Final Screwtape Letters (For Awhile)

Alright, this will be one of the last Screwtape Letters posts for awhile, I promise! It is just that this book is so good and actually really really prophetic for me right now! So praise Him.

“All mortals tend to turn into the thing that they are pretending to be.”

“He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space. . . .
We do not have to contend with the explicit repentance of a definite, fully recognized, sin, but only with this vague, though uneasy feeling that he hasn’t been doing very well lately.
This dim uneasiness needs careful handling. If it gets too strong it may wake him up and spoil the whole game. On the other hand, if you suppress it entirely – which, by the by, the Enemy will probably not allow you to do – we lose an element in the situation which can be turned to good account. If such a feeling is allowed to live, but not allowed to become irresistible and flower into real repentance, it has one invaluable tendency. It increases the patient’s reluctance to think about the Enemy. All humans at nearly all times have some such reluctance; but when thinking of Him involves facing and intensifying a whole vague cloud of half-conscious guilt, this reluctance in increased tenfold. … He will want his prayers to be unreal, for he will dread nothing so much as effective contact with the Enemy. His aim will be to let sleeping worms lie.”  

“When He talks of their losing their selves, He only means adandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) then when they are wholly His they will be more themselves as ever…. He hates to see them drifting away from their own nature for any other reason.”

“Even of his own sins the Enemy does not want him to think too much; once they are repented, the sooner the man turns his attention outward, the better the Enemy is pleased.”

Ok that is enough of that for a little while. I am about halfway and will finish. I will probably post more from it, but I do not want this blog to become tedious and planned. So let’s move on. I will try to keep you all updated about my daily reading. (And listening, someday.) Enjoy your day!