Monday, November 2, 2009

We Saw Screwtape!

We spent Halloween at the theater. Exciting, right?

Not only that, we were watching The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. Now does it all make sense? I am not attached to Halloween, at all. I don’t dress up or spend the money on candy for strangers.

When the possibility came for twisting it into a relevant learning experience, I jumped.

Sometimes the best way to define something is to tell you what it is not. It is hard to tell you exactly what makes me happy, but I can tell you what makes me unhappy, easily. That is the experience of The Screwtape Letters. It does not tell you what Christ is, but it shows you what He is not. Seeing my Savior from the enemy’s camp lit a fire in my husband and me. We were hungry for this type of experience.

You know what stared me in the face through the whole performance? Distraction. I have succumbed to the advances of the enemy on this field.

Excerpt from a letter written by Screwtape, to Wormwood, concerning Wormwood’s human patient,

“Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it ‘real life’ and don’t let him ask what he means by ‘real’.”

The stream of immediate sense experiences, isn’t that what we fight every day?

I read a verse this morning.

I think that it fits my struggle with the stream of immediate sense experiences.

I think that it illuminates this area of sin in God’s people.

Thus says the Lord concerning this people:

Truly they have loved to wander,

they have not restrained their feet; -Jeremiah 14:10a, NRSV

Do you struggle with fixating on the stream of immediate sense experiences?

4 comments:

  1. wow -- this is profound! Thank you for sharing -- it gives me lot's to think on this afternoon!

    Be Blessed!

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  2. I find myself in that situation right now with something that happened this weekend. This is profound....and something needed to shake me up and to stop wandering.

    What a neat experience to see The Screwtape Letters on Halloween. I read the book several years ago and I think it would be fascinating to see it as a play.

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  3. At times I think I have the market cornered on distraction. I can't seem to keep my mind from wandering off into multiple scenarios, while I am having my quite time with God. I really need God's help to "be still".

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  4. Whew. I don't even have the words...I'm afraid distraction is my middle name! It's not that I truly love to wander, I just don't take the time to remind myself of the fact that I want to know just where it is I'm headed.

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-TJK

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