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Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Since in Sunday School this week, Steve-O focused on worship and communion, we'll have another week of quotes to get your brains working (hopefully)...
Today's is from C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters. Remember, these are a series of letters written from one demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, and it's written in the style of how they can wreck a believer's life. Here's one from early in the book:
"The trouble about argument [my note: the demon has begun to explain why trying to confuse a believer is futile] is that it moves the whole struggle to the Enemy's own ground. He can argue, too; whereas in really preactical propoganda of the kind I am suggesting He has been show for centuries to be greatly inferior to Our Father Below. By the very act of arguing, you awake the patient's reason; and one it's awake, who can foresee the result? Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favor, you will find that you have been strengthening 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.'"
The point that Screwtape is trying to get across is that getting believer's thinking is negative even if they buy into the propoganda for a while...eventually they'll see the flaws in that thinking. He's telling Wormwood that the best thing to do is distract the believer into not thinking by having them focus on their day-to-day life.
What are some things that you buy into every day that distract you from your moment-by-moment walk with Christ? What practical steps can you take to avoid the temporary and focus more on the eternal?
Brent 4:29 AM
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