After some harsh rebukes for Wormwood, Screwtape addresses the subject of prayer by Wormwood's patient in chapter four. I want to address a few things about prayer which may seem obvious to some of you and not so obvious to others.
Screwtape encourages the temptation of the patient to anything other than serious prayer. By serious prayer, I am guessing that Screwtape means when the patient completely shuts himself off from the cares and concerns of the rest of the world and engages the Father one-on-one in true quality time between Father and adopted Son.
Prayer is not about feelings, but rather about the concentrated effort which talking to God requires of us. To borrow from a missionary in Costa Rica, "Is this God talking to me, or just last night's pizza?" I say this because prayer is not about getting some good feelings, but instead about honest labor, often on behalf of someone else.
God is present in the room, in the very space where prayer takes place. Enough said.
Finally, prayer is very much affected by the place in which a person prays. Consider that a sociable person in the company of several very good friends will pray far more earnestly in that setting than he or she will when alone in the privacy of their own room. Also, a person who does not feel at all comfortable praying in church save the rare instance that he or she is called upon to do so will spend hours in prayer where no one else may see. This is not an advocation of "to each his own". Rather, the encouragement is for a Christian to pray in the place where they are most dedicated to the task at hand: direct communication with God on behalf of others and self. Though this is not necessarily covered in the book, I wanted to include this reflection because regular prayer is as much a discipline for Christians as marching is for military recruits.
The next post will be a look at chapter 5 and a reflection on the gospel of Luke.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Reminders
Read the fourth chapter of the Screwtape Letters yet? I have; I'm just really tardy in getting around to writing anything!
The recent holiday (okay, two Thanksgiving dinners for me) has quite shifted many routines out of whack. This is more of a reminder to myself to cover the fourth chapter for a change instead of just posting something. Don't let me forget, folks!
The recent holiday (okay, two Thanksgiving dinners for me) has quite shifted many routines out of whack. This is more of a reminder to myself to cover the fourth chapter for a change instead of just posting something. Don't let me forget, folks!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Thanksgiving
A time to give thanks for the blessings of the past year is coming a bit earlier than normal. Not that I am complaining, really; the big meal four days early? Are you kidding? No complaints here!
Whatever you're doing the rest of the week, wherever you are eating the meal, whoever you're with at the table, give thanks if you are able to God for everything He's done for you. The last eleven months, for better or for worse, have left you alive and with the means to read this post. Life, health, food, family, education, and the season of autumn; I cannot think of anything else that I would rather have right now.
Is there something which you are particularly thankful for? Let us know with a comment attached to this post.
Whatever you're doing the rest of the week, wherever you are eating the meal, whoever you're with at the table, give thanks if you are able to God for everything He's done for you. The last eleven months, for better or for worse, have left you alive and with the means to read this post. Life, health, food, family, education, and the season of autumn; I cannot think of anything else that I would rather have right now.
Is there something which you are particularly thankful for? Let us know with a comment attached to this post.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The Screwtape Letters, chapter 3
At long last, we arrive at chapter 3!
In this chapter, we are made aware of the patient's home life to a certain extent. We know that the patient lives with his mother or his mother lives with him (hard to tell at times), and that their interactions are less than harmonious. To sabotage the patient's new spiritual life, Screwtape suggests several methods to Wormwood to increase the discord between the two. I will look at them each individually and in order, starting with:
"1. Keep his mind on the inner life." Doubt me not, this may seem like a decent thing to do...until we read on and discover that Screwtape means for the patient's focus to be entirely on himself at the expense of the world and people around him. There is mention of the "most elementary duties" being neglected in favor of "the most advanced and spiritual ones", and this may cause some confusion to us as well. So let's break down these duties in terms of what they might look like. An elementary duty for any Christian is the very simple act of helping someone in need without thought for self-gain. For instance, helping someone pick up the papers which they have dropped on the floor, or covering the coffee bill for a person who has left all their money at home are good examples of helping someone without thought for self-gain. Now, an example of a most advanced and spiritual duty might be the very careful planning and scheduling of intentional fasting during Lent. There is nothing wrong with either one, but Screwtape is hinting at having the patient's spiritual life becoming unbalanced, particularly so that the patient's relationship with his mother becomes severely fractured.
