in the end of chapter or letter 7, screwtape makes this comment, "Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours, and the more 'religious' (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a petty cageful down here..." this reminds me of the ghost in The Great Divorce who was so concerned with proving Christianity that he forgot about Christ. i know plenty of people who do all the religious things but forget about what the religious things are for. i like how Lewis address this issue in both of these books.
posted by $tovetop at 1:17 PM
4 Comments:
This also ties into A Grief Observed a little. The part that I'm thinking of is when Lewis talks about humans using God as a means to heaven.
"But then of course I know perfectly well that He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the ends but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all."
I totally agree that many people do the religious practices and completely blot God out of the picture.
You have to wonder why people do this. And it always comes back to pride, as I think most things do. People feel that they need to appear to be something or have something. In the Christian life and the Christian community you hear a lot of talk about works. Sometimes it seems that many of our works we do,not to praise God through doing them, but to show other Christians that we are "good" Christians. In a way I think it can turn into "keeping up with the Jones", and the reasons for our work is nowhere near what they should be. It's not about God at all.
There is a deifinite cry out for a return to Christ in many movements going on in Culture today! So often, as Bruce Murphy was talking about in chapel the other day, we get caught up in things that distract us from the source, Christ. Return to the source and return to authentic Christianity!
I find it interesting and kind of sad, that Lewis can address this issue, that many years ago, and we still have the problem today. I'm not saying that it should have been completely illiminated in that time span, but what is sad is that it is something that has been brought to our attention, but we do nothing about it (ok not all people).
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