Inner Driving

The Scripture Lessons for Today are  HERE! Letter 24 is all about spiritual pride.   Picture in your mind someone who would actually be proud of their humility!   That is close to what we will see in our Letter today. Our Old Testament lesson from the book of Exodus offers an excellent example.   The Israelites are in the wilderness at Mount Sinai.   Moses is on top of the mountain talking to God.   The Israelites below - on the other hand – make a golden calf and start worshipping it.   Think about it.   They know that Moses is talking to the God who brought them out of Egypt and across the Red Sea.   Exodus tells us that they can see flashes of lightning and hear loud thunder coming from the cloud on top of the   mountain and they know that God is in that cloud.   They know all this and decide it is ok to offer sacrifices and worship a golden calf? Our Psalm retells the same story and verse 20 sums it all up.   And so...

  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 Jes...

  The Scripture Lessons for Today are HERE!   We begin Letter 22 with 2 important events. 1.         The Patient is in love 2.       There is growing stress between Screwtape and Wormwood. It seems that Screwtape has been caught.   He is now under the intense scrutiny of the powers that be in the Kingdom Below and the Secret Police for certain statements made in letters to a certain nephew that seem to almost extol the virtues of the Kingdom Above and criticize the Kingdom Below. Fortunately, Screwtape has been able to smooth things over with the demonic hierarchy. Now Wormwood is in trouble for tuning in Screwtape and soon shall pay.   And from this I think we must assume that if demons work against each other and cannot be trusted, why would we even imagine they word work FOR us and to our advantage.   But before we get into the heart of Letter 22, we need a couple of definitions. 1.  ...

 The Scripture Lessons for today are HERE! Today we begin the 4 th Week of Lent with Letter 21 and I will tell you that this is definitely one of my favorites.   In it, C. S. Lewis through Screwtape and Wormwood explores the philosophical and theological questions of what I am going to call “TIME and MINE.”   It seems that Wormwood needs a new approach with his temptations.   Since the Patient has experienced a profound second conversion experience, many of the previously tried tactics are no longer working.   So Screwtape suggests to his nephew demon an attack on the Patient’s PEEVISHNESS. Now if you had to look that one up, so did I!   Peevishness is another word for those times when we are CRANKY, IRRITABLE, and just plain GRUMPY.   And this is best used as a subordinate attack.   In other words, use something that makes the Patient feel GRUMPY and Screwtape suggests TIME. Do we ever have enough time to get everything done?   Scre...