Screwtape Letter #25 – Discussion Guide

Screwtape Letter #25 – Discussion Guide is article #52 in the series: Screwtape Letters. Click button to view titles for entire series

Letter #25

The Screwtape Letters Study Guide

More bad news
for Wormwood.

 


 

My dear Wormwood,

The real trouble about the set your patient is living in is that it is merely Christian. … Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.

 

25.1) “Mere Christianity” is a reference to another C. S. Lewis book. A reading group guide for the book includes the following text:

Regarded as the centerpiece of Lewis’s apologetics, Mere Christianity began as a series of live fifteen-minute radio talks that Lewis gave, under the auspices of the BBC, during WWII. Characterized by careful reasoning, vivid analogies, and Lewis’s gift for making complex religious ideas immediately accessible, the broadcasts were overwhelmingly successful,

Lewis was able to reach such a wide audience in part because he tried to explore the essence of Christian belief, what he felt “all Christians agree on.” After he finished the radio scripts, he sent them to Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Church of England theologians, all of whom agreed on the main points he had made. Lewis himself says in the preface to Mere Christianity, “So far as I can judge from reviews and from the numerous letters written to me, the book, however faulty in other respects, did at least succeed in presenting an agreed, or common, or central, or ‘mere’ Christianity.”

Compared to “Christianity And” – why is “Mere Christianity” something that Screwtape wants to avoid?

 

A common topic these days

“Mere Christianity” – Christianity at it’s core – without things added or subtracted by people – is the very basic set of beliefs. There’s really nothing to argue about – nothing necessary to be added – nothing that can be taken away without having something that isn’t Christianity any more.

As we move into “Christianity and” things get added – things that not everyone will agree on.
We also move into territory where we start adding our own beliefs (maybe hopes / desires) would be a better word.

In any case – “Christianity and” isn’t Christianity.
The further that we get away from Christianity and build up “Christianity and” –
the further we get from God – and the more likely that Satan will succeed against us.

An interesting side note here – I first wrote these lessons in 2009.  At that time. there wasn’t the big deal about “Christianity and” or “Christianity plus” that there is now in 2019 as I’m updating this for proper formatting on mobile phones and other small devices.  
Beyond that though – way beyond – C S Lewis wrote this book in 1942 – more than 75 years ago, as of this update!  Are we repeating, or did Lewis recognize something in us that far ahead?  I wasn’t alive back then, so I don’t know.

 

 

The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart—an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship. … He gives them in His Church a spiritual year; they change from a fast to a feast, but it is the same feast as before.

Now just as we pick out and exaggerate the pleasure of eating to produce gluttony, so we pick out this natural pleasantness of change and twist it into a demand for absolute novelty. … Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up.

 

25.2) Change – escape from boredom or a scary experience?

Depending on whether you like change or not – talk about why you would or wouldn’t like the idea of being-

not only contented but transported by the mixed novelty and familiarity of snowdrops this January, sunrise this morning, plum pudding this Christmas.

 

Responses will likely vary among different people

For myself – I think there’s a flaw in Screwtape’s thinking.
I don’t believe it’s just the same things over and over – to the point of boredom.

There’s so much to learn about God –
so much to experience –
as we do these same things year after year –
as we read the Bible and study it time after time –
as we grow with other people year after year –
we see more – experience more – learn more – and grow.

So – while it is – in the sense of the calendar and events – the same thing –
it’s hardly boring – because I’m always learning and coming into a deeper relationship with God.

When we get to the point where we’re reaching out to others to help them –
then it starts to get scary – because we don’t want to mess up –
but even that – with God’s help –
it’s exciting – and not at all boring.

 

This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. … Finally, the desire for novelty is indispensable if we are to produce Fashions or Vogues.

The use of Fashions in thought is to distract the attention of men from their real dangers. … Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

25.3) Screwtape continues to talk about what the devils can do with change.

There’s no mention (explicitly) of God or Christianity in this paragraph. And yet, both are being undermined. How is this happening when we start to do what’s proposed here?

 

Money

For a look at what money can do – compare what Jesus says about treasures in Heaven versus treasures on earth –

Treasures in Heaven

Mt 6:19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Mt 6:22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Mt 6:24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Fashion

As for what is fashionable – what about “fashion” itself? From Charles Finney –

Nonconformity in Fashion

In regard to fashion: Why are Christians required not to follow the fashions of the world? Because it is directly at war with the spirit of the gospel and is minding earthly things. What is minding earthly things if it is not to follow the fashions of the world that like a tide are continually setting to and fro and fluctuating in their forms and keeping the world continually changing?

Nay, further, another reason is that following the fashions of the world, professing Christians show that they do in fact love the world. They show it by their conduct, just as the ungodly show it by the same conduct. As they act alike, they give evidence that they are actuated by one principle, the love of fashion.  1  Heritage of great evangelical teaching : Featuring the best of Martin Luther, John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody, C.H. Spurgeon and others. 1997. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

 

 

But the greatest triumph of all is to elevate this horror of the Same Old Thing into a philosophy so that nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will. … For the descriptive adjective ‘unchanged’ we have substituted the emotional adjective ‘stagnant’. We have trained them to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes attain—not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

25.4) As with other things before, Screwtape starts with a little bit of something – change in this case – and takes it to the extreme.

It may be possible to sum up this paragraph in two words – peer pressure. That’s a force that can be hard to fight against. What help are the verses from John’s Gospel?

Jn 8:23 But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

Jn 8:24 I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be , you will indeed die in your sins.”

Jn 18:36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

 

We can't choose our family - but can we choose our peers?

In a sense – it comes down to a question of who do we want to be our peers? Consider what Jesus says about the narrow and wide gates.

The Narrow and Wide Gates

Mt 7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

Do we want to be a peer of the ones going through the wide gate – or the narrow gate?

 

Vocabulary:

Conkers – Children, until we have taught them better, will be perfectly happy with a seasonal round of games in which conkers succeed hopscotch as regularly as autumn follows summer.

Conkers – a game in which a child swings a horse chestnut on a string in an attempt to break that of another player. 

Bogey – Cruel ages are put on their guard against Sentimentality, feckless and idle ones against Respectability, lecherous ones against Puritanism; and whenever all men are really hastening to be slaves or tyrants we make Liberalism the prime bogey.

Bogey – Military . an unidentified aircraft or missile, especially one detected as a blip on a radar screen. 

(Not a golf term. Remember – this was set during a time of war and England was being bombed by the Germans. He’s using “bogey” to identify something that would definitely get the person’s attention.)  

Footnotes

  • 1
      Heritage of great evangelical teaching : Featuring the best of Martin Luther, John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody, C.H. Spurgeon and others. 1997. Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

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