Greetings to everyone! Without further ado, we turn again to Screwtape's advice regarding his nephew's patient...
The possibility of the patient being drafted for the war effort has produced a deal of anxiety, which Screwtape mentions quickly is quite advantageous to Wormwood's efforts of temptation. The idea is to block off the "Enemy" from prevailing upon the patient to be concerned with what he does, and fill the patient's mind instead with notions of what may happen to him (presumably negative). It is for his current situation and trials which Screwtape says that "he is to say 'Thy will be done', and for the daily task of bearing this that the daily bread will be provided." In other words, Wormwood's primary objective is to keep the patient focused on anything but what he is to cope with in this very moment, and even more importantly, to keep the patient from both realizing what he must do and Whom he must draw his strength from to withstand the present "tribulation", though we may use the word "trials" and arrive at the same understanding.
Screwtape's next encouragement to Wormwood is to either focus the patient's attention on trivial matters outside of himself-anger at a neighbour or passion at the sight of a lovely woman-or to focus that attention inward on himself. Either way, the goal is achieved when the "Enemy" is no longer the focus of the patient's prayers and actions. Screwtape has already encouraged Wormwood to do this in chapter 4, and the fact that Screwtape brings the subject up again should be a reminder that the Devil and his minions will continue to use whatever tricks work best, or be most insistent with one or two avenues of attack against us.
The next two paragraphs highlight the need for Wormwood to direct his patient's "malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know." In so doing, the patient will turn his real virtues into imagined ones.
I believe that this chapter points out the great dangers which we Christians in the Western Hemisphere face...and never seem to realize until we are rasping out our last breaths. Oh, to be a missionary to the far-flung corners of the world seems a fine and noble thing, and indeed it is. Yet we North Americans in particular (and I do not discount myself; I am as guilty as anyone of this) fail miserably at being a good neighbour to the person who lives right next door to us. I tell you now that I have been on missions in Costa Rica and have come away changed, but I can never seem to say much more than a "good morning" or "Hullo!" to the various tenants of the apartment building in which I live. I can advocate for missions to Europe where many people are eager to hear the Good News all over again, but I have often failed to deliver the Good News to people living just up the street from my residence.
Where do you stand on this issue of focusing what God wants us to do right now, rather than worrying about what will become of us?
No comments:
Post a Comment