In his first letter to Wormwood, Screwtape focuses on two strategies for distracting our hearts and minds to keep us "out of the Enemy's clutches." The first is avoiding "argument" about what is true or false in life. Instead, Wormwood is instructed to help his Patient focus on jargon, or contemporary philosophy.
"Don't waste time trying to make him think that materialism is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous - that is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of think he cares about."
He goes on to state why argument can be such a powerful tool for the believer.
"By the very act of argument, you awake the patient's reason; and once it is awake, who can forsee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strenghtening 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'."
This is the second strategy - making the faithful get lost in the day to day activities of the present age such that we lose sight of our eternal purpose and destiny. Whenever our life is reduced to the traffic jam on the way to work, or the pending project due by close of business, or our child's soccer game, or the host of other activities that fill our block of hours known as a day, we lose sight of our true purpose; in fact it become difficult for us to accept the reality of anything beyond our dayplanner.
This is the advise of Screwtape to Wormwood:
"You begin to see the point? Thanks to processes which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Keep pressing on him the ordinariness of things."
So what does this mean for us?
For starters, we should not be afraid to wrestle with the reality of truth. In fact, we must challenge the reason of our faith to discover "the universal issues" for which we were created. God welcomes this inquiry for He is pleased to reveal His knowledge and "awaken our reason" to discover our unique, individual purpose.
Secondly, we must not let the day to day become our all in all. The routine and regiment of daily living can be hypnotic, placing us in a trance that mistakes the activities of life for the reason for living. God wants us to seek the extraordinary of what we cannot touch and see. He wants us to experience the "real life."
So the next time you are bumper to bumper on I-35 or racing the clock to finish a proposal for your boss or finding yourself frustrated with the officiating on the field, don't confuse the "pressure of the ordinary" with the purpose of our existence. We were made for experiences beyond those things and moments that simply fill our calendar each day.
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1 comment:
I think most of us get the part about being lost in busy-ness. It happens to us all the time. To borrow the old money-month phrase...the day runs out before the stuff to do does!
And even among unbelievers and skeptics, this busy-ness cycle seems to overwhelm a search for truth. So I hear people say and practice--"just keep your head down and don't ask questions!"
I do believe that the enemy tries to keep us from delving into truth-claims by making us think they are too hard to understand and answer or even "maybe" were not right.
But the reality is that when a person seeks truth and is open to both answers for his questions and questions for his answers, then the devil has to tremble. Truth and light go together. Jesus has both.
Confusion and distraction eqaully keep me from honoring the Lord.
Truth is, I am more distracted than confused!
Lord have mercy.
Grace
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