"2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous." Screwtape's suggestion here follows in the same vein as the previous bit of advice; namely, that the patient focus on the spiritual rather than the basic needs of the person which might be more urgent. To put the matter another way, praying for the salvation of a starving man's soul without giving the starving man the nourishing soup and water which he desperately needs immediately may result in a corpse, and so does the starving man little good for the present. Now the counter-argument may be that prayer is necessary. Yes. This is most true. Yet after having read through the Gospels, not once did Jesus attend to just the physical or the spiritual needs of the people he met and taught; he attended to both, often in the same sitting. As regards the patient and his mother, the challenge to the reader is to start with the very basic needs of the person they are praying for before moving on to that person's future and eternal life (or eternal death). The particularly chilling thought about the seriousness of Screwtape's point comes in the last sentence; many cases of domestic violence in the United States and around the world have occurred in the most spiritually-minded homes.
"3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that..." How many of us have had a classmate or co-worker or housemate who drove us nuts with certain habits, certain ways of phrasing their sentences, or a certain expression or body posture? Screwtape presses on this particular issue by encouraging Wormwood to use those expressions and tones to set both of the residents against one another. This process is further enhanced in...
"4. In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face." Screwtape is pushing for such domestic tension here that the questions about mundane home routines become blown all out of proportion in a full-fledged verbal assault by each person involved. If Wormwood does things right and utilizes the third method to the fullest in this scenario, the patient and his mother will soon not be able to be in the house and share each other's company for even five minutes. I think I might leave examples to your imagination, as many of us have come from homes where this situation occurred at least once.
Notice that the assault is comprehensive in its approach, and that Wormwood is not being asked to pick out any one method of temptation, but rather that all four approaches seem to work very nicely with each other if done right.
Rather terrifying, isn't it? But my encouragement to anyone who is reading this post and seeing their own home life reflected in horrific accuracy is this: ask for the Lord to intervene and He will. After all, if we are told anything by Jesus about prayer, it is that we pray in full faith that when we "ask, and it shall be given", peace between ourselves and another person really will be given!
Chapter 4 comes with the next post!
In this chapter, we are made aware of the patient's home life to a certain extent. We know that the patient lives with his mother or his mother lives with him (hard to tell at times), and that their interactions are less than harmonious. To sabotage the patient's new spiritual life, Screwtape suggests several methods to Wormwood to increase the discord between the two. I will look at them each individually and in order, starting with:
"1. Keep his mind on the inner life." Doubt me not, this may seem like a decent thing to do...until we read on and discover that Screwtape means for the patient's focus to be entirely on himself at the expense of the world and people around him. There is mention of the "most elementary duties" being neglected in favor of "the most advanced and spiritual ones", and this may cause some confusion to us as well. So let's break down these duties in terms of what they might look like. An elementary duty for any Christian is the very simple act of helping someone in need without thought for self-gain. For instance, helping someone pick up the papers which they have dropped on the floor, or covering the coffee bill for a person who has left all their money at home are good examples of helping someone without thought for self-gain. Now, an example of a most advanced and spiritual duty might be the very careful planning and scheduling of intentional fasting during Lent. There is nothing wrong with either one, but Screwtape is hinting at having the patient's spiritual life becoming unbalanced, particularly so that the patient's relationship with his mother becomes severely fractured.
