Ancient Anglican

This week, we are reading through and discussing letters 13-16 of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Letter 15 – The Present: In this letter, Screwtape instructs his nephew on the differences between the past, the present, the future, and the eternal. According to Screwtape, it is only in the Present where Eternity breaks through. Therefore, the Enemy (God) wants humans to live in the present moment so that they may experience Eternity. Alternatively, the future…

This week, we are reading through and discussing letters 13-16 of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Letter 13 – Small Pleasures: In this letter, Screwtape berates Wormwood for allowing the Patient to experience a spiritual renewal or second conversion. As a result, an “asphyxiating cloud” has enveloped the Patient preventing any spiritual attacks to come upon him. The source of this renewal was a good book the Patient read for his own enjoyment and a…

Nothingness is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind.

Think through the issues that are present in any company that you keep. It is human nature to want to be liked by others and therefore to adopt their outlook on fundamental matters.

But is in the Dark Night of the Soul where transformation ultimately takes place. Think back to those dark places in your life when God appeared to be absent and see how you are now different on the other side.

Reflect on how war, suffering, or any other evil in human society can often be a means of turning people towards God. Also, reflect on how the modern world’s concealment of death and suffering can prevent us from turning fully towards God.

Another means of distracting the Patient from true prayer, Screwtape writes, is to have the Patient pray to something and not the Enemy.

In the letters, Screwtape shares with Wormwood his knowledge, experience, and skill derived from his many years of tempting humans to abandon “the Enemy” (i.e. God).

Is the foreign policy the result of our need to avenge American honor or American deaths, as Jonah advocates, or is the policy rooted in the mercy and loving-kindness of God?

Jonah finally meets his God in his silence to God’s final question to him.

In his wish for death, however, Jonah is simply stating the obvious that a refusal to change is a choice for death.

It is the king of Nineveh and his subjects who fulfill the perfect fast of repentance as described in Isaiah 58:6.