THROUGH THE LENS WITH C.S. LEWIS

3 October 2012

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.” 

C. S. LewisA Grief Observed

A LITTLE BACKGROUND

July 20, 1940 letter to his brother Warren: 

Humphrey came up to see me last night… and we listened to Hitler’s speech together. I don’t know if I’m weaker than other people: but it is a positive revelation to me how while the speech lasts it is impossible not to waver just a little. I should be useless as a schoolmaster or a policeman. Statements which I know to be untrue all but convince me, at any rate for the moment, if only the man says them unflinchingly. The same weakness is why I am a slow examiner: if a candidate with a bold, mature handwriting attributed Paradise Lost to Wordsworth, I shd. feel a tendency to go and look it up for fear he might be right after all.

THE PROCESS The idea for a book

called As One Devil to Another came to Lewis at church, telling his brother, “The idea would be to give all the psychology of temptation from the other point of view.”

He wanted to strike a balance between the ideas that demons don’t exist or they hold supernatural power over humans.

The book may be reasonably easy to read, but it was unpleasant to write:Though I had never written anything more easily, I never wrote with less enjoyment… Though it was easy to twist one’s mind into the diabolical attitude, it was not fun, or not for long.

October 25–November 1, 1936Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sign a treaty of cooperation on October 25; on November 1, the Rome-Berlin Axis is announced.

November 25, 1936Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, directed against the Soviet Union and the international Communist movement.

July 7, 1937Japan invades China, initiating World War II in the Pacific.

March 11–13, 1938Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss.

September 29, 1938Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement which forces the Czechoslovak Republic to cede the Sudetenland, including the key Czechoslovak military defense positions, to Nazi Germany.

March 14–15, 1939Under German pressure, the Slovaks declare their independence and form a Slovak Republic. The Germans occupy the rump Czech lands in violation of the Munich agreement, forming a Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

March 31, 1939France and Great Britain guarantee the integrity of the borders of the Polish state.

WORLD WAR TWO-EUROPE

April 7–15, 1939Fascist Italy invades and annexes Albania.

August 23, 1939Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression agreement and a secret codicil dividing eastern Europe into spheres of influence.

September 1, 1939Germany invades Poland, initiating World War II in Europe.

September 3, 1939Honoring their guarantee of Poland’s borders, Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.

September 17, 1939The Soviet Union invades Poland from the east.

September 27–29, 1939Warsaw surrenders on September 27. The Polish government flees into exile via Romania. Germany and the Soviet Union divide Poland between them.

November 30, 1939–March 12, 1940The Soviet Union invades Finland, initiating the so-called Winter War. The Finns sue for an armistice and have to cede the northern shores of Lake Lagoda and the small Finnish coastline on the Arctic Sea to the Soviet Union.

WORLD WAR TWO-EUROPE

WITH THAT IN MIND…

LETTER 1 What is the effect of the internet on action and reason?

On logic? On belief?

He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily ‘true’ or ‘false’, but as ‘academic’ or ‘practical’, ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary’, ‘conventional or ruthless’. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally is keeping him from the Church. (127)

STREAM OF EXPERIENCE How has Satan

used the “stream of immediate sense experiences” to influence the Church? (127)

Sight Sound Smell Taste Touch

STREAM OF EXPERIENCE How has Satan

used the “stream of immediate sense experiences” to influence the Church? (127)

Sight Sound Smell Taste Touch

Music

STREAM OF EXPERIENCE How has Satan

used the “stream of immediate sense experiences” to influence the Church? (127)

Sight Sound Smell Taste Touch

Music Lights

STREAM OF EXPERIENCE How has Satan

used the “stream of immediate sense experiences” to influence the Church? (127)

Sight Sound Smell Taste Touch

Music Lights Spectacle

STREAM OF EXPERIENCE How has Satan

used the “stream of immediate sense experiences” to influence the Church? (127)

Sight Sound Smell Taste Touch

Music Lights Spectacle Activities

STREAM OF EXPERIENCE How has Satan

used the “stream of immediate sense experiences” to influence the Church? (127)

Sight Sound Smell Taste Touch

Music Lights Spectacle Activities Personality

STREAM OF EXPERIENCE How has Satan

used the “stream of immediate sense experiences” to influence the Church? (127)

Sight Sound Smell Taste Touch

Music Lights Spectacle Activities Personality People

How do the distractions of daily life interfere with your

ability and/or

willingness to hear

God speak?

LETTER TWOThe people we know…

HOW DOES REALITY MAKE YOU STUMBLE?Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like ‘the mind of Christ’ and the actual faces in the next pew. (129)

Work hard, then on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman. The Enemy allows this disappointment to occur on the threshold of every human endeavor. (129)

Desiring their freedom, He therefore refuses to carry them, by their mere affections and habits, to any of the goals which He sets before them: He leaves them to ‘do it on their own’. And there lies our opportunity. But also, remember, there lies our danger. If ones they get through this initial dryness successfully, they become much less dependent on emotion and therefore much harder to tempt. (130)

A GIFT?

LETTER THREEHow does Satan use family to trip us up in our walk of faith? (131)

LETTER FOURWhat is false prayer? (133-134)

EXTERNAL TURMOIL

Consider too what undesirable deaths occur at wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy’s party, prepared. How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence, and even, if our workers know their job, withholding all suggestion of a priest lest it should betray to the sick man his true condition! (136)

Letter Five

CHAPTER SIX“We want him to be in the

maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with

contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope

or fear. There’s nothing like suspense and anxiety for

barricading a human’s mind against the Enemy.” (137)

How has this worked in your life?

CHAPTER SEVEN“I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy. The ‘Life Force’, the worship of sex, and some aspects of psychoanalysis, may here prove useful. If once again we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits’—then the end of the war will be in sight.” (139)

How much closer are we today?

CHAPTER EIGHT

What are the four biggest fears of Screwtape regarding his role in keeping humans safely on the path to his Father’s house?

The first three are on page 141; the last is on page 142.

Why are these things important for US to know in our society?

CHAPTER NINEWhat is the “law of undulation” and how does it affect believers?

What kind of religion does Screwtape find amusing? Why?

ALL MORTALS TEND TO TURN

INTO THE THING THEY ARE

PRETENDING TO BE. (145)

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER ELEVEN LAUGHTER

Joy and FunJoke Proper and

Flippancy

HOMEWORKRead The Screwtape Letters chapters 12-21 (149-168)Write a short essay exploring how one of the tactics described in these letters has been attempted on you. Create an image of how one of these tactics might look in the modern era. Prepare a 3 slide show presentation that includes your artwork and how you did it.