Wednesday in the 4th Week of Lent: Letter 23
The Scripture Lessons for today are HERE!
Letter 23 opens with Screwtape continuing to complain about “this
girl and her disgusting family.”
The Patient is getting to know more and more intelligent Christians which makes it quite impossible to remove Christianity from his life.
It is time for a new approach.
Rather than REMOVING, Wormwood should move to CORRUPTING. Screwtape says:
The World and the Flesh have failed us; a third Power remains. And success of this third kind is the most glorious of all. A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician makes better sport in Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.
A “debauchee” would be a person give to excessive indulgence in pleasures of the senses.
Now before we continue, I want say that this Letter 23 is very dense and if it seemed confusing, don’t worry, I will walk us all through it.
It deals primarily with the question, “Who is Jesus Christ?” and let’s face it, Theologians and other church folks have been studying the answers for over 2000 years. I am confident that Lewis does not intend to sum it all up in a short Screwtape Letter.
Screwtape wants to corrupt the Patient’s Christian faith by means of the intersection between politics and theology.
Now I think it is important for us to understand that Lewis is not talking about politics that we see on CNN or Fox News every day. Rather he is referring to the classical definition.
If you asked a Greek philosopher to define “Politics” he would say that it is about WHO GETS WHAT, WHEN, AND HOW.
As Screwtape says, it is about the social impact of our actions. This will become important as we go further in the letter.
I also want us to take a look at our Gospel reading for today, because it tells us a good deal about who Christ is! Now again, this is a complicated Gospel passage but stay with me and I think it will make sense.
Jesus has just healed a man who could not walk at the Pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. The Jewish leaders are condemning Jesus for healing someone on the Sabbath and claiming to be equal with God. Jesus is now proclaiming who He is and what He has come to do.
From this passage we learn that:
1. The Father and the Son are one just as we proclaim each Sunday in the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds.
2. Life comes from the Father and the Son. Remember only God can create and since the Trinity is 1 in 3 and 3 in 1, then whatever 1 does – all 3 do.
3. The Son comes to Judge just as the Father does and I want us to remember that Judgement in scripture is not about judgement in a court of law but about making things RIGHT.
4. So when we believe in Jesus, we are made RIGHT with God and we receive Eternal Life. If we don’t then we get to meet Screwtape and Wormwood face to face.
This is important because Screwtape wants to corrupt the Patient’s faith by tearing down his understanding of Jesus. And he will do this by means of “The Historical Jesus.”
Now I want to make 2 points going forward. First, understanding the Historical Jesus is a legitimate field of academic study. There are a number of first rate scholars studying what the world was like when Jesus walked in Judah, Jerusalem, and Galilee.
I think it is fascinating to hear Rich talk about how the New Testament connects to the Old and how Jesus would use Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets to show how God loves us.
Second, we are not OT or NT scholars. We are ordinary Christians and so we need to stick with our beliefs and not allow ourselves to be tempted into unbelief because of what I will call “Popular Theology.”
Some years ago there was an Episcopal Bishop who wrote a number of What-if books. He would say things like “What if – Mary the mother of Jesus was not a Virgin?” He would then write a few more pages and by the end of the chapter he was acting like what he had said was fact. It was not!
So, with all that said, Screwtape advises Wormwood to go after the Historical Jesus in the mind of his Patient.
It seems that every 30 or so years there is a new idea of who the historical Jesus really was.
Screwtape tells his nephew:
In the first place they all tend to direct men’s devotion to something which does not exist, for each “historical Jesus” is unhistorical.
The second step is to highlight some particular theory that Jesus supposedly taught, said, or did so that the Patient no longer thinks of Jesus as the Son of God but rather a philosophical teacher who imparted great truths. This makes him mortal.
The third step is to destroy the devotional life by substituting God who we are continually coming to know with a “merely probable, remote, shadowy, and uncouth figure, one who spoke a strange language and died a long time ago.”
Fourth, we make Jesus into some sort of historical figure who we study but only believe in through the lens of those who taught our earliest Sunday School classes.
This Jesus is nothing more than an academic pursuit who we seek to understand rather than believe.
Strangely enough, Screwtape gives us a perfect summary of believing in Jesus rather than simply understanding.
The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single doctrine (the Redemption) operating on a sense of sin which they already had…
Now Screwtape warns Wormwood to keep things in the right order.
Politics should always corrupt faith rather than faith informing our politics.
Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster.
And the last sentence of this letter is a good reminder to us that we should always view temptation with a healthy dose of skepticism since in is all a game to the demons.
A quick note about the Psalm for today. Psalm 145 is one of my favorites and it is truly a song of praise. If you are feeling distant from God, this Psalm will bring you back. The Talmud – a collection of ancient Jewish laws and traditions – says that every one who repeats this Psalm 3 times a day may be sure that he is a child of the world to come.
Let close today with our Prayer for Wednesday in the 4th week of Lent.
O Lord our God, you sustained your ancient people in the wilderness with bread from heaven: Feed now your pilgrim flock with the food that endures to everlasting life; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.