More Screwtape~

You may be wondering why I continue with images of devils and their thinking. I suppose it's because I'm still listening to The Screwtape Letters and find that it's having a singular effect on me. I hope by now that you're feeling some of it too--that tickling at the back of your mind that you haven't thought of this side of your spiritual life in some time--if ever. While striving to be good, we forget how easily we can be bad! This is just a short passage from the preface of the book. Do you believe that spending time reflecting on the way Satan operates in the world  might be beneficial to you? I hope you  see how this idea  catches you with its unique and extraordinary theme in so many ways:  first, mentally, then emotionally and  spiritually. And isn't that what you're praying for? To increase your spirituality!

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The Screwtape Letters, from the Preface

Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives. The first is fear of punishment: for as totalitarian countries have their camps for torture, so my Hell contains deeper Hells, its "houses of correction." Their second motive is a kind of hunger. I feign that devils can, in a spiritual sense, eat one another; and us. Even in human life we have seen the passion to dominate, almost to digest, one's fellow; to make his whole intellectual and emotional life merely an extension of one's own--to hate one's hatreds and resent one's grievances and indulge one's egoism through him as well as through oneself. His own little store of passion must of course be suppressed to make room for ours. If he resists this suppression he is being very selfish.

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You might ask yourself: Is this the way I move through the world? Controlling people to the extent of not allowing them to be who they are? Mothers can do this to their children, or the father to his children, or the children to their parents when they're old. Wives to their husbands or husbands to their wives. Elders to their congregation. The government to the people. I've definitely noticed that it's pretty much everywhere--control and conquer. Seems that no one wants you to be you! Satan and his angels--and all who deny Christ--are in rebellion. If you're not a believer--and I mean a true believer--then you're in rebellion as well. It makes for a world of controlling people who do not care about your happiness or your peace! Think about it.

Have a good Thursday!

Blessings...Mimi