Dr. Jim's WebLog

Here, from Joe Carter, is a pretty good link to starting a Blog.

For previous letters: 1 2 For next letter: 4

Our patient has a strained relationship with his mother (who he lives with.) How can our devils exploit this?

First, the Patient thinks his conversion to Christianity is inside him, so keep him focused internally. (God wants us focused on God and on our neighbors.) One of my favorite quotes is in this section: "You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself which are perfectly clear to anyone who has ever lived in the same house with him or worked in the same office." That's me! Self examination is a big waste of my time, I'm too clever to actually see the truth.

Second, make his prayers vague and spiritual. Don't pray for her arthritis, pray for her "soul." Pray for her sins (which, of course, really means "pray for all the things she does that irritate ME!) Part of the purpose of prayer, it seems, is to get the feelings and thoughts of prayer to affect the way one treats others day-to-day.

Third, people who live together irritate each other, sometimes just by existing. There are a couple of ways we can interpret this: "She does that on purpose, just to irritate me!" or, "Well, that tone of voice is irritating, but she can't help it and besides, I suspect she has one or two things on her mind just now aside from irritating me!" (and of course, nothing I do could in any way irritate her...)

Fourth, and another favorite of mine, talks about the difference between the plain words and the real communication. People can say, "When is dinner?" in two different ways--one is seeking information, and the other is whining, accusing, or judging. The difference is the tone of voice and the body language.

So the devils (or the dark side of our psychology, you pick) say for us to assume the worst of those around us.

Our pastor did a sermon on love last week. The chapter in I Corinthians 13 is famous in weddings. You've probably heard it: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude...

He went on to say that love does three vital things. It protects (covers, bears burdens for.) Love Trusts--it gives the benefit of the doubt, thinks the best, assigns the best interpretation to the facts. And love HOPES. God makes all things possible.

Life is so much brighter when you begin to assume the best! Yes, it's a bit unnatural and a voice inside may whisper about what a sap you're being. Ignore it. Of course this does not mean to ignore actual facts, but it does mean to be careful about how you interpret them.

Yes, the world is dangerous. From Australia comes a nice article about suffering, pain, and God. Take a quick look... and think about this quote:

"if there is one single conclusion forced on us by the history of mankind, it is that the growth of faith in God is not hindered by misfortune and suffering, but by satisfaction."

Look at Western Europe, and compare it to Africa and Asia where Christianity is growing rapidly. Interesting.

For letter 1, see here.

Letter 2 begins with the horrifying news that the Patient has become a Christian, tempered with the reassurance that lots of adult converts revert to their old ways and can be reclaimed. Some evangelicals don't believe that you can "lose your salvation." I claim no expertise but don't want to take the chance!

The letter goes on to describe the church in England in the 1940's and the opportunities it gives the Devils. The people the patient used to avoid are in the church, including grocers and people with ridiculous squeaky boots. In my church, yesterday, you would have found kids with piercings and bald older men that Screwtape would have found equally amusing.

The meat of the letter describes how God wants people to be free, and so refuses to make life easy for them. Soon after the excitement of conversion, the man will feel disappointment or anticlimax. This, he says, is true of all human endeavors. I have to say, I have this experience all the time. The beginning of any new project is exciting, but finishing it is usually work and often I run out of steam. My conversion was exciting (like Lewis, I came to christianity as an adult) but then there were these long dry spells. At times, I wonder while reading Screwtape how Lewis knew me ten years before I was born...

And the end of the chapter really stung me. The patient really doesn't believe his own sinfulness, and believes he "has run up a very favourable credit balance in the Enemy's [i.e., God's] ledger by allowing himself to be converted, and thinks that he is showing great humility and condescension in going to church with these 'smug', commonplace neighbors at all..." Sigh. Guilty as charged.

Oh, there is another great line, where Screwtape tells Wormwood about how we humans can avoid seeing our own shortcomings while focusing on our neighbor's (meaning, anybody else handy.) "...'if I, being what I am, can consider that I am in some sense a Christian, why should the different vices of those people in the next pew prove that their religion is mere hypocrisy and convention?' You may ask whether it is possible to keep such an obvious thought from occurring even to a human mind. IT IS, Wormwood, IT IS!"

My hope is that you will find some of the same growth and knowledge I did when my wonderful wife got me this book on tape. We humans are all alike in so many ways and Lewis finds so many of them.

For letter 3...

