{"id":5119,"date":"2018-08-16T16:24:45","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T00:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=5119"},"modified":"2018-08-16T16:24:45","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T00:24:45","slug":"the-screwtape-letters-six-through-twelve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2018\/08\/16\/the-screwtape-letters-six-through-twelve","title":{"rendered":"The Screwtape Letters: Six Through Twelve"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blog readers: Chi Alpha @ Stanford is engaging in our annual summer reading project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will largely consist of excerpts I found insightful). They are all tagged summer-reading-project-2018<\/a>. The schedule is online<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This week\u2019s reading (letters six through twelve) was simultaneously short and full of insightful observations.<\/p>\n

A few of Lewis\u2019s comments stood out to me:<\/p>\n

Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy\u2019s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. (Letter Nine, page 210)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lewis is spot-on here. Pleasure is a gift from God. As James 1:27 reminds us, \u201cevery good and perfect gift is from above.\u201d Truly internalizing this is transformative. The pleasures of God are premium, grade A stuff. It is true that Satan is a skillful knockoff artist, and this means that the opportunities he lures us with can seem as good as (or even superior to) God\u2019s pleasures at first, but at the end of the day they are still knockoffs. The pleasures they produce don\u2019t last. Hebrews 11:25 calls them \u201cthe fleeting pleasures of sin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The upshot: few things disrupt Satan\u2019s schemes for your life like a fierce love of wholesome pleasure. One of the best ways to resist temptation is to be full of godly joy.<\/p>\n

Moving on, letter ten seems especially helpful to Stanford students.<\/p>\n

[When trying to impress new, sophisticated friends] he will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and sceptical attitudes which are not really his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary. (Letter Ten, pages 212\u2013213)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Boom! Not much to add to that except pray for all the frosh heading to Stanford in a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Also of relevance to the Stanford culture:<\/p>\n

But flippancy is the best [source of laughter] of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour-plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. (Letter Eleven, page 217)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, little commentary is needed. You will find it worthwhile, though, to pay attention to the things that are simply assumed to be false by your community. What Lewis calls flippancy is an indication that there might not be solid arguments against the opinion being mocked. Internet culture is especially prone to this sort of superficial commentary. Social media, in particular, incentivizes it. There may very well be good reasons that your community believes what it does about the good life, the problems facing society, the true religion, and right-thinking politics\u2026 but perhaps there are not. Seek out the non-flippant opinions before you allow the juvenile banter to sway you unduly.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I hope you derived as much benefit from this week\u2019s reading as I did. Enjoy the book!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blog readers: Chi Alpha @ Stanford is engaging in our annual summer reading project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will largely consist of excerpts I found insightful). They are all tagged summer-reading-project-2018. The schedule is online. This week\u2019s reading (letters six through twelve) was \u2026 Continue reading \u201cThe Screwtape Letters: Six Through Twelve\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Some of C.S. Lewis's thoughts on pleasure, impressing one's friends, and flippancy.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[230,229,236],"class_list":["post-5119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-reviews","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-summer-reading-project-2018","tag-the-screwtape-letters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-1kz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5119"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5122,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5119\/revisions\/5122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}