Thursday in the 3rd Week of Lent: Letter 18 Notes
Screwtape on
the other hand denies the possibility of love because for any good demon, all
of life is competition and preying on the weak.
Relationships for a demon are about using, consuming, or absorbing another. Remember, demons’ corrupt virtues.
And of
course, the virtue here is love. Ancient
Greek philosophers identified six forms of love:
1.
Familial
love – storge
2.
Friendly
or platonic love – philia
3.
Romantic
Love – eros
4.
Self-love
– philautia
5.
Guest
love – xenia
6.
Divine
or Unconditional love – agape
On the other
side, our reading from Psalm 95 warns the people of God not to harden their
hearts which is very Church way of saying don’t stop loving God. In verse 11, God says that the people who do
not love God will not enter into God’s rest.
I like that image that living in God’s love is living in His rest.
And of
course there are many teachings about love in the New Testament. Jesus repeats the commandments to love God
and love your neighbor as the greatest commandment and the “second like unto
it.” Jesus often taught the people to
love their enemies and those who do not love them in return. The Apostle Paul gave us the great imagery of
love in 1 Corinthians. Without love I am
like a clanging symbol and a noisy gong!
However,
Screwtape sounds just like that in his advice to Wormwood. Much of this letter focuses on the idea of
being “in love” and how this feeling can be exploited. You will remember from previous letters that
demons often tempt us to feel a certain way in order to convince us that we
experienced an associated virtue. If we
feel in love then we must be.
Now one
thing to remember as we read this letter is that The Screwtape Letters was
published in 1942 and Lewis was a confirmed bachelor. He did not marry Joy Davidman until 1956.
Screwtape reminds Wormwood that the minions of Hell have used any number of poets and novelists to convince us we can all experience that romantic love that leads to marriage. The problem is from the side of the demons is that all love is based on competition and self-love. “My good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains another loses.”
Yet God
“aims at a contradiction.” Love between
two people is for the good of one another.
The model for this kind of love is the Trinity. In 3 persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit –
we find unity in being and divine love.
We know that
only God creates. God loves us so that
we may share that love with one another.
Rather than separating us, this love binds us together so that rather
than compete, we are made to co-operate.
Screwtape
points out the place of love in the family that turns out to be simple one more
way in which love strengthens the bond between us. I often tell young people who come for
pre-marital counseling that marriage binds us together in a way nothing else
does.
First of
all, marriage is a sacrament. We make
vows to one another and then ask God’s blessing on those promises. The couple actually marry themselves one to
another through those vows and then God blesses the union. And because it is a sacrament, then we
believe that God works in that couple through the mystery of faith. From then on there will never be a time in
their married lives that they are separate individuals. I am always Phyllis’s husband and she is
always my wife, so every decision and action we make for each other as well
even when we are not together. This is
what it means to be one flesh.
Screwtape
also makes light of the whole idea of love.
Remember, and I know I say it often but it is a critical point to
understanding how the demons think and tempt in The Screwtape Letters, demons
corrupt what God has created. And we
know that we love since God first loved us which means that God creates love
and we share it. So when we love someone
else, we are doing what God does.
I also tell
folks that marriage is not a 50/50 commitment.
It is 100%/100%. I think the same
is true in our relationship with God. I
can say with all certainty that God loves me fully all of the time. I wish I could say the same on my end. Then again, the Apostle Paul reminds us that we
are called to continually work to love God more and more. It is a journey of faith and love so that our
goal is love God and our neighbors just a little more each day.
In our
reading from Jeremiah today, the people of Israel are reminded that God is our
God which as Rich reminds us regularly, if God says He is going to do it, then
He does. Even when God’s chosen people
did not love Him, he sent the prophets to remind them. I think that God sends me reminders everyday
of his presence and love in my life. Often
times, my prophets are one of the children at the Day School or a high school
student coming for EYC.
Going back to Psalm 95, we are reminded that worship is one of the chief ways we can love God. Verse 6 is a good discipline for Lent:
“Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee and kneel before
the Lord our Maker. For he is our God,
and we are people of his pasture and sheep of his hand. Oh, that today you would hearken to his
voice.”
By the way,
if that sounds familiar, we say those verses often in the 9am Sunday service as
part of the Venite.
Our Gospel
reading today comes from Luke.
Appropriately to our study of The Screwtape Letters, Jesus is casting
out demons. In other words, Jesus his
healing people. Some who are watching
him start asking if Jesus’s power to cast out demons comes from Beelzebul, who
was known as the prince of the demons in Jesus’s day. Beelzebul was a name derived from a
Philistine god and later adopted by some of the Middle Eastern religions. It is also associated with the Canaanite God
Baal which comes up several times in the scriptures.
Jesus makes
the point to the people that day when Jesus acts then it is as if the finger of
God has touched you. Of course
Michelangelo’s painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling immediately came to mind
with God reaching out and touching Adam with his finger. As you read our lesson from Luke’s Gospel,
think of God continually reaching out to you and touching you. It is a marvelous image.
I think that
as we read this and all of The Screwtape Letters, it is always good to remember
that love is always a gift from God and that love can help us through the
temptations.
Let us close
with our prayer for today which reminds of God’s unfailing love. Let us pray.
Keep watch
over your Church, O Lord, with your unfailing love; and, since it is grounded
in human weakness and cannot maintain itself without your aid, protect it from
all danger, and keep it in the way of salvation; through Jesus Christ your Son
our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever
and ever. Amen.