"2. It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous." Screwtape's suggestion here follows in the same vein as the previous bit of advice; namely, that the patient focus on the spiritual rather than the basic needs of the person which might be more urgent. To put the matter another way, praying for the salvation of a starving man's soul without giving the starving man the nourishing soup and water which he desperately needs immediately may result in a corpse, and so does the starving man little good for the present. Now the counter-argument may be that prayer is necessary. Yes. This is most true. Yet after having read through the Gospels, not once did Jesus attend to just the physical or the spiritual needs of the people he met and taught; he attended to both, often in the same sitting. As regards the patient and his mother, the challenge to the reader is to start with the very basic needs of the person they are praying for before moving on to that person's future and eternal life (or eternal death). The particularly chilling thought about the seriousness of Screwtape's point comes in the last sentence; many cases of domestic violence in the United States and around the world have occurred in the most spiritually-minded homes.
"3. When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other. Work on that..." How many of us have had a classmate or co-worker or housemate who drove us nuts with certain habits, certain ways of phrasing their sentences, or a certain expression or body posture? Screwtape presses on this particular issue by encouraging Wormwood to use those expressions and tones to set both of the residents against one another. This process is further enhanced in...
"4. In civilised life domestic hatred usually expresses itself by saying things which would appear quite harmless on paper (the words are not offensive) but in such a voice, or at such a moment, that they are not far short of a blow in the face." Screwtape is pushing for such domestic tension here that the questions about mundane home routines become blown all out of proportion in a full-fledged verbal assault by each person involved. If Wormwood does things right and utilizes the third method to the fullest in this scenario, the patient and his mother will soon not be able to be in the house and share each other's company for even five minutes. I think I might leave examples to your imagination, as many of us have come from homes where this situation occurred at least once.
Notice that the assault is comprehensive in its approach, and that Wormwood is not being asked to pick out any one method of temptation, but rather that all four approaches seem to work very nicely with each other if done right.
Rather terrifying, isn't it? But my encouragement to anyone who is reading this post and seeing their own home life reflected in horrific accuracy is this: ask for the Lord to intervene and He will. After all, if we are told anything by Jesus about prayer, it is that we pray in full faith that when we "ask, and it shall be given", peace between ourselves and another person really will be given!
Chapter 4 comes with the next post!
Saturday, November 12, 2011
The recent events at Penn State
I'm going to go out on a limb and put Lewis on hiatus for at least another few hours. If people really want to read more information about the child molestation scandal unfolding around former Penn State football assistant Jerry Sandusky, please go to ESPN.com. For those people that want to get a bit of summary and an interpretation of the events, continue reading.
My gut reaction to the revelations of Sandusky sexually abusing at-risk boys (single-parent households, low-income households, and so on) was to call for the man's head. The state of Pennsylvania does not have a death penalty as far as I know, so I imagine that Sandusky will be given a very lengthy prison sentence that will end with his death in a prison cell. So much for that.
Now on to the university: the board of trustees perhaps believes that the correct and immediate actions have been taken by firing Joe Paterno, Gary Schultz, Tim Curley, and Graham Spanier. I believe that the board of trustees has made a huge error, considering that all four of these men and the graduate assistant (at the time) Mike McQueary were probably not trained at all to know exactly what to do in the event that they witnessed or were informed about sexual abuse of children on campus property. Penn State is a massive higher education institution which serves young adults who are no longer considered minors for almost everything except the consumption of alcohol before the legal age of 21; knowledge of reporting and handling child abuse cases is mostly confined to the Education Department and the Social Services Department which train students to be teachers and social workers. After all, many child abuse cases are first discovered because a teacher or social worker in a K-12 school setting suspects that a child is being abused after seeing a significant change in the child's behavior corresponding with signs of physical trauma appearing on the student where the teacher or guidance counselor or social worker can document in writing what they have seen and observed.
