I see now why God wanted me to wait until this point to read The Screwtape Letters. After several conversations this year that have taught me a lot spiritually, both through things the other people said and through things God revealed to me to share with them, I’ve been finding that C.S. Lewis came to a lot of the same conclusions I’ve been coming to this year. God wanted me to find these conclusions on my own before reading The Screwtape Letters so that they would be confirmed to me, and that I would know I’m not the only one who He’s revealed these things to. The three biggest ones are:
- “[God] sees that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality” (pg. 161). The devil produces fear in us, and when we’re afraid, we can be reassured that we are doing the Lord’s will because the devil wouldn’t want to hinder us if we weren’t working against him.
- “[Precautions] have a tendency to increase fear… What you must do is to keep running in his mind (side by side with the conscious intention of doing his duty) the vague idea of all sorts of things he can do or not do, inside the framework of the duty, which seem to make him a little safer” (pg. 162). Faith with a plan B is weak faith. If I want my faith to be stronger, I have to take some risks without taking precautions. I have to learn to act in obedience to God without having second thoughts.
- “Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us [devils] if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel” (pg. 67). If we hear God’s voice and disobey, we will continue to disobey his voice until we ignore it completely and it seems as if we can’t hear Him anymore. The best way to hear God more clearly is to do what He says.
