Space Enough, and Time

My daily New Testament reading for the last couple of weeks was the letter of Ephesians.  The letter, one that weaves the theological and the practical together the way the always should be, ends with a popular passage that casts a vision not just of God’s glorious kingdom, but also of the darker side of reality against which war is fought, what one translation renders “this present darkness.”  A fitting reminder for what C. S. Lewis was trying to do with his Screwtape Letters.

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In Screwtape’s seventh letter to Wormwood, the “affectionate uncle” has something to say about “extremes” in their work of spiritual antagonism, beginning with whether or not Wormwood should let his patient know of his demonic existence.  Screwtape writes of their “policy” to conceal themselves:

When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism and we make no magicians.  On the other hand, when they believe in su, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics.

He then mentions the great hope of “emotionalizing and mythologizing the sciences” as a way of real victory for their party:

If once we can produce our perfect work– the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshiping, what he vaguely calls ‘Forces’ while denying the existence of ‘spirits- then the end of the war will be in sight.

It’s a great turn of phrase, the “Materialist Magician.”  And it points to a truly possible way that others might see and move through the world.

From there, Screwtape adds to his discussion concerning extremes, wondering whether they should “make the patient an extreme patriot or an extreme pacifist.”  It’s an interesting “either-or,” I think, that could be easily deconstructed.  But that’s not Screwtape’s point because

All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.

But then, in an interesting twist, Screwtape brings up a kind of extremism that comes from factions, even (and perhaps especially?) in the church.  The “Cause,” whatever it is, might keep the church small but focused in an unfortunate way.

We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men many know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or clique.

In his biblical “knowledge,” the head demon even points Wormwood back to the problem in the Corinthian church and its struggle with various “founders and their followers.”

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Which does bring up the question of what an “appropriate extreme” might look like, especially in Our Current Moment when everything extreme is loud and seemingly clear and yet still unconnected from where many people have settled.  This is true in churches, too, where each church doesn’t just have it’s own “charism” but also has its own way of understanding the relationship between God and man and then between people in general.  Which makes you wonder how much of Lewis’s “mere Christianity” can still be found in the Church today.

Way back at the end of November, I mentioned rereading The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis.  And then I didn’t say much about it.  It took me a little longer than I intended (which has been the case in general this last year), but it really was a rewarding read.  This week I want to touch on some of the highlights of that reread, particularly as it pertains to whatever the spiritual life is (or isn’t).

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Early in Screwtape’s collection of missives (Letter #4) to his apprentice demon, Wormwood, the topic of prayer comes up.  “The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether.”  He then hits on a number of things about the practice of prayer:

At the very least, they can be persuaded that the bodily position makes no difference to their prayers; for they constantly forget, what you must always remember, that they are animals and whatever their bodies to affects their souls.  It is funny how mortals always picture us as putting things into their minds: in reality our best work is done by keeping things out.

Screwtape gives lots of advice about superficiality and misdirection (and how they work against people in the pursuit of prayer).  But he also has an interesting view of the One to Whom People Pray.

But of course the Enemy will not meantime be idle.  Whenever there is prayer, there is danger of His own immediate action.  He is cynically indifferent to the dignity of His position, and ours, as pure spirits, and to human animals on their knees He pours out self-knowledge in a quite shameless fashion.

He even addresses the idea of having Wormtongue’s “patient” fixate on some kind of “intermediary” location as a way of keeping a knowledge and sense of the omnipresent God from the human’s mind and heart: “you must keep him praying to it– to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him.”  Something like catastrophe arrives if the patient makes the shift from the thing to the Person:

Once all of his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it– why, then it is that the incalculable may occur.

Screwtape calls this the “real nakedness of the soul in prayer.”  And this, he adds, is something “the humans themselves do not desire … as much as they purpose.”  That is the “more than they bargained for!”

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I think it was Eugene Peterson who said his primary task as a pastor was teaching his parishioners how to pray.  I think he was onto something.  Yes, that includes the formal prayers we have received from those who have prayed before us (and thus includes the Bible itself).  But it also includes the prayers that are the cries of our hearts.  And the prayers the spring up as conversation for the seeking of counsel.  “Faith,” the writer of Hebrews asserts, is “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  The writer goes on to say that “without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (11:1, 6).  And so it is with prayer.  As it was with Abram and Sarah, with David and Daniel, so it should be with us.  Beyond them, we have the example of Jesus as well as the presence of the Spirit, who prays for us when we cannot.  Oh that we would let our hearts be directly wholly and rightly to Him!

(image from insight.org)