Why does God allow suffering? Big problem. David Hume said, "Is He willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then He is impotent. Is He able, but not willing? Then He is malevolent. Is He both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

Here is an interesting approach to the problem. It should be noted that the Theodicy problem (the problem of evil in the world) is not a new flash that occurred to a University intellectual last year to disprove God's existence. It dates back hundreds of years and many very smart people have addressed it.

In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis addresses this problem. Letter 29, from Screwtape the senior demon to his nephew Wormwood, says "We [the devils] have made men proud of most vices, but not of cowardice. Whenever we have almost succeeded in doing so, the Enemy [God] permits a war or an earthquake or some other calamity, and at once courage becomes so obviously lovely and important even in human eyes that all our work is undone...this indeed is probably one of the Enemy's motives for creating a dangerous world..."

Small consolation to the families destroyed by a few minutes of earthquake. Nobody wants to be the way someone else gets to show their courage, or develop their spirit! But this is our world and we must all do what we can to make it better. See below for some links to help.

I just found a whole website on The Screwtape Letters! I'll have to see what it has that I haven't thought of. There is also a reading group guide. There is a series of Study Guides on PDF files that Literary Guild put out as well. Go here for letter 2.

Letter One introduces us to the three main characters. Wormwood receives the letters, and is a "junior tempter" in the Devil's Lowerarchy. Screwtape, his uncle, is more experienced and writes letters of advice. The Patient is Wormwood's current assignment on Earth, in 1940 England.

In the first letter, Screwtape tells Wormwood that modern humans have lost the ability to follow a logical argument, and that this is a great achievement. "Your man has been accustomed to have a dozen incompatible philosopies dancing about together inside his head." He goes on to say that his patient won't particularly worry about the truth or falsity of an idea, but rather whether it is modern or old or fashionable.

He then advises keeping the Patient from thinking about anything universal or eternal by fixing his attention on immediate sense experiences. Keep him thinking about the ordinary.

Finally, Science is NOT a good defense against Christianity in his opinoin, because it forces one to thing about invisible realities.

So what do I think about these ideas? First, the "incompatible philosophies", seems to ring true. Postmodernism teaches that there is no absolute truth and many modern professors seem to push that strange idea. (Ever note that "there is no absolute truth" is a statement that makes an absolute claim of truth?) While I agree that sometimes it can be difficult to ascertain truth, it seems a long leap to say "there is no truth."

The idea about ideas having traits other than truth (like fashionability) also rings true to me. The people living two thousand or more years ago were just as intelligent as those alive now. They had complex political systems, friends, and the same biological needs and traits as us. But we have bought the idea that life inevitably progresses (and in a positive, desirable direction.) So the old ideas are outworn. We can ignore 2000 year old ideas not because they are wrong but simply because they are old. Hm. Not too logical of us.

Keeping ones attention off of universal issues makes it pretty easy to tempt a human away from "virtue" which is a higher function. I certainly find this in myself. If I'm thinking about what is really good for me in the long term, I don't have the extra dessert. If I'm just thinking about what happens to sound delicious, though, down the gullet it goes.

So we will move on to the next letter, and see how Wormwood, Screwtape, and the Patient fare in their struggle. We will see that while many of the ideas in this book are stated in explicitly religious terms, the various insights into human nature in The Screwtape Letters translate into modern psychological language rather well.
Letter 2

Just finished a terrific anthology of science fiction stories, edited by Orson Scott Card. "Masterpieces: The best science fiction of the 20th Century." Readable, a full range of terrific short stories. I've always thought short stories were the natural element of science fiction, anyway. This is a good bedtime book.

James Gleick's Chaos is one of those rare books that changed the way I looked at the world. It discusses the mathematics of randomness, showing along the way why it is so difficult to predict weather more than a few days out and why random fluctuations give rise to stock market cycles. I loved it.

Orthodoxy, by Chesterton, was written in 1908 or so. He discusses how his ideas about the world, gleaned from wide reading and observation, turned out to have been discovered 2000 years ago by the first Christians. The thing that fascinates me about this book is that he constructs arguements on the page that take several sentences or paragraphs to finish. But despite my years of education, I've become a child of the sound bite and have some trouble with complex arguments! Nevertheless I have enjoyed his observations.

The best Western I ever recall is Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. It contains great characters, humor, action, and the sense of reality that authors must dream about producing. My wife and I both read it and would consider reading it again, high praise for modern fiction.