None of the four fired men was trained to handle a child abuse case. I have been trained as a teacher to act on my suspicions of child abuse and immediately begin documenting evidence and reporting that evidence to school authorities, which will then require me to cooperate fully with authorities investigating the evidence and the reports from myself and others. With all regard to the trustees who have taken action and to the media who have done a very thorough job of covering this series of events, everyone is dead wrong. Paterno was a football coach, not a teacher or social worker. Curley and Schultz were university administrators, not men with education degrees trained to spot such things and follow up on their suspicions. Spanier was a university president charged with advocating for the university students, not fingering child molestors that were once part of the Penn State staff.
Not that any of this mattered to Sandusky, who set them all up to be fired in disgrace. The reaction by the board of trustees will haunt them whether they know it or not as the knee-jerk response it was. The reaction of many media personnel to vilify all four men fired rather than the man who committed the crimes is idiotic and hypocritical at best; I'm looking at you, Ivan Maisel, Lester Munson, Mark May, and Pat Forde. None of you have been trained to handle such a case, and you all would have made mistakes. Just like the human beings that you are.
Sandusky will be put in jail, the board of trustees will be viewed very negatively by alumni and students, and the media writers will hold their jobs (unfortunately). Am I falling for Paterno's cult of personality? No. I am reacting to the situation as someone seeing four firings as a very poor course of action in the absolute wrong direction.
Soooo...what happens now? Penn State will face Nebraska in their last home game of the season without two members of their coaching staff. After the season is over, who knows? Some folks have suggested (Munson) that Penn State's football program, indeed the entire athletics department, be scrapped for two years or more and started over from scratch. Quite a wonderful punishment to the hundreds of student-athletes and coaching staffs who had absolutely nothing to do with Sandusky at all, isn't it? Sheer idiocy on Munson's part, and if he has the guts, Lester Munson will contact me right now and explain to me how he can so boldly tell so many young athletes to give up the sports which they love so much and sustain their academic endeavours to become young professionals in a field other than athletics.
To all the writers saying "here's how it should have been handled and because the four men did not do so, they deserved to be punished", check your egos and do a lot of soul-searching. ANYONE can make the mistake Paterno did, since no one else suspected Sandusky of such atrocities either. That includes all media writers who may have interviewed him, and that includes the four above which I have mentioned and their peers. I certainly could have done the same thing in Paterno's shoes, or Curley's or Spanier's or Schultz's, even.
In the end, perhaps the strenth of the reaction and lashback is because Penn State is viewed as a place and institution where nothing may go so horribly wrong. That includes my own reaction, which is written in some measure here. I must conclude by stating that Penn State IS what Paterno and others who shared his vision wanted it to be: a university where the students and academics truly are important. Penn State will in fact not be tarnished from this scandal, and proper blame will be placed where it should be placed: at the feet of an old man who was never what he seemed, and sought to gratify only himself and his own selfish interests.
My gut reaction to the revelations of Sandusky sexually abusing at-risk boys (single-parent households, low-income households, and so on) was to call for the man's head. The state of Pennsylvania does not have a death penalty as far as I know, so I imagine that Sandusky will be given a very lengthy prison sentence that will end with his death in a prison cell. So much for that.
Now on to the university: the board of trustees perhaps believes that the correct and immediate actions have been taken by firing Joe Paterno, Gary Schultz, Tim Curley, and Graham Spanier. I believe that the board of trustees has made a huge error, considering that all four of these men and the graduate assistant (at the time) Mike McQueary were probably not trained at all to know exactly what to do in the event that they witnessed or were informed about sexual abuse of children on campus property. Penn State is a massive higher education institution which serves young adults who are no longer considered minors for almost everything except the consumption of alcohol before the legal age of 21; knowledge of reporting and handling child abuse cases is mostly confined to the Education Department and the Social Services Department which train students to be teachers and social workers. After all, many child abuse cases are first discovered because a teacher or social worker in a K-12 school setting suspects that a child is being abused after seeing a significant change in the child's behavior corresponding with signs of physical trauma appearing on the student where the teacher or guidance counselor or social worker can document in writing what they have seen and observed.
