Screwtape

I am reading “The Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis. It is a fictional account of letters written from the point of view of a veteran Demon to his nephew Demon who is new in the tempting business. It is a fascinating book, of which I have never read anything like this before. They refer to the humans that they test as “Patients.” It is a book about the strategies that the tempters use to get us away from God. Screwtape is the Uncle and he is writing to Wormwood and giving him pointers on how to stay undercover and keep his patient unaware that he is even working in his life.

I ran into my favorite quote today. He writes this advice:

“You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say, as one of my own patients said on his arrival down here, “I now see that I spent most of my life in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.’”

That describes humanity. If Satan can get us to do nothing, he wins, so that when you die you say, “I did not live for God, nor did I live it up in sin, I just did nothing.”

I had to ask myself, and I pose this question to you, what is your proverbial “Dead Fire”? Television, Internet, Video Games, that great Novel, News, Radio, music, work, hobbies. Not that these things are in and of themselves bad, but if this robs you of time from your family, or your spouse, or your God, they have become distractions, and we make Satan's job very easy.

Just some thoughts.