralism: the idolization of moral goodness as ultimate
Nietzscheanism: the goodness of badness and the badness of goodness, the “transvaluation of all values”
(adapted from Peter Kreeft)
The Pilgrim’s Regress (Chapter V)
John decides to live virtuously, but at once meets an obstacle.
Conscience tells him he can and must pass it by his own efforts;
Traditional Christianity says he cannot. Fear is too suspicious,
and the natural conscience too proud, to accept help.
Rejecting Christianity, John turns to cultured worldliness, its pretentiousness and cold frivolity. Far from attacking the spiritual life, the cultured World patronizes it: "the philosophy of all sensible men". Its hatred of systematic reasoning, its ignorant and dilettante skepticism, its unacknowledged dependences: "the religion of all sensible men". These "sensible" men are parasitic, their culture is precarious. Take away its power of commanding labor, and the whole thing collapses.
Mr. Sensible Rejects Reason
"Sense is easy, Reason is hard. Sense knows where to stop with gracious inconsistency, while Reason slavishly follows and abstract logic whither she knows not. The one seeks comfort and finds it, the other seeks truth and is still seeking. Le bon sens is the father of a flourishing family: Reason is barren and a virgin. If I had my way I should clap this Reason of yours in the bridewell to pursue her meditations in the straw. The baggage has a pretty face, I allow: but she leads us from our true aim--joy, pleasure, ease, content, whatever the name! She is a fanatic who has never learned form my master to pursue the golden mean, and, being mortal, to think mortal thoughts."
"I give up!" broke out Mr. Sensible. "Spare us the rest, young man. We are not at a lecture, and I readily admit that your scholarship is more recent than mine. Philosophy should be our mistress, no our master: and the pursuit of a pedantic accuracy amidst the freedom of our social pleasures is very unwelcome."
Temptation:
· James 1:12 BLESSED IS THE MAN WHO PRESEVERES under trial: he will receive a crown (Greek word: wreath - place on the head of an athlete or king.)
· James 1:13 GOD CAN NOT be tempted (Mt 4:1- Jesus temptation), nor does He tempt anyone (Gen. 22;1) Abraham and Isaac – GOD tests us in order to confirm our faith (Exodus 20:20) or prove our commitment (Dt.8:2). The Israelites, 40 years in the desert. 40 days Jesus was in then desert. May we be able to answer Here I am Lord (I Sa 3:10), Not (Luke 8:13)!
· Mt 4:1, Gn.3 -SATAN tempts (in order to make us fall)-May we be able to know Gods word to say no!
· James 1:14-1 - OURSELVES, our evil desires tempt us. Desire àSinà Death (Gen 3:6-22,Eve; II Sa 11:2-17 David)
· How do we fight temptation?
1. Listen to God’s word and apply it (James 1:22-25);
2. Count 40 days before giving up
3. Do not walk, stand or sit in the way nor presence of the wicked (Ps 1:1-2)