None of the four fired men was trained to handle a child abuse case. I have been trained as a teacher to act on my suspicions of child abuse and immediately begin documenting evidence and reporting that evidence to school authorities, which will then require me to cooperate fully with authorities investigating the evidence and the reports from myself and others. With all regard to the trustees who have taken action and to the media who have done a very thorough job of covering this series of events, everyone is dead wrong. Paterno was a football coach, not a teacher or social worker. Curley and Schultz were university administrators, not men with education degrees trained to spot such things and follow up on their suspicions. Spanier was a university president charged with advocating for the university students, not fingering child molestors that were once part of the Penn State staff.
Not that any of this mattered to Sandusky, who set them all up to be fired in disgrace. The reaction by the board of trustees will haunt them whether they know it or not as the knee-jerk response it was. The reaction of many media personnel to vilify all four men fired rather than the man who committed the crimes is idiotic and hypocritical at best; I'm looking at you, Ivan Maisel, Lester Munson, Mark May, and Pat Forde. None of you have been trained to handle such a case, and you all would have made mistakes. Just like the human beings that you are.
Sandusky will be put in jail, the board of trustees will be viewed very negatively by alumni and students, and the media writers will hold their jobs (unfortunately). Am I falling for Paterno's cult of personality? No. I am reacting to the situation as someone seeing four firings as a very poor course of action in the absolute wrong direction.
Soooo...what happens now? Penn State will face Nebraska in their last home game of the season without two members of their coaching staff. After the season is over, who knows? Some folks have suggested (Munson) that Penn State's football program, indeed the entire athletics department, be scrapped for two years or more and started over from scratch. Quite a wonderful punishment to the hundreds of student-athletes and coaching staffs who had absolutely nothing to do with Sandusky at all, isn't it? Sheer idiocy on Munson's part, and if he has the guts, Lester Munson will contact me right now and explain to me how he can so boldly tell so many young athletes to give up the sports which they love so much and sustain their academic endeavours to become young professionals in a field other than athletics.
To all the writers saying "here's how it should have been handled and because the four men did not do so, they deserved to be punished", check your egos and do a lot of soul-searching. ANYONE can make the mistake Paterno did, since no one else suspected Sandusky of such atrocities either. That includes all media writers who may have interviewed him, and that includes the four above which I have mentioned and their peers. I certainly could have done the same thing in Paterno's shoes, or Curley's or Spanier's or Schultz's, even.
In the end, perhaps the strenth of the reaction and lashback is because Penn State is viewed as a place and institution where nothing may go so horribly wrong. That includes my own reaction, which is written in some measure here. I must conclude by stating that Penn State IS what Paterno and others who shared his vision wanted it to be: a university where the students and academics truly are important. Penn State will in fact not be tarnished from this scandal, and proper blame will be placed where it should be placed: at the feet of an old man who was never what he seemed, and sought to gratify only himself and his own selfish interests.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Long absences
If you read this blog regularly, you may have noticed that I have not made a new post for quite some time. I do apologize about that. I will be returning to a more-or-less regular posting with the Screwtape Letters; let me know through your comments if there is anything in particular which you the readers want me to address or if you wish for me to take a break from Screwtape and write about something else (I understand that not everyone enjoys Lewis' works).
So where have I been? Mostly running around on errands and doing my best to prevent my night job from getting me too discouraged. In light of those various responsibilities, I felt it necessary to get away from the blog for a bit. I do hope that you all will not punish me too much for doing so; as long as breaks do not become a habit from good routines, all is well, right?
More coming from Lewis tomorrow, as I take a look at chapter 3!
So where have I been? Mostly running around on errands and doing my best to prevent my night job from getting me too discouraged. In light of those various responsibilities, I felt it necessary to get away from the blog for a bit. I do hope that you all will not punish me too much for doing so; as long as breaks do not become a habit from good routines, all is well, right?
More coming from Lewis tomorrow, as I take a look at chapter 3!
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