{"id":5140,"date":"2018-08-30T10:21:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T18:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=5140"},"modified":"2018-08-30T10:21:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T18:21:24","slug":"the-screwtape-letters-twenty-through-twenty-five","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2018\/08\/30\/the-screwtape-letters-twenty-through-twenty-five","title":{"rendered":"The Screwtape Letters: Twenty Through Twenty-Five"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Screw\u00adtape Let\u00adters by C.S. Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blog read\u00aders: Chi Alpha @ Stan\u00adford is engag\u00ading in our annu\u00adal sum\u00admer read\u00ading project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will large\u00adly con\u00adsist of excerpts I found insight\u00adful). They are all tagged sum\u00admer-read\u00ading-project-2018<\/a>. The sched\u00adule is online<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

This week we\u2019re look\u00ading at let\u00adters 20 to 25. Two pas\u00adsages caught my atten\u00adtion this week.<\/p>\n

I was struck by how con\u00adtem\u00adpo\u00adrary Lewis\u2019s com\u00adments on sex\u00adu\u00adal temp\u00adta\u00adtion in let\u00adter 20 seem, even though he wrote this book near\u00adly 80 years ago.<\/p>\n

We have engi\u00adneered a great increase in the licence which soci\u00adety allows to the rep\u00adre\u00adsen\u00adta\u00adtion of the appar\u00adent nude (not the real nude) in art, and its exhi\u00adbi\u00adtion on the stage or the bathing beach. It is all a fake, of course; the fig\u00adures in the pop\u00adu\u00adlar art are false\u00adly drawn; the real women in bathing suits or tights are actu\u00adal\u00adly pinched in and propped up to make them appear firmer and more slen\u00adder and more boy\u00adish than nature allows a full-grown woman to be. Yet at the same time, the mod\u00adern world is taught to believe that it is being \u201cfrank\u201d and \u201chealthy\u201d and get\u00adting back to nature. As a result we are more and more direct\u00ading the desires of men to some\u00adthing which does not exist\u2014making the role of the eye in sex\u00adu\u00adal\u00adi\u00adty more and more impor\u00adtant and at the same time mak\u00ading its demands more and more impos\u00adsi\u00adble. What fol\u00adlows you can eas\u00adi\u00adly fore\u00adcast! (let\u00adter 20, page 243)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It was indeed easy to fore\u00adcast, but now we need mere\u00adly look around. Sex\u00adu\u00adal dys\u00adfunc\u00adtion plagues our soci\u00adety. A study that appeared this week (Pornog\u00adra\u00adphy Use and Mar\u00adriage Entry Dur\u00ading Ear\u00adly Adult\u00adhood: Find\u00adings From a Pan\u00adel Study of Young Amer\u00adi\u00adcans<\/a> in pre\u00adpub\u00adli\u00adca\u00adtion) found that \u201chigh\u00ader lev\u00adels of pornog\u00adra\u00adphy use in emerg\u00ading adult\u00adhood were asso\u00adci\u00adat\u00aded with a low\u00ader like\u00adli\u00adhood of mar\u00adriage by the final sur\u00advey wave for men, but not women.\u201d Lewis called it.<\/p>\n

The oth\u00ader pas\u00adsage which stood out to me was from let\u00adter 21, and I con\u00adfess it struck uncom\u00adfort\u00adably close to home:<\/p>\n

Men are not angered by mere mis\u00adfor\u00adtune but by mis\u00adfor\u00adtune con\u00adceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feel\u00ading that a legit\u00adi\u00admate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, there\u00adfore, that your patient can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tem\u00adpered. Now you will have noticed that noth\u00ading throws him into a pas\u00adsion so eas\u00adi\u00adly as to find a tract of time which he reck\u00adoned on hav\u00ading at his own dis\u00adpos\u00adal unex\u00adpect\u00aded\u00adly tak\u00aden from him. It is the unex\u00adpect\u00aded vis\u00adi\u00adtor (when he looked for\u00adward to a qui\u00adet evening), or the friend\u2019s talk\u00ada\u00adtive wife (turn\u00ading up when he looked for\u00adward to a tete\u2011\u00d0\u00b0-tete with the friend), that throw him out of gear.\u2026 They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen.\u2026 The man can nei\u00adther make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and moon his chat\u00adtels. He is also, in the\u00ado\u00adry, com\u00admit\u00adted a total ser\u00advice of the Ene\u00admy; and if the Ene\u00admy appeared to him in bod\u00adi\u00adly form and demand\u00aded that total ser\u00advice for even one day, he would not refuse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is so true. If God asks for fif\u00adteen min\u00adutes, I\u2019ll give it to Him glad\u00adly regard\u00adless of what I am doing. But if some\u00adone chats with me for fif\u00adteen min\u00adutes while I\u2019m try\u00ading to get a task done, I become impa\u00adtient and irri\u00adta\u00adble. Yet Jesus clear\u00adly said \u201cwhat\u00adev\u00ader you did for one of the least of these broth\u00aders and sis\u00adters of mine, you did for me\u201d (Matthew 25:40). I need to change.<\/p>\n

Any\u00adway, that\u2019s some of what I got from this week\u2019s read\u00adings. Only two weeks of read\u00ading remain!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blog read\u00aders: Chi Alpha @ Stan\u00adford is engag\u00ading in our annu\u00adal sum\u00admer read\u00ading project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will large\u00adly con\u00adsist of excerpts I found insight\u00adful). They are all tagged sum\u00admer-read\u00ad\u00ading-project-2018. The sched\u00adule is online. This week we\u2019re look\u00ading at let\u00adters 20 to \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cThe Screw\u00adtape Let\u00adters: Twen\u00adty Through Twen\u00adty-Five\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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Written nearly 80 years ago, the 20th Screwtape Letter has incisive comments on modern beauty standards.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[230,223,229,236],"class_list":["post-5140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-reviews","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-lust","tag-summer-reading-project-2018","tag-the-screwtape-letters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-1kU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5140","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=5140"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5143,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5140\/revisions\